In our sample we have six males who derived sexual gratification from communicating with females by telephone, using taboo vocabulary, and who were in consequence arrested and convicted. The females were almost all total strangers, usually selected randomly from a telephone directory. Not infrequently the males would masturbate while telephoning. Six is a tiny sample, especially since the number of “obscene telephoners” is large. It is our impression that any town of over, say, 20,000 people having a dial telephone system has at least one obscene call per year reported to the police.
The obscene telephone caller is more than just an offensive nuisance, but this is because his victims interpret his behavior as a threat. Even a sexually experienced and emotionally stable woman is uneasy when she realizes that she. is an object of sexual interest to someone whom she regards as mentally unbalanced. There is always the thought: What if he comes around? Since the majority of females listed in a directory are unmarried, they are most often the target of the obscene telephone caller and, lacking the protection of a husband, they are particularly apt to be alarmed. Furthermore, a fair number of the unmarried owe their marital status to an aversion toward or disinterest in sex and hence the telephoned vocabulary is deeply disturbing to them.
An examination of our six cases reveals some interesting consistencies. While most sex offenders came from broken homes, only one of these men did. Furthermore, they seem to have gotten along with their parents reasonably well and were quite adequately supplied with siblings (only one was an only child). Similarly there is nothing unusual about their relations with their peers: they usually had enough playmates when young, and friends and companions later.
Moreover, five of the six had quite adequate (and in two cases abundant) heterosexual coital activity, at least from the viewpoint of frequency and number of partners. The sixth, the only one who did not have coitus, was somewhat feeble-minded. However, lie petted and did not complain about his lack of coitus.
Not only were the heterosexual lives of these males quantitatively adequate, but in addition five of the six had had some homosexual experience after puberty. This behavior was sporadic in four cases, and in the fifth, where it had been regular, it had been long discontinued. In brief, while a homosexual element is a part of these men’s histories it did not loom large in terms of frequency.
Their sociosexual activities combined with their nocturnal emissions and a rather substantial rate of masturbation give these men frequencies of total outlet well above-average. Three of the six had for some years in their lives averaged more than an orgasm a day; two of the remaining three had averaged over 5 orgasms a week; and the remaining man averaged between 2 and 3 a week.
This high total outlet suggests that these may be individuals who cannot, or feel they cannot, do without orgasm to the extent that most other males can. This is not to bring up the old “sex fiend” theory, but they may be physiologically or, more likely, psychologically driven to activity and unable to delay their need for sexual gratification. Telephoning is a readily available and fairly safe means of sexual stimulation and gratification. This idea of drive is buttressed by evidence of compulsiveness: these men continued their telephoning or other obscene communication after having been arrested for such behavior on one or more prior occasions. Their disregard of foreseeable consequences and their failure to learn from experience are the same as the exhibitionists’. It is of interest that three of the six “obscene telephoners” had also been convicted of exhibition.
The compulsiveness was such that alcohol was not necessary to overcome inhibitions and scruples: only one male usually became intoxicated before telephoning. Similarly, drugs played no part.
In terms of previous criminality the six men are divided sharply into two equal groups. Three of the men had no convictions other than for obscene communication; they evinced no other asocial or antisocial tendencies. Their problems tended to be more internal than external: one male was an unstable youth disfigured facially, one male was mentally very dull, and the third had difficulties exacerbated by drinking. The other three males present a different picture: one was a twenty-three-year-old with a history of burglary, exhibition, homosexual prostitution, use of marijuana, and some tendency toward violence; another had had five marriages, convictions for theft, exhibition, and forgery, and was close to becoming alcoholic; the third had over a dozen convictions stemming from obscene communications, showing pornography, exhibition, and touching females without their permission.
One is left with the impression that obscene telephone communication is not a discrete behavioral and psychological entity, as are some sex offenses, but is simply one more instance of a pathological development of an interest common to most males—a symptom of some sexual and emotional difficulty. This difficulty may be related to exhibition since half of the males involved were also exhibitionists; moreover, obscene communication may be looked upon as a sort of verbal exhibition. The true exhibitionist seeks to cause a strong emotional reaction in his feminine audience and/or arouse the females sexually; these are aims common to the user of obscene communication. One uses his taboo anatomy, the other his taboo vocabulary. Note also that self-masturbation frequently accompanies both.
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