Ray Blanchard

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Ray Blanchard

Ray Blanchard, 2008
Born Ray Milton Blanchard
October 9, 1945 (1945-10-09) (age 66)
Hammonton, New Jersey, U.S.
Residence Canada
Citizenship United States, Canada
Fields Psychology, sexology
Institutions Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto
Alma mater University of Pennsylvania
University of Illinois
Known for Phallometry, paraphilias, gender dysphoria, sexual orientation

Ray Milton Blanchard (born October 9, 1945) is an American-Canadian sexologist, best known for his research studies on pedophilia, gender dysphoria, and sexual orientation. He has also published research studies on phallometry and several paraphilias, including transvestism and autoerotic asphyxia.

Contents

[edit] Education and career

Blanchard was born in Hammonton, New Jersey. He received his A.B. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967 and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1973. He conducted postdoctoral research at Dalhousie University until 1976, when he accepted a position as a clinical psychologist at the Ontario Correctional Institute in Brampton, Ontario, Canada (a suburb of Toronto). There, Blanchard met Kurt Freund, who became his mentor. Freund was conducting research in chemical castration for sex offenders.[1] In 1980, he joined the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry (now part of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health).[2] In 1995 Blanchard was named Head of Clinical Sexology Services in the Law and Mental Health Programme of the CAMH, and he serves as a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He served on the American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders[3] and was named to the DSM-5 committee. According to the Web of Science, Blanchard's scientific articles have been cited more than 1800 times, with an h-index of 27.[4]

[edit] Fraternal birth order effect

Blanchard has conducted research on factors that influence the development of sexual orientation, including biological factors. He has proposed a theory known as a fraternal birth order effect or "older brother effect". This theory is that the more older brothers a man has, the greater the probability is that he will have a homosexual sexual orientation. The number of older sisters has no effect, however. The same is not true for lesbians—neither the number of older brothers nor the number of older sisters appears to be related to the sexual orientation of women.[5][6][7] The fraternal birth order effect is the strongest known predictor of sexual orientation,[8] with each older brother increasing a man's odds of being gay by about 33%.[9] Blanchard goes on to state that "A man's chance of being gay is pretty low to begin with --perhaps as low as 2%..." So having one older brother ups the chance to only about 2.6%."[10]

Blanchard hypothesizes that the older brother effect is caused by interactions between a male fetus and the immune system of the mother: Because certain proteins (called H-y antigens) are produced by male and not by female fetuses, the mother's immune system reacts only to male fetuses and is more likely to produce a reaction with each successive exposure to a male fetus.[11]

[edit] Male-to-female gender dysphoria

Main article: Blanchard's transsexualism typology

Blanchard coined the term "autogynephilia" to describe men with an erotic desire to be women and hypothesized that all gender dysphoria in biological males are variants of only two types: homosexual gender dysphoria and non-homosexual gender dysphoria. The former are attracted to men, while the latter are attracted to the idea of themselves being a woman.[12] Within the transsexual community, there has been much controversy surrounding Blanchard's ideas.[13]

Blanchard supports public funding of sex reassignment surgery as an appropriate treatment for transsexual people, as he believes the available evidence supports that the surgery helps them live more comfortably and happily, with high satisfaction rates.[14]

[edit] The term teleiophilia

Blanchard coined the term teleiophilia to refer to sexual interest in adults.[15] Unlike the terms referring to sexual interest in other age groups, such as pedophilia (sexual interest in prepubescent children) and hebephilia (sexual interest in pubescent children), teleiophilia is not considered a paraphilia. The term was formalized in order to forestall neologisms, such as "adultophilia" or "normophilia," that were occasionally used, but had no precise definition. The term is used primarily by professional sexologists in the scientific literature.

