Abstract: Hypersexuality and Sexual Offending

Germany has a long history of using the construct of sexual addiction/hypersexuality in sexual offenders. In this lecture I will give an overview about the historical development in Germany and will present preliminary results of current research. I will focus on hypersexuality as a dimensional and as a categorical construct. I will discuss sexual addiction/hypersexuality as a criterion of severity of disturbance and for risk in sexual offenders. Finally, psychotherapeutic and pharmacological treatment options will be discussed.

Professor Peer Briken is Director of the Institute for Sex Research and Forensic Psychiatry in Hamburg since 2010. The institute has an outpatient clinic for sexual offenders and provides court reports on sexual offenders. Peer Briken’s main research activities are: pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatment of sexual offenders, sexual homicide, hypersexuality, juvenile sexual offenders and delinquency. He published the first German studies on pharmacological treatment of paraphilic patients with GnRH agonists and SSRI. He is reviewer for international journals, member of Editorial Board of the Open Forensic Science Journal, Sex Offender Treatment and Editor of the German Journal of Sex Research. He is also a member of several societies. Since 2010, he was appointed the president of the German Society of Sex Research. Since 2012 he is Member of the Correctional Services Advisory and Accreditation Panel, National Offender Management Service, Ministry of Justice, UK. Since 2012 he is advisor to the DSM-5 Development Process.