Читать книгу Social Work with Sex Offenders - Cowburn Malcolm - Страница 16

This section focuses on three different types of denial that while they may be interlinked, also have their own distinctive characteristics; all of them, in various ways, affect how we understand and respond to sex offenders. They are: worker denial, societal denial and offender denial. Before exploring each of these aspects, it is helpful to consider a wider definition of denial. The online Oxford English dictionary (OED, 2015) offers (among others) this definition of denial: ‘Refusal to acknowledge a person or thing as having a certain character or certain claims; a disowning, disavowal’.

While this definition is general in character, it captures the essence of denial across all three types; all of them would reject the ‘certain character’ of a sex offender or the threat of sexual danger. The OED (2015) also offers another pertinent definition: ‘Psychoanal. The suppression (usu. at an unconscious level) of a painful or unacceptable wish or of experiences of which one is ashamed. Now also in more general use, esp. in phr. in denial’. This particular focus is relevant to both workers and offenders; it acknowledges psychological ways of coping with difficult and painful experiences through suppressing any recognition of them.