ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between attachment styles and emotional loneliness in relation to sexual offending. Research into attachment styles, for example John Bowlby (1969), has suggested that the types of attachments formulated in early childhood are a blueprint for the type of relationships we develop in adulthood. While secure attachment styles in early childhood will result in positive adult relationships, insecure attachment styles in childhood will result in negative adult relationships. Furthermore, links between emotional loneliness and attachment styles have been made in the work of Dan Russell et al. (1980) where it is has been argued that there is an association between insecure attachments and emotional loneliness. An individual who cannot form secure attachments will feel isolated and cut off from peers, thus leading to a lack of emotional intimacy within a relationship. William Marshall (1989) conducted the first research into attachment styles and sexual offending and concluded that sex offenders demonstrate insecure attachment styles and high levels of emotional loneliness. From this, the following chapter investigates the styles of attachments and levels of emotional loneliness of a sample of male sex offenders in custody in comparison with a group of males who were not sex offenders within the UK. The research challenges the results from previous research in relation to attachment styles: first the assumption these are static and secondly the claim that sex offenders display insecure attachment styles and high levels of emotional loneliness.
