The Use of Fantasy Training as a Therapeutic Process in Working With Sexual Offenders

Abstract

Many individuals who are sexual offenders can be helped by making use of fantasy training as an additional approach to traditional psychotherapy. Many non-psychotic persons who are characteristically action-prone, aggressive, impulsive and socially deviant generally exhibit meagre fantasy skills. Others are given to a repetitive obsessive fantasy that spills over into action. Because there is a linkage between fantasy and behavior, fantasy training can be utilized to reduce the acting-out behavior of these individuals. Fantasy experiences are typically underused in psychotherapeutic intervention. Because they have potential for increasing the adjustment captabilities of many sexual offenders, much greater consideration should be given to the teaching of the imaging process as a treatment technique. Amplification of this information and how the instruction of fantasy process can be done will be discussed.