No sooner, it seems, does psychological science identify a new disorder than the legal profession turns it into an implausible defence implying diminished criminal responsibility. If the early 1990s was the era of Twinkie rages (”OMG, your honour, it was all that sugar in my metabolism that turned me into a crazed psychokiller!”) then it seems in the 2000s you can claim you’re a sufferer of sexsomnia if you’re up on a rape charge.
If only Lady Macbeth had known all about sleep disorders, she wouldn’t have had to suffer so much Freudian guilt.
What that other thread reminds me is that some of these poor dopes never get out of university – never progress beyond the ego-driven little games played there.
Suddenly they’re professors themselves!- dictating their venerable findings, “The mind is like a beehive!” they say, and more besides.
Yes, and look out, because Freud changed the way people think, but they’re going to CHANGE IT BACK!
Wooh!
Golly.
Well at least it gives their parents a rest.
Actually RH, I took your advice and asked the next door neighbour’s 12 year old son for his opinion on penis envy, the castration complex and vaginal orgasm. He screamed then ran back home. I guess he must be in denial.
My partner has sexsomnia.
Just sayin’
Grow up Munn. You hysterical little boy.
Your whole education was a waste of dough.
Apparently it isn’t only men who have sex in their sleep-
“Mr Buchanan [a sleep physician] told the Australasian Sleep Association how a patient of his, who was a respectable middle-aged woman with a steady partner, would leave the house while sleepwalking and have sex with strangers.
The woman was totally unaware of her double life until her partner became suspicious and found her engaged in the act.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3744226.stm
And their was an article about “sexwalkers” in a psychiatric journal-
“In [a] study, appearing in the March/April issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, the Stanford researchers divided the eleven patients into three groups according to the severity of their symptoms.
In the first group were two women who made sexual sounds in their sleep. While embarrassing, their symptoms were considered relatively harmless.
The second group, consisting of a man and a woman, experience periods of violent masturbation in their sleep, which left them bruised and sore.
The third group was made up of six men and one woman who made unwanted, and sometimes violent, sexual advances on their partners.” http://www.biopsychiatry.com/sleepsex.htm
So apparently even some women have a potential to rape in their sleep.
“Sexsomnia”, or “sleepsex” is a well known and well documented phenomenon. It’s sound science. Media reports of trials are rarely very trustworthy, but if accurate it seems that Mr. Luedecke had ample evidence for his condition. This is a long way from the so-called “twinkie defense” (itself a myth — see wikipedia).
If he really could establish he was asleep when the assualt took place, he must be acquitted under the standard legal defense of automatism. Even anti-rape campaigners want innocent men to be acquitted.
I don’t think it is reasonable to worry about this becoming a catch-all defense against rape. This defense is only available to those with sexsonmia — an extremely rare condition — and then, presumably only when the circumstances back up the defendant’s claims.
We don’t know enough about the circumstances to call this an implausible defense or a bad verdict.
The twinkies defence was used for diminished responsibilityway back in the 70’s by Dan White an ex-policeman who assasinated Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk, the form sympathetic to minority groups and the latter openly gay – a first for the position. The Dead Kennedys rightly called bullshit in their version of I Fought the Law. I found out recently that the picture of the burning cars on Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables is from the riots that resulted in San Fran.
“No sooner, it seems, does psychological science identify a new disorder than the legal profession turns it into an implausible defence implying diminished criminal responsibility …”
Good lord, Kim, you’ve turned into a raving RWDB!
You really must stop listening to John Laws and Alan Jones, it’s having a nasty effect …
Jason Stokes took the words right out of my mouth. Last time I checked sleepwalking was a form of automatism. Now, if this condition really is a form of sleepwalking, then the verdict was correct.
For this condition to be exploited, as Stokes points out, it would have to be under the
(i)1 in whatever chance that the defendant has been found to have this conditon
where
(ii) the defendant then somehow ended up sharing the same bed with someone who didn’t know he had this condition.
But if you read Kim’s comment on the Freud thread you’ll see she’s using it as an excuse to discredit non-Freudian behaviourial science.
