Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

History

Major Professor

Brian Connolly, Ph.D.

Committee Member

David Johnson, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Kyle Burke, Ph.D.

Keywords

biopower, Foucault, psychiatry, subjectivity

Abstract

This thesis critically examines the use of penile plethysmography (PPG), or phallometry, in the treatment and management of sex offenders in the late-twentieth century. Using the Florida Mental Health Institute’s 1986-1989 sex offender treatment program as a case study, it asks how phallometry came to be understood as an objective method for uncovering otherwise hidden sexual truths. Instead of focusing only on its appearance and development throughout the second half of the twentieth century, this thesis draws on the work of Michel Foucault to situate phallometric science within a broader history of sexuality and biopower. In doing so, it argues that PPG is not a neutral, objective technology, but an instrument of psychocarceral power. By quantifying genital arousal in order to articulate desire and evaluate risk, phallometric science not only (re)produces perverse sexual subjects, but reaffirms psychiatric power over sexuality by reinforcing the field’s proximity to truth. In this frame, the late-twentieth century expansion of the carceral state—which many scholars have flagged as an effect of mounting concerns with sexual dangers—must be viewed as an expression of the relationship between truth, sexuality, and power, a relationship that transcends and conditions institutional and actuarial efforts to manage those dangers.

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