[edit] DSM-5

[edit] Appointment

Blanchard served on the gender dysphoria sub-working group for the DSM-IV and served as Chair of the paraphilia sub-working group for the DSM-5, which was protested by activists protested the latter appointment.[16] The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force issued a statement questioning the APA's decision to appoint Blanchard.[17]

[edit] Paraphilias

In 2008, Blanchard was the lead author of an influential paper proposing the introduction of hebephilia in the DSM-5.[18] The paper, coauthored mostly with colleagues from CAMH and the University of Toronto, triggered a number of reactions, many of them critical on the basis that it pathologizes reproductively valid behavior in order to uphold current social and legal standards. Critics include Richard Green,[19] DSM-IV editor Michael First,[20] forensic psychologist Karen Franklin,[21] and Charles Allen Moser,[22] while others including William O'Donohue argued that the proposal does not go far enough.[23] Blanchard also wrote the literature review paper for the DSM-5 committee regarding pedophilia, in which he summarizes and attempts to address the criticism over the DSM-IV-TR definition of pedophilia.[24] The DSM-5 diagnosis proposes a new name ("pedohebophilic disorder") and the rationale for the change draws cites several of Blanchard's scientific publications.[25] The naming also reflects the more general distinction proposed between paraphilia and paraphilic disorder in DSM-5 as proposed by Blachard in his review paper on pedophilia.

