Peter FrombergerUniversitätsmedizin Göttingen · Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie - Forensische Psychiatrie
Peter Fromberger
PhD, Dipl.-Psych.
About
60
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
August 2006 - present
Education
October 2006 - October 2012
October 2000 - April 2006
Publications
Publications (60)
Sexueller Missbrauch hat für Kinder sowohl kurzfristig als auch langfristig starke negative Folgen. Eine Vielzahl von Behandlungsprogrammen in Deutschland hat daher die Prävention von Kindesmissbrauch zum Ziel. Ein Ansatzpunkt ist dabei die Tertiärprävention, d. h. Maßnahmen zur Verhinderung von Rückfälligkeit. Bisher wurde dies mit uneinheitlichen...
Background: There is a high demand for evidence-based and cost-effective treatment concepts for convicted individuals who sexually abused children (ISAC) and individuals who consumed child sexual exploitation material (ICCSEM) under community supervision (CS). The @myTabu-consortium developed a guided web-based intervention for convicted ISAC and I...
Zusammenfassung
Virtuelle Realitäten (VR) werden in der Diagnose und Behandlung von Patienten im klinischen Feld bereits seit 20 Jahren erfolgreich eingesetzt und weiterentwickelt. Seit etwas mehr als 5 Jahren gibt es nun auch erste Beispiele über die Anwendung von VR in psychiatrisch-forensischen Kontexten. Für die forensische Psychiatrie ist die...
How does sexual attraction alter social interaction behavior? We examined the influence of sexual orientation on locomotor approach-avoidance behavior and interpersonal distance. We immersed androphilic and gynophilic male subjects into a virtual environment and presented various male and female virtual persons. In the first experiment, subjects to...
In Germany, access to outpatient treatment services devoted to the prevention of (further) sexual offenses against minors and child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) offenses is often limited. The therapy project “Prevention of Sexual Abuse” tries to fill this gap by providing treatment to patients with a self-reported sexual interest in children...
The use of biomarkers in medicine is a common and valuable approach in several clinical fields. Understanding the relationship between measurable biological processes and clinical outcomes not only is indispensable in the face of understanding physiological processes in healthy as well as in diseased organisms but also for understanding and evaluat...
Many models of human behavior work in an interaction of a dual system. While one system usually represents controlled and reflective behavioral responses, the other system reflects automatic and impulsive actions. In the impulsive system, positive stimuli initiate approach reactions and negative cues avoidance reactions. Besides stimulus valence, t...
In recent years, web-based health services for a variety of mental disorders have been developed and evaluated. Evidence suggests that guided internet-based therapy can be as effective as conventional face-to-face therapy. In forensic psychiatric practice, few web-based treatments have been implemented up to now. However, to our knowledge, there do...
Objective
This study aimed to assess adults’ subjective perception of infants with a unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) with and without a nasoalveolar molding (NAM) appliance compared to those of controls concerning (1) adult gaze patterns and (2) emotional valence.
Methods
This interdisciplinary study was performed by (1) the Department of O...
Despite the successful application of virtual reality (VR) in a wide variety of mental disorders and the obvious potentials that VR provides, the use of VR in the context of criminology and forensic psychology is sparse. For forensic mental health professionals, VR provides some advantages that outrun general advantages of VR, e.g., ecological vali...
The decision about unsupervised privileges for sexual offenders against children (SOC) is one of the most difficult decisions for practitioners in forensic high-security hospitals. Facing the possible consequences of the decision for the society, a valid and reliable risk management of SOCs is essential. Some risk management approaches provide fram...
Neurofunctional correlates of sexual arousal are of interest in basic research as well as in clinical science. In forensic psychiatry, it is important to use designs which are potentially robust against susceptibility to manipulation or deception. We tested a new design to measure neurofunctional correlates of sexual preference. Twenty-two healthy...
Sexual child abuse is one of the most destructive events for child development. One possible approach to avert it is the preventive treatment of individuals with a sexual interest in children. The aim of the current eye tracking study was to compare people with a self-reported sexual interest in children who participate in the outpatient preventive...
In the context of forensic psychiatry, it is crucial that diagnoses of deviant sexual interests are resistant to manipulation. In a first attempt to promote the development of such tools, the current fMRI study focusses on the examination of hemodynamic responses to preferred, in contrast to non-preferred, sexual stimuli with and without explicit s...
