The mental health of paedophiles
3 March 2008This post is a collection of research showing that there is no reliable evidence for the claim that paedophiles display clinically significant pathology.
Individuals whose sexual orientation is directed toward children manifest the same range of personality, temperamental, and character traits as individuals whose sexual orientation is directed towards adults.
~ Berlin, F. S. (2000). “Treatments to change sexual orientation,” The American Journal of Psychiatry, 157:5.
The psychoticism score of the paedophiles [in our study] is slightly elevated compared with controls, but not drastically so, and certainly not to the extent that they could be called pathological as a group. There are several occupational groups listed in the Manual that have P[sychoticism] scores of approximately the same order, including actors, apprentices, architects, doctors, drivers, students and welfare officers, none of which could be regarded as clinically psychotic as a whole. Thus, there is no reason on the basis of these results to suppose that men with paedophile sexual preferences are necessarily marked by any exceptional degree of thought disorder.
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The neuroticism scores of the paedophiles are again slightly higher than controls but not to an extent that would justify describing them as clinically abnormal. Among groups of men with similar N[euroticism] scores according to the Manual are actors, apprentices, machinists and students, and a great many of the female groups given in the Manual show N scores that are higher than these male paedophiles.
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Perhaps the most striking thing about these results is how normal the paedophiles appear to be according to their scores on these major personality dimensions - particularly the two that are most clinically relevant (N[euroticism] and P[sychoticism]). The only marked characteristic of the PIE [Paedophile Information Exchange] members with respect to these major dimensions is their tendency to introversion, and this in itself is not usually thought of as pathological. Furthermore, the fact that the Lie Scale scores of the paedophiles are not distinguishable from those of controls would suggest that, overall, they were not bent on creating an artificially favourable impression on the questionnaire, but were giving an honest and accurate self-report.
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Obsessionality, as indicated by this particular item from the EPQ does not seem to be characteristic of the paedophiles; in fact, the proportion endorsing this item is lower than that for controls.
~ Wilson, G. & Cox, D. (1983). “The Child-Lovers: A Study of Paedophiles in Society.” London: Peter Owen Publishers, 1983.
Okami and Goldberg (1992) systematically reviewed the literature and found that pathology has not been reliably associated with paedophilia. They conclude:
The clearest finding of the present review is that relatively little may be stated about the personality or phenomenology of pedophiles […] Looking at the very scanty data pertaining to pedophilia per se, then, we are unable to report any reliable findings. […] as Wilson and Cox (1983) and several others have pointed out, the types of affective and social pathologies associated with samples of pedophiles … seriously beg the question of causal direction. Guilt feelings, feelings of ostracism loneliness, low self-esteem, etc., clearly are exacerbated by, if not sequelae of, the social condition of pedophiles … and should not be interpreted as representing etiological variables or intrinsic correlates of sexual preference for children. […] For example, because an unknown percentage of true pedophiles may never act on their impulses or may never be arrested, forensic samples of sex offenders against minors clearly do not represent the population of “pedophiles,” and many such persons apparently do not even belong to the population of “pedophiles.”
~ Okami, P. & Goldberg, A. (1992). “Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators?”, Journal of Sex Research, 29(3):297-328.
One Response to “The mental health of paedophiles”
May 13th, 2010 at 9:23 am
Paedophilia is not a pathology and therefore people won’t find any relible evidence for it simply because there isn’t any. Psychiatry is, to a large extent. a pseudo-science. Like neo-classical and Marxist economics it is basically an ideology-cum-secular-theology designed to allow people to make sense of the world within a given paradigm. And if further proof was needed, the removal of homosexuality from the definition of a paraphilia is it; if one set of sexual non-conformists are ‘normal’ then so are all others.