Blanchard noted that both Richard Green[26] and William O'Donohue[27] remarked that a so-called "contended pedophile"—an individual who fantasizes about having sex with a child, but does not commit child sexual abuse, but just masturbates fantasizing it, and who does not feel subjectively distressed afterward—does not meet the DSM-IV-TR criteria for pedophilia, because he does not meet Criterion B. Whereas Green proposed to solve the problem by removing pedophilia from the DSM, and O'Donohue proposed to remove criterion B for pedophilia, Blanchard proposed a general solution applicable to all paraphilias, namely a distinction between paraphilia and paraphilic disorder. The latter term is proposed to identify the diagnosable condition, which meets both Criterion A and B, whereas an individual who does not meet Criterion B, can be ascertained, but not diagnosed, as having a paraphilia. (Blanchard acknowledges Kenneth Zucker and James Cantor for discussions about this distinction.)[24] Interviewed by bioethics professor Alice Dreger, Blanchard explained: "We tried to go as far as we could in depathologizing mild and harmless paraphilias, while recognizing that severe paraphilias that distress or impair people or cause them to do harm to others are validly regarded as disorders."[28]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Freund K (1980). Therapeutic Sex Drive Reduction. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 62 (s287), 5–38 DOI:10.1111/j.1600-0447.1980.tb10433.x
  2. ^ Laws RD, O'Donohue WT (eds.) Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment. Guilford Press ISBN 1572302410
  3. ^ Bradley SJ, Blanchard R, Coates SW, Green R, Levine SB, Meyer-Bahlburg HFL, Pauly IB, Zucker KJ (1991). Interim report of the DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders. Archives of Sexual Behavior Volume 20, Number 4 / August, 1991
  4. ^ Web of Science, accessed March 18, 2010
  5. ^ Blanchard, R., & Bogaert, A. F. (1996). Homosexuality in men and number of older brothers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 27–31.
  6. ^ Blanchard, R., & Bogaert, A. F. (1996). Biodemographic comparisons of homosexual and heterosexual men in the Kinsey interview data. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 25, 551–579.
  7. ^ Blanchard, R., Zucker, K. J., Siegelman, M., Dickey, R., & Klassen, P. (1998). The relation of birth order to sexual orientation in men and women. Journal of Biosocial Science, 30, 511–519.
  8. ^ Bogaert, A. F. (2006). Biological versus nonbiological older brothers and men's sexual orientation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 10777-10774.
  9. ^ Cantor, J. M., Blanchard, R., Paterson, A. D., & Bogaert, A. F. (2002). How many gay men owe their sexual orientation to fraternal birth order? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31, 63–71.
  10. ^ http://www.nowpublic.com/world/big-brother-effect-or-biological-error
  11. ^ Blanchard, R., & Klassen, P. (1997). H-Y antigen and homosexuality in men. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 185, 373–378.
  12. ^ Blanchard, R. (1989). "The classification and labeling of nonhomosexual gender dysphorias". Archives of sexual behavior 18 (4): 315–334. PMID 2673136.  edit
  13. ^ Dreger, A. D. (2008). "The Controversy Surrounding the Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age". Archives of Sexual Behavior 37 (3): 366–421. doi:10.1007/s10508-007-9301-1. PMC 3170124. PMID 18431641. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=3170124.  edit
  14. ^ Blanchard (2000). "Part II: The case for publicly funded transsexual surgery" (pdf). Psychiatry Rounds 4 (2): 4–6. http://individual.utoronto.ca/james_cantor/index_files/Blanchard2000.pdf. 
  15. ^ Blanchard, R., Barbaree, H. E., Bogaert, A. F., Dickey, R., Klassen, P., Kuban, M. E., et al. (2000). Fraternal birth order and sexual orientation in pedophiles. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 29, 463–478.
  16. ^ Rau, K (2008-07-07). "Trans activists infuriated by doctors in charge of gender identity definitions". Xtra!. http://www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.aspx?AFF_TYPE=3&STORY_ID=5074&PUB_TEMPLATE_ID=2. Retrieved 2012-02-10. 
  17. ^ "Task Force questions critical appointments to APA’s Committee on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders". National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. 2008-05-28. http://www.thetaskforce.org/press/releases/pr_052808. Retrieved 2012-02-10. 
  18. ^ Blanchard, R.; Lykins, A. D.; Wherrett, D.; Kuban, M. E.; Cantor, J. M.; Blak, T.; Dickey, R.; Klassen, P. E. (2008). "Pedophilia, Hebephilia, and the DSM-V". Archives of Sexual Behavior 38 (3): 335–350. doi:10.1007/s10508-008-9399-9. PMID 18686026.  edit
  19. ^ Green, R. (2010). "Sexual preference for 14-year-olds as a mental disorder: you can't be serious!!". Archives of sexual behavior 39 (3): 585–586. doi:10.1007/s10508-010-9602-7. PMID 20204488.  edit
  20. ^ Frieden, J (2009-12-01). "DSM-V Work on Paraphilias Begins in Earnest". Clinical Psychiatry News.  accessible at http://www.clinicalpsychiatrynews.com/index.php?id=2407&cHash=071010&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=40678
  21. ^ Franklin, K. (2010). "Hebephilia: Quintessence of diagnostic pretextuality". Behavioral Sciences & the Law 28 (6): n/a. doi:10.1002/bsl.934. http://www.wisspd.org/html/training/ProgMaterials/Ch980/Heb.pdf.  edit
  22. ^ Moser, C. (2008). "When is an Unusual Sexual Interest a Mental Disorder?". Archives of Sexual Behavior 38 (3): 323–325; author 325 331–325. doi:10.1007/s10508-008-9436-8. PMID 18946730.  edit
  23. ^ O’donohue, W. (2010). "A Critique of the Proposed DSM-V Diagnosis of Pedophilia". Archives of Sexual Behavior 39 (3): 587–590. doi:10.1007/s10508-010-9604-5. PMID 20204487.  edit
  24. ^ a b Blanchard, R. (2009). "The DSM Diagnostic Criteria for Pedophilia" (pdf). Archives of Sexual Behavior 39 (2): 304–316. doi:10.1007/s10508-009-9536-0. PMID 19757012. http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/Sex%20and%20GID%20Lit%20Reviews/Paraphilias/DSMV.PEDO.pdf.  edit
  25. ^ "U 03 Pedophilic Disorder - Rationale". American Psychiatric Association. http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=186. Retrieved 2012-02-10. 
  26. ^ Green, R. (2002). "Is pedophilia a mental disorder?". Archives of sexual behavior 31 (6): 467–471; discussion 471–510. PMID 12462476.  edit
  27. ^ O'Donohue, W.; Regev, L. G.; Hagstrom, A. (2000). "Problems with the DSM-IV diagnosis of pedophilia". Sexual abuse : a journal of research and treatment 12 (2): 95–105. PMID 10872239.  edit
  28. ^ Dreger, A (2010-02-19). "Of Kinks, Crimes, and Kinds: The Paraphilias Proposal for the DSM-5". Hastings Center. http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=4494. Retrieved 2012-02-10. 

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