Clinical and statistical classification of sexual disorders: The case of unintegrated sexuality applied to a clergy sample.

摘要

This mixed-method study used qualitative and quantitative procedures to clinically and statistically classify sexual disorders in a clinical sample of 533 Roman Catholic clergy. The research focus of this study is the Sexual Disorder NOS diagnosis, Unintegrated Sexuality, given to priests and vowed religious men and women by clinicians at Saint Luke Institute, Silver Spring, Maryland, since the mid-1980's. The Delphi method of qualitative data collection and theory testing was used, in two iterations, to formalize a diagnostic criteria set for Unintegrated Sexuality. The 24 experts participating in the clinical classification portion of this study define Unintegrated Sexuality as a marked deficit in psychosexual development manifested by clinically significant impairment in a person's awareness of and/or acceptance of the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral elements of human sexual desire, sexual attraction, or sexual orientation. Four research hypotheses were tested using Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA) to compare subjects diagnosed with Unintegrated Sexuality to four, equal-sized (n = 101) comparison groups: (a) No Sexual Diagnosis, (b) All Other Sexual Diagnoses, (c) Ephebophilia and Pedophilia, and (d) Exploitative and Compulsive Sexualities. The measures were MCMI-III personality scales; MMPI-2 personality and supplementary scales; WAIS-III intelligence scales VIQ, PIQ, and FSIQ; and several demographic and psychosocial variables such as age, education, and history of childhood sexual abuse. After some transformations 53 candidate predictor variables met the statistical assumptions for DFA. Each of the four hypotheses tested resulted in statistically significant discrimination between groups at p .01 with prediction models ranging from 59.4% to 70.8% correct classification of observed cases into diagnostic groups. Implications were discussed concerning pastoral counseling, sexual identity development, the selection and training of Roman Catholic seminarians, and the relationship between Unintegrated Sexuality and other sexual disorders.