A Compositional Explanation of Deviant Sexual Fantasy: A Pluralistic Modelling Approach

Forensic psychology has tended to focus its explanatory theories on offence types rather than psychological phenomena. This has left many phenomena related to crime lacking adequate theoretical explanations. I argue that the phenomenon known as deviant sexual fantasy (DSF) is lacking a clear and consistent conceptualisation, and that a compositional explanation is necessary to provide a detailed description of the relevant structures and processes that make up its constitution. This thesis examines DSF in relation to sexual offending and takes a pluralistic approach when constructing compositional explanations by developing a collection of models that will represent the composition of DSF at various levels. To achieve this, I have drawn upon the black box model and the agent-action-context schema to produce three models that describe DSF based on the characteristics and cognitive components of the individual, the specific behavioural patterns and the contextual components that describe the situational features in which agents and actions are embedded. This thesis argues that by providing a stronger and more comprehensive conceptual understanding of DSF, researchers will be better equipped for attempting to explain its causal mechanisms and for designing increasingly finetuned interventions.