![FigUre 1 | experimental design [see also ref. (29)]. Given are examples...](profile/Peter-Fromberger/publication/311305863/figure/fig1/AS:434760796381184@1480666459214/experimental-design-see-also-ref-29-Given-are-examples-for-each-condition-For_Q320.jpg)
Pedophilic disorder, a subtype of paraphilia, is defined as a recurrent sexual interest in prepubescent children, which is characterized by persistent thoughts, fantasies, urges, sexual arousal, or behavior. Besides a deviant sexual preference, sexual preoccupation was found to be a dynamic risk factor for reoffending. Thus, it is conceivable that...
The assessment of deviant sexual preference has a long tradition in forensic psychiatry and psychology, as it is one of the strongest predictors for sexual offence recidivism. So far, however, the development of a reliable clinical tool for assessing sexual preference based on brain imaging methods has been unsuccessful. Predicated on the extensive...
Indirect measures of deviant sexual interest have yielded interesting and promising in the field of pedophilic interest. However, further research is needed. A lot of indirect measures are still at the developmental stage regarding clinical application. They do not reach appropriate psychometric criteria or are not yet sufficiently tested for susce...
Background: Antiandrogen therapy (ADT) has been used for 30 years to treat pedophilic patients. The aim of the treatment is a reduction in sexual drive and, in consequence, a reduced risk of recidivism. Yet the therapeutic success of antiandrogens is uncertain especially regarding recidivism. Meta-analyses and reviews report only moderate and often...
In der 5. Auflage des Diagnostischen und Statistischen Manuals psychischer Störungen (DSM-5) werden psychophysiologische Verfahren als diagnostische Marker bei der Pädophilie eingeführt. Das DSM-5 ist als statistisches und diagnostisches Manual nicht zur Beantwortung rechtlicher Fragen konzipiert. Aus einer forensisch-psychiatrischen Perspektive ak...
The assessment of deviant sexual preference has a long tradition in forensic psychiatry, as it is one of the strongest predictors for sexual offence recidivism. From a clinical point of view, an objective assessment of sexual preference, i.e. independent of the patient's subjective response, is of great importance. Functional brain imaging offers o...
Virtual Reality (VR) has successfully been used in the research of human behavior for more than twenty years. The main advantage of VR is its capability to induce a high sense of presence. This results in emotions and behavior which are very close to those shown in real situations. In the context of sex research, only a few studies have used high-i...
Background
Antiandrogen therapy (ADT) has been used for 30 years to treat pedophilic patients. The aim of the treatment is a reduction in sexual drive and, in consequence, a reduced risk of recidivism. Yet the therapeutic success of antiandrogens is uncertain especially regarding recidivism. Meta-analyses and reviews report only moderate and often...
For more than 20 years virtual realities (VR) have been successfully used in the assessment and treatment of psychiatric disorders. The most important advantages of VR are the high ecological validity of virtual environments, the entire controllability of virtual stimuli in the virtual environment and the capability to induce the sensation of being...
Sexuelle Übergriffe zum Nachteil eines Kindes zählen zu den schwerwiegendsten negativen Ereignissen für dessen gesunde psychische Entwicklung. Die Pädophilie ist nach den aktuellen psychiatrischen Klassifikationssystemen als eine anhaltende oder dominierende sexuelle Präferenz für präpubertäre Kinder definiert. Nur etwa die Hälfte aller Kindesmissb...
Child sexual abuse is one of the most destructive events for healthy child development. Following psychiatric classification systems, pedophilia must be distinguished from child sexual abuse. Approximately only one half of all child abusers fulfill the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia which is defined as a persistent or dominating sexual preferen...
Dieses Kapitel beschreibt neurobiologische Grundlagen sexuellen Erlebens und Verhaltens. Nach einem kurzen historischen Überblick werden zunächst die Grundannahmen zu sexuellen Reaktionszyklen beschrieben, die einerseits als Basis für neurobiologische Modelle ihre Bedeutung haben, andererseits die Grundlage der Nomenklatur darstellen. Im zweiten Ab...
Recent theories in sexuality highlight the importance of automatic and controlled attentional processes in viewing sexually relevant stimuli. The model of Spiering and Everaerd (2007) assumes that sexually relevant features of a stimulus are preattentively selected and automatically induce focal attention to these sexually relevant aspects. Whether...
The study examines the legal probation of offenders who are considered to be highly dangerous but due to the decision of the Federal High Court were not in retrospective preventive detention (§ 66b StGB). In view of the current discussion, in anticipation of a detailed presentation of the study results the relevant criteria "probation behavior", "p...
