Erotic Target Location Errors: An Underappreciated Paraphilic Dimension (Report‪)‬

Although the unusual erotic interests called paraphilias have been the subject of considerable attention by clinicians and researchers, a generally accepted classification scheme for paraphilic sexual interests has remained elusive. Attempts to classify the paraphilias have typically emphasized two principal dimensions: unusual erotic target preferences and unusual sexual activity preferences (Freund, Seto, & Kuban, 1996). For example, in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev. [DSM-IV-TR]; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000), the paraphilias are conceptualized in terms of either unusual objects of attraction (i.e., preferential attraction to children, nonconsenting persons, or inanimate objects vs. consenting adults) or unusual sexual activity preferences (i.e., attraction to experiencing the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner vs. more conventional sexual activities). In the early 1990s, Blanchard (1991; Freund & Blanchard, 1993) suggested the existence of yet another significant dimension of paraphilic sexuality: erotic target location errors (ETLEs), which involve the erroneous location of preferred erotic targets in the environment. Blanchard (1991) proposed that some persons with paraphilias erroneously direct their erotic interest toward peripheral or inessential parts of their preferred erotic targets (e.g., the clothing, hair, or feet of a target), which manifests as fetishism. Other persons with paraphilias erroneously locate their preferred targets in their own bodies, rather than in another person: They either desire to impersonate their preferred targets or desire to turn their bodies into facsimiles of those targets. ETLEs of the latter type manifest as transvestic fetishism, as one paraphilic variety of male-to-female (MtF) transsexualism, and as lesser known analogues of these two conditions. Freund and Blanchard (1993) coined the term erotic target identity inversion to describe ETLEs in which persons erroneously locate their preferred erotic targets in their own bodies and want to either impersonate or become facsimiles of those targets.