Exhibitionism
Exhibitionism is a mental illness that is characterized by the pathological behavior of the patient in the form of a demonstration of the penis in a state of erection to strangers, thus achieving self–affirmation, hypercompensation.
Exhibitionism can signal other mental disorders – for example, this behavior occurs in the hebephrenic form of schizophrenia, with Huntington’s chorea, in dissociative people.
CAUSES OF EXHIBITIONISM
Modern psychiatry is not ready to answer the question of what exactly can cause the development of exhibitionism in an adult. It is generally believed that the roots of the disease go back to childhood to incidents that happened to a child a long time ago. For example, sexual abuse of a child, other forms of sexual activity towards a child.
The nature of exhibitionists is such that they cannot achieve sexual satisfaction in the usual way, but achieve it by showing their genitals to people around them.
SYMPTOMS OF EXHIBITIONISM
The main manifestation of this mental illness is the demonstration of their genitals. As a rule, patients demonstrate themselves to the opposite sex. Exhibitionists can simply demonstrate their organs, or they can supplement their demonstration with masturbation followed by ejaculation.
There are some varieties of exhibitionists. The first group was called “harmless” exhibitionists. Persons belonging to this group do not demonstrate themselves to everyone in a row – they either limit themselves to fantasies, or demonstrate themselves to a limited number of people who usually suffer from a similar ailment.
The second group is more serious. These are “dangerous” exhibitionists. Persons of this group are able not only to demonstrate their genitals to any person they meet (a typical example is a man in a coat on the street). The subject of the demonstration can be a woman, a passerby, or even a child. The danger of this type of ecgibitionism lies in the fact that often such clinical cases are aggravated and develop into criminally punishable pathologies – pedophilia, violence and other types of pathological behavior.
DIAGNOSIS OF EXHIBITIONISM
Since exhibitionism is still a disease, therefore it requires diagnosis. This mental pathology depresses the patient’s personality, significantly complicates and worsens the quality of his life. In the case when the patient does not resist his condition, he commits not only immoral, but also illegal actions that are criminally punishable.
A person who is suspected of this pathology should seek the advice of a psychiatrist. The task of a psychiatrist is not only to identify the presence of mental pathology, but also to try to identify possible causes that led the patient to such a condition.
Of course, exigibiconists rarely realize themselves that they need help and turn to specialists. Most often, a visit to a psychiatrist occurs after a certain conflict, or in a forced form.
Based on this, patients may not be in the mood to talk about their life, sexual preferences (collecting anamnesis for a psychiatrist) and this complicates the process of further treatment.
TREATMENT OF EXHIBITIONISM
Exhibitionism is a mental illness, therefore the main type of treatment is prolonged psychotherapy, detailed and thorough psychoanalysis. In some cases, if the cause of immoral behavior is in other mental illnesses (hebephrenic schizophrenia), the patient may need medication therapy to relieve the underlying disease. Drugs and dosages are selected strictly individually, sometimes it takes quite a long time to determine the optimal option and achieve an improvement in mental indicators.