So a 1 in a 100000 whatever chance of exploitation of a rare psychiatric condition may lead to a 1 in 10000 whatever rape cases being wrongly acquired – therefore non-Freudian science should go down the toilet. You can see she’s clutching at straws.
What about posting or commenting in your sleep, you smooth-limbed, taut-bodied warm beautiful animal with all your nooks and crannies smelling of fresh green apples you….mmmmh.
What! wHat? whaT!? What I am doing here? Who are you all? And why are you all looking at me like that? Haven’t you seen a Big Top before?
Maybe Kim feels left out because she doesn’t have her very own twinkie?
Err, Steve, since she went sleep-walking and had sex with strangers, presumably they were consenting?
anthony, wasn’t there a film based on a book called “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk”? Fabbo guy – from my old home town.
No, just a raving Foucauldian
Actually Jason I was trying to be lighthearted and change the mood. Reprogram your neurons for joviality!
The painting is Fuseli’s “Macbeth” by the way.
The “Twinkie Defense” story is a fabrication.
““Twinkie defense” is now a widespread and commonly-recognized term. It is also a term based on something that never happened.
Neither White nor his defense team ever claimed that White’s consumption of junk food had wrought psychological or physiological changes in White that caused him to act in way inconsistent with his “normal” behavior when he shot George Moscone and Harvey Milk. White’s defense was that he had been suffering from a long-standing and untreated depression that diminished his capacity to distinguish right from wrong, and thus he was not capable of the premeditation required to support a charge of first degree murder. Dr. Martin Blinder was called as a witness by the defense to testify that the conversion of the previously health-conscious White to a diet of Twinkies and other junk foods was evidence of his Best Defense depression. This testimony was similar to offering evidence that the habitual wearing of torn and dirty clothes by someone who had previously always been a snappy dresser was a sign that that person was suffering from depression. Nobody who paid attention would claim that such testimony asserted that bad clothing had caused the defendant’s depression, but that is essentially what happened in White’s case. Junk food was used as evidence that White was depressed; White’s depression was used to establish grounds for a successful diminished capacity plea; and therefore White was judged incapable of the premeditation required for a murder conviction.
When the diminished capacity defense was successful and White was convicted of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, an outraged media and public skipped the middlemen. White’s depression wasn’t mentioned; instead we were told he had claimed that “Twinkies made him do it.” (Dr. Blinder did suggest excessive sugar could have aggravated a chemical imbalance in White’s brain, but that comment was offered only as a parenthetical remark during Blinder’s testimony about White’s depression. It was not in any way a substantive part of White’s defense.) “
I thought I read somewhere recently that another movie about Harvey Milk is in the works.
I never heard the twinkie defence expanded out like that before SJ. And it makes a lot more sense now. You comment was a very good examplw how blogs can work to deflate urban myths with abit of thoughtful research.
“So apparently even some women have a potential to rape in their sleep.”
“Attack of The Succubi!” Can’t believe no one’s pitched that one to Dario Argento or Tinto Brass yet.
That’s good – I’m glad to learn the Twinkie defence is a myth.
Now perhaps someone could explain how people who wake with a condom on their penis put it on through automatism?
Forgive me for being just a tad sceptical.
Kim, you failed to read my second link properly. It clearly says that one woman in the Stanford study “made unwanted, and sometimes violent, sexual advances on their partners.”
That it my view creates at least the potential for rape.
I must admit that when I was 20, I fell asleep while having sex. I am glad that I can now avoid responsibility for this appalling incident by claiming that I was suffering from the opposite of sexsomnia, sexnarcolepsy. Phew!
Where a person had sex with a person suffering sexsomnia, even if the sexsomniac initiated it, if the other person was aware of the sexsomnic’s condition of being asleep at the time, that person would be guilty of rape because the sexsomniac, being in a state of automatism, would be incapable of giving consent. Of course if they argued that they did so because of a real apprehension of violence from the sexsomniac they’d probably have a defence.
It would certainly be a challenge to a jury to sort that out.
Which would be why it’s a good defence, presumably.
“It would certainly be a challenge to a jury to sort that out.”
