CURRENT NOTES.

The Treatment of a Chronic Case of Exhibitionism by Means of the Autobiographic Method of Analysis-Exhibitionits constitute a very difficult problem for treatment in the prison inasmuch as only a few are willing to face their deviation honestly. However, when there is a sincere effort to overcome the abnormal pattern much can be accomplished. Analysis by the autobiographical method lends itself, especially, as an approach with the more intelligent prisoners. The subject of this study, a young man of 24, (I.Q. 110), was committed to the Detroit House of Correction on a term of six months to one year for Indecent Exposure. He had been in the habit of exposing himself and masturbating before women on the street almost daily for several years. He had received psychiatric treatment before incarceration for one year and a half without success. In the prison he requested treatment and wrote, on instruction, an autobiography of close to 170 pages which was used as a systematic basis for a psychological analysis of the origin and development of the exhibitionistic pattern. The autobiography served, chiefly, for reducing the number of hours necessary for treatment by making the subject do before-hand much of the reminiscing which he would otherwise do in the course of interviews. The treatment was based on the following assumption: The exhibitionistic pattern in this case, as in a great many cases, is practically an automatic behavior pattern. It is, therefore, unconscious in motivation and not open to the conscious direction of the will. To destroy this automatism it is necessary, in accordance with Dunlap's theories, to make the unconscious motivation conscious. This in turn can best be accomplished by tracing historically, together with the individual, the evolution of this pattern, and by helping him acquire insight into the real meaning of his deviant behavior. The automatism is overcome by placing its component elements into the focus of consciousness. The analysis in this case disclosed that the exhibitionistic pattern originated from extremely severe punishment imposed upon the subject by his generally domineering mother for innocent sex plays he engaged in at the tender ages of nine and ten which involved disrobing before little girls. The punishment, (long periods of isolation from play with other children), had a very significant result. It established the act of exposing his sex organs as a strongly charged pleasure principle, that is, it made the child aware of his ability to seriously upset and arouse his mother through this act and prompted him to utilize it as a weapon with which to inflict punishment upon her at any time her discipline became oppressive. The analysis also disclosed that, later in life, the subject transformed this same pleasure principle into