Given that recurrent sexual interest in prepubescent children is one of the strongest single predictors for pedosexual offense recidivism, valid and reliable diagnosis of pedophilia is of particular importance. Nevertheless, current assessment methods still fail to fulfill psychometric quality criteria.
The aim of the study was to evaluate the diag...
Antiandrogen therapy has been used for 30 years to treat paraphilic patients and sexual offenders. Yet the therapeutic success of antiandrogens is uncertain. Furthermore, there is still a lack of comprehensive knowledge about the effects of androgen-lowering therapy in paraphilic patients.
This article reviews current neurobiological and clinical k...
Since its introduction in 2004, the additional preventative detention ("nachträgliche Sicherungsverwahrung") in Germany has been discussed controversially and emotionally. There are few empirical data about additional preventative detention. We report initial results of a country wide study of the legal probation and danger prognoses of individuals...
Antiandrogen therapy has been used for 30 years to treat paraphilic patients and sexual offenders. Yet the therapeutic success of antiandrogens is uncertain. Furthermore, there is still a lack of comprehensive knowledge about the effects of androgen-lowering therapy in paraphilic patients.
We discuss endocrinological, neurobiological, and therapeut...
It has been proposed that sexual stimuli will be processed in a comparable manner to other evolutionarily meaningful stimuli (such as spiders or snakes) and therefore elicit an attentional bias and more attentional engagement (Spiering and Everaerd, In E. Janssen (Ed.), The psychophysiology of sex (pp. 166-183). Bloomington: Indiana University Pres...
Sexualstraftaten sind heterogen motiviert. Verstärkt in jüngerer Zeit wurden neurobiologische Veränderungen auch bei Sexualstraftätern
untersucht. Dabei fanden sich strukturelle und funktionelle Veränderungen in kortikalen und subkortikalen Hirnarealen bei
verschiedenen Tätergruppen. Es wird eine Übersicht über die Literatur zu neurobiologischen Ve...
Die Symptomatik depressiver Erkrankungen wird unter kriminologischen Aspekten oft als protektiv bezeichnet. Bei wahnhafter
Depression können aber schwerwiegende Gewalttaten wie erweiterte Suizide verübt werden. Unterbringungsmaßnahmen nach §63des
Strafgesetzbuches (StGB) werden bei Depressionen selten angeordnet, und wegen der relativ guten Behandl...
Prognoses in forensic psychiatry are demanded and delivered on a daily basis. Given the multitude of different causes, it is not surprising that prognostic questions also widely differ. To predict the likelihood of criminal re-offences, risk checklists are used; biological parameters are rarely considered. This text outlines exemplary (neuro-)biolo...
Die Schwierigkeit bei der Diagnostik pädophiler Sexualstraftäter liegt in der validen Einschätzung eines pädosexuellen Interesses. Die aktuell angewendeten Verfahren und Methoden können die psychometrischen Gütekriterien nur zum Teil erfüllen. Angesichts einer zunehmenden Fülle bildgebender Befunde zu den neuronalen Korrelaten pädophilen Erlebens s...
Abstract The question according to the causes of pedophilia is of high social relevance. During recent years, the investigation of neurobiological correlates of pedophilia comes increasingly to the forefront of forensic research. Meanwhile there are some investigations to possible neurobiological causes of pedophilia, however, the results are still...
Psychopathy – measured with the Psychopathy-Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) – is, according to Hare [21], a personality disorder which is denoted by deviated, interpersonal and emotional characteristics (PCL-R-Factor 1) like affect flatness, deficiency in guilt, remorse and impulsive-antisocial behaviour (PCL-R-Factor 2). Psychophysiological measures lik...
Projects
Projects (3)
There is a high demand for evidence-based and cost-effective treatment concepts for convicted individuals who sexually abused children (ISAC) and individuals who consumed child sexual exploitation material (ICCSEM) under community supervision (CS). The @myTabu-consortium developed a guided web-based intervention for convicted ISAC and ICCSEM under CS consisting of six online modules targeting psychological meaningful risk factors. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of this guided web-based intervention in reducing dynamic risk factors and the risk to re-offend compared to a placebo condition. Furthermore, these dynamic risk factors are measured before and after every module to evaluate their individual effectiveness to reduce the respective risk factor as well as risk to re-offend.
Assessment of sexual interest and self-control for diganostic, risk-assessment and treament in mentally ill offenders
Virtual Reality based applications for diagnostic, risk assessment, and treatment of mentally ill offenders
