A Rorschach study of interpersonal disturbance in priest same-sex ephebophiles

The purpose of this study is to assess whether significant differences exist between the interpersonal functioning of Catholic priests in treatment for same-sex ephebophilia and a comparison group of priests in treatment for some other form of psychological disorder. The present study compared 76 priest ephebophiles with 75 nonoffending priests using archival Rorschach protocols. The two groups were compared on two Exner (1993) Comprehensive System structural measures, the Coping Deficit Index (CDT) and the new measure, the Human Experience Variable (BEV) (Bums and Viglione, 1986), and on a measure using the content of Rorschach responses, the Mutuality of Autonomy Scale (Urist, 1977). In addition, a comparison was made of the two groups' performance on the Rorschach Sexual Score (RSS), in order to assess this measure's ability to capture sexual disturbance in the ephebophile group.; Results of five one-tailed t test comparisons generally failed to find significant differences between groups in the area of interpersonal functioning. No significant differences were found between groups on the CDI The results on the HEV and the MOA were mixed. Contrary to expectation, the two groups produced an equivalent number of good human representations. As expected, the ephebophile group produced a greater number of poor BEV responses. On the MOA, as expected, the sexually offending priests differed in the frequency of their Least Adaptive Responses (LAR) suggesting a greater expectation of destructive relationships. The ephebophile group did not produce a significantly greater number of narcissistic responses (NAR) than the comparison group. No significant differences were found between groups in the frequency of Most Adaptive Responses (MAR) with a slight trend contrary to expectation. Possible reasons for this discrepancy were discussed.; This study did confirm the diagnostic utility of the RSS. The ephobophile group showed themselves to be more sexually disturbed on three of the five RSS summary scores, the General Sexual References, Gender Disturbance and Total Sexual Scores.; Exploratory analyses of the frequencies of Gacono and Meloy's extended Aggression scores, and Texture and Reflection responses were conducted. Over a third of the ephebophile group produced protocols with more than one Texture responses. A high frequency of unusual or negative Texture responses in this group was noted and discussed. Finally, the protocols of these priest ephebophiles were briefly compared with those of incarcerated pedophiles (Bridges, 1992).