Provided of course they stayed awake during the expert witnesses’ explainations. Or perhaps not.
I certainly sleepwalked through my one spell of jury duty. It was the third most boring experience of my life.
No word has yet been invented to describe the tedium that settles on a poorly ventilated Melbourne Court in high summer as the Crown Prosecuter shuffles his papers and glares at a VicPol tech who can’t get the tape recorder working – while the defence lawyer rewrites his resume, the Jury plays ‘Hangman’ and ‘Noughts and Crosses’ amongst themselves, the Judge does the Age crossword and the defendant tries to signal to his family what he wants on thr daily shopping list.
Yes Justice is blind. You can tell so by the unhurried fumbling around.
Now I’m gonna go put on Station To Station while frantically reading up on the commercial and ethical impacts of streamlining multisite clinical trails so I don’t sleepwalk through a 9am meeting tomorrow.
Hey Kimbetrix, I wasn’t kidding (for once) – my partner really does have “sexsomnia”.
I understand your scepticism – I would be the same if I didn’t have first hand knowledge.
If my wife developed this traumatic condition then I would feel an obligation to be as supportive as possible. I think I would avoid even drawing it to her attention given the potential for embarassment; I would reluctantly tolerate the symptoms.
Mark, it’s ok to admit falling asleep during sex, but I’d leave out the bit about being 20 at the time.
WHile following the link the the Canadian news site you gave I clicked on a link about sealing and was confronted with this regional oddity: “Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams”. Just sharing, as you were.
Zoe, I… I want to ask questions about this but I’m afraid to.
So I won’t.
People can and do perform a range of quite complicated and dextrous tasks in their sleep, Kim. Something as natural and visceral as sex seems quite likely indeed, if rare. Putting on a condom, if part of your normal sexual routine over a few years, is not a challenge at all. These people can actually see, hear, feel, respond to stimuli etc.
These people ARE NOT LIKE YOU WHEN YOU ARE ASLEEP.
It’s a disorder.
Kate, you can always send me an email
True Zoe, true, but I don’t think I shall, because I respect your privacy either way. (And I am shy.)
My one thought was that if Mr Kate was a sufferer I’d have to insist on separate beds because I really don’t like having MY own sleep interrupted.
Let us change a couple of the medical conditions in Kim’s post and see how it reads:-
“No sooner, it seems, does psychological science identify a new disorder than the legal profession turns it into an implausible defence implying diminished criminal responsibility. If the early [1970s] was the era of [Pre-Menstrual Tension] then it seems in the [1980s] you can claim you’re a sufferer of [Battered Woman Syndrome] if you’re up on a [murder] charge.”
I’m with Kim of course. These new fangled conditions have been manufactured by so-called psychological science experts who have been corrupted by the financial rewards offered by defence lawyers.
Women who claim to be battered are in fact hysterical neurotics who have unresolved issues with their fathers. So called Pre-Menstrual Tension is a neurotic rejection of the womb accompanied by a death wish fulfilment fantasy.
Anthony: thanks. until your post I thought DK’s ‘I fought the Law’ was specifically about the ‘Mississippi Burning’ murders. It all makes sense now…
It’s a pity a lot of men find it such a challenging task when awake.
Liberal Party leader suave Billy Sneddon died on top of a woman in a motel room.
Truth Newspaper ran the headline:
BILLY DIES ON THE JOB!
His brother owned a tiny supermarket in Yarraville. Business boomed as new customers came in to study him. But he was a man with a dilemma; he didn’t know whether to laugh or look serious. So he did both, depending on how each customer took it, because the customer is always right.
And that’s business. Man lives to shag, that’s all. Libido’s the boss.
Lets change few key words in Steve’s post:
“[Fish] who claim to be battered are in fact [delicious food] who have unresolved issues with their [taste]. So called Pre-[Frying] Tension is a neurotic rejection of the [Deep-Fryer] accompanied by a [wonderful snack] fulfilment fantasy.”
The things people do in their sleep! Helluva topic. Must blog the great Elizabeth Bay mystery about who urinated on the woman’s handbag in the middle of the lounge room in the flat on floor 15 sometime …