Marshall, William L.

I was born in Perth, Western Australia, on July 30, 1935. I left school at age 15 years, that being the earliest age permitted in Western Australia. I worked in various clerical jobs until age 26 years, when an opportunity was presented to attend university as a matureage entrant. My undergraduate degree (B. Psych., 1967) at the University of Western Australia provided an excellent grounding in experimental psychology, particularly in perception and learning, which proved to be very useful. My research supervisor A. J. (Tim) Marshall (unrelated) provided excellent guidance. A master's of science at the University of London (1969) was spent in both study and extensive clinical experience at both Maudsley and Bethlem Royal Hospitals. Stanley (Jack) Rachman was my clinical supervisor. Jack was the ideal scientist-practitioner model, and his influence has been felt ever since. I then went to Canada to do my doctoral degree at Queen's University, which I completed in 1971.

When I started work with sexual offenders in 1969, there were very few others interested in this area of work. Isaac Marks and John Bancroft in England and Gene Abel and Nick Groth in North America all provided support and encouragement as we struggled to determine the most effective treatment methods for these problematic clients. As a devoted behaviorist in the early 1970s, I found the neophyte Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy and its members to be excellent models, and supportive. In particular, the friendship and encouragement from David Barlow, Michael Mahoney, Joe Wolpe, Alan Kazdin, and Michel Hersen were very valuable.

Since the late 1960s, I have devoted most of my clinical and research efforts to sexual offenders. I have more than 270 publications, including 12 books, and I have been on the editorial board of 16 international journals. In the mid-1970s, I developed satiation therapy, which proved to be one to the most popular and effective procedures for reducing deviant sexual preferences. In 1971, I published a description of a program for sexual [Page 367]offenders that included for the first time treatment targets involving social and relationship skills. Shortly thereafter, I published the first description of a phallometric procedure for assessing rapists. With my colleague Howard Barbaree, I published in 1984 a theory of the development of sexual offending, which has continued to evolve and has been somewhat influential. Recently, my colleagues and I have documented the role of the therapist in generating treatment changes.

I was president of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers from 2000 to 2001, and in 1993, I received that association's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1999, I was awarded the Santiago Grisolia Prize from the Queen Sophia Centre in Spain for my worldwide contributions to the reduction of violence, and in 2000, I was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

My current work includes continued research into factors that characterize sexual offenders, including shame and guilt, empathy, self-esteem, coping, intimacy and loneliness, and deviant sexual interests. Also, recently I have examined the reliability and validity of the diagnosis sexual sadism, and I am continuing my investigations of the childhood and adolescent antecedents of sexual offending.

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