Vandalized Lovemaps

Book excerpt: In the criminal justice system they are termed perverted. On the streets they are called kinky. The attitude toward people who practice aberrant sexual activity is almost always molded by prejudice or fear. Even after Alfred Kinsey's research ascertained the statistical prevalence of variant sexual activity in the population at large, the scientific establishment - and the public - have been slow to accept the study of "unacceptable" eroticism. Dr. Money, who coined the word "lovemap" a decade ago, defines a lovemap as our subconscious pattern of erotic yearnings and desire. Each of us has a distinctive lovemap, as different and individual as a fingerprint. "Vandalized" lovemaps are those that have gone awry during development, becoming paraphilic - literally, "away from what is expected in love." Paraphilia manifests itself in behavior that is, according to the ideological criterion of everyday orthodoxy, unorthodox. Vandalized Lovemaps is the first study of its kind, for it is a study of paraphilic development which is not retrospective, as is usually the case, but prospective. In seven cases, John Money and Margaret Lamacz record, from childhood onward, factors in the evolution of a paraphilic lovemap, studying biographical background, practices and subsequent treatments.