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This report of an interdisciplinary commission for the study of the sex offender is one more step in the integration of social-psychiatric thinking in a field of psychopathology, until recently implicitly conceived as being outside the pale of scientific interest. Precipitated by a half century of psychoanalytic investigations of psycho-sexuality in children and neurotic adults and by the recent Kinsey report on the sexual behavior of 'normal' American males, a movement has been launched in several of our larger states (New York, California, Michigan, etc.) to implement and mobilize through legislative action, the psychiatric and social facilities which could diagnose and treat sexual deviation. The recommendations offered by this commission oppose the 'lock 'em up and throw the key away' technique still abundantly present in many judicial, lay, and even psychiatric minds regarding sex deviates.
The report presents forty recommendations based on a thorough sifting of available data in Michigan and other states and on 'selective and creative' judgments for eventual legislative action. The commission was aware of the unconscious participation of every citizen in the 'sex fiend', with the reaction-formation of demands for drastic treatment via castration laws (as is now being offered in the California legislature), longer prison terms, and so on. It also displayed an acute perception of the part played by fantasy-induced sexual accusations on the part of child victims. In the area of lawmaking, the commission understood the ineffectiveness of passage of so-called sex psychopath laws without provision for clinical psychiatric study and investigation. The viewpoint of the commission was based on the 'fundamental thesis of rehabilitation of the treatable offender and protection for society', with an appreciation of all the practical problems this view entails.