The Structure, Covariates, and Etiology of Hypersexuality: Implications for Sexual Offending

A substantial increase in research on the structure, covariates, and etiology of hypersexuality has emerged during the last decade. It is the goal of this review to summarize and integrate this research and to indicate some practical implications for clinical and forensic practice, especially as applied to those who have sexually offended.

Studies from the last half-decade converge on the conclusion that hypersexuality has both problematic and high sexual drive components. Both aspects have consistently been found to be distributed dimensionally and not categorically. Each subdimension covaries differentially with specific types of impulsivity. In addition to sexual abuse, psychological or emotional abuse has emerged to be a potent developmental antecedent of hypersexuality. Current research has focused on the problematic dimension of hypersexuality and has neglected to specify the criteria for high sexual drive. Lacking are large-scale representative and clinical samples that provide determination of optimal cutoffs for treatment and dispositional decisions for both dimensions of hypersexuality. Research on the etiology of both aspects of hypersexuality is in its infancy, and more differentiated assessments of developmental abuse histories are required.