You're 16, You're a Pedophile, and You Don't Want to Hurt Anyone.

[D.]

Marge

[D.]

The subject has been broached here. Your thoughts on this #longread?

https://medium.com/matter/youre-16-y...w-e11ce4b88bdb

[reprise85]

I read this on reddit and then listened to the This American Life podcast where they spoke to the main person from the article ("Adam").

As someone who lived with an active/offending pedo for an extended period of time and saw the depths of his depravity, you cannot compare him to this man. This man is suffering, and a victim of his own desires.

What we also cannot do is be the thought police and punish pedos when they have not committed a crime. This article and the podcast show the problems with getting these people therapy not only to ensure they don't offend, but to improve their own lives. I may actually be interested in this professionally when the time comes for me to start focusing on a certain problem or population, if I go that route.

This man has offended in that he has looked at CP, however I think the fact that he started looking at it while he was a child himself and stopped early in his life is a huge mitigating factor.

I feel empathy for these people. They have a sexual desire they can never fulfill. Imagine telling a 13 year old boy that they can never have sex with anyone they find attractive. Ever.

[MyOneAndOnly]

isn't this considered, like psychopathy, to be a condition that's caused by trauma? IE. that's is not a preference that someone is born with. Psychopaths, for instance, are born with certain behaviorial predispositions, like lack of empathy, but it takes damage to specific parts of the brain along with exposure to extreme violence at a young age, in tandem with those behavior traits (genetics) to create a psychopath.

[MyOneAndOnly]

Here's an interesting talk regarding the ingredients necessary to create a psychopath


https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon...nd_of_a_killer

[Mooney]

sociopath/psychopath is what i think you were after.

[reprise85]

Originally Posted by scottytheoneand

isn't this considered, like psychopathy, to be a condition that's caused by trauma? IE. that's is not a preference that someone is born with. Psychopaths, for instance, are born with certain behaviorial predispositions, like lack of empathy, but it takes damage to specific parts of the brain along with exposure to extreme violence at a young age, in tandem with those behavior traits (genetics) to create a psychopath.

This is not so cut and dry. There are many psychopathic murderers who claim to not have suffered extreme violence or abuse of any kind. I personally think the largest part of the puzzle is biological/genetic, and in some cases that is all that is needed. There are people like Jeffery Dahmer who, while having a troubled home life, supposedly did not experience extreme violence. However, he is the protypical killer who killed animals etc... and he also was an alocohlic starting in his early teens. This certainly contributed to the lack of maturity of his brain. My point is there is not causal proof that nurture must be involved in any way.

Back to pedophiles, many of them were abused themselves and sexualized at an early age. But it is also possible for some of them that it is a sexual preference they were born with. I don't know how you can study this, but it makes sense to me that those who are just attracted to child's bodies and those who are actually attracted to taking someone's innocence have different mechanisms working in their brains. The latter also seems much more sociopathic in general. Either way, by the time they are adults and probably way before then, these patterns of arousal are ingrained in them and not going away barring castration. The question then becomes how do you help them and make sure they don't hurt other people.

Of course, the majority of those abused do not go on to abuse, so there must be some biological component.

[vixnix]

I saw a doco that showed psychopaths brains were physically different, and the amygdala was smaller...

[Eulogy]

Homosexuals have sex with other consenting adults.

[slunken]

You're 16, You're a Pedophile, and You Don't Want to Hurt Anyone.

Title later shortened to ALF.

[juliana]

Originally Posted by Eulogy

Homosexuals have sex with other consenting adults.

[MyOneAndOnly]

Originally Posted by reprise85

Back to pedophiles, many of them were abused themselves and sexualized at an early age. But it is also possible for some of them that it is a sexual preference they were born with. I don't know how you can study this, but it makes sense to me that those who are just attracted to child's bodies and those who are actually attracted to taking someone's innocence have different mechanisms working in their brains. The latter also seems much more sociopathic in general. Either way, by the time they are adults and probably way before then, these patterns of arousal are ingrained in them and not going away barring castration. The question then becomes how do you help them and make sure they don't hurt other people.

Of course, the majority of those abused do not go on to abuse, so there must be some biological component.

castration? they can still abuse kids after being castrated

what you're saying, though, is similar to what Fallon claims about psychopaths. They are a combination of genetics and trauma. without either of the two they don't become disordered.

I think more and more we'll find that different people react to the same trauma in different ways because they possess different genes, which in turn informs their behavior and how their brain adapts.

[reprise85]

Originally Posted by scottytheoneand

castration? they can still abuse kids after being castrated

what you're saying, though, is similar to what Fallon claims about psychopaths. They are a combination of genetics and trauma. without either of the two they don't become disordered.

I think more and more we'll find that different people react to the same trauma in different ways because they possess different genes, which in turn informs their behavior and how their brain adapts.

The can still abuse kids if they are castrated, but to essentially turn off their libido should give them a leg up in therapy and treatment of their compulsive behaviors that they perhaps couldn't get while they were still getting physically aroused by children.

Most of the modern literature on psychopathy that I've read is based around Robert Hare's Without Conscience, which outlines Hare's opinions on where psychopathy comes from and how it can be used in forensic settings to predict which offenders are more likely to re-offend if they are let out (not talking specifically about pedophiles here). In Hare's view, a large majority of suffering is caused by a small minority of people, many of which are not caught, and many who are let out of prison on parole because their superficial charm and adaptability win over judges and panels.

Hare's view is that most of the traits of psychopathy (not the behaviors themselves) like shallow affect, lack of empathy, antagonism, malignant narcissim, etc, are due to deficits in the cerebral cortex and/or amygdala that can be measured with fMRIs. For example, one of the tests he does involve hooking a person up to an fMRI and flashing words on a screen, some of them benign or positive in nature (book, car, house, blue) and some of which cause a small but visceral reaction in most people's bodies (cancer, death, genocide) and brains that can be measured and analyzed, such as blood flow in sections of the brain and heart rate/perspiration of the body. His conclusion is that those with psychopathic traits do not show any difference in their brains and bodies when they see words such as CANCER any more than they see benign words such as table or car or whatever.

This is just what I remember off the top of my head, he had all kinds of experimental things he work on in forensic settings. He also found patterns of common idiosyncrasies in their speech and on certain tests like Rorschach.

He also tried to illuminate what psychopathy, sociopathy and anti-social personality disorder have in common but also where they differ. Basically anyone who he would consider a psychopath (born with it possibly w/ environmental issues) and sociopath (maybe born with tendencies but with a bigger part being due to how they grew up and society) would be DSM diagnosed as having ASPD, but most people with ASPD would not be considered to be clinically psychopathic or sociopathic. Which seems like a bunch of words that don't matter except that those who are psychopathic are much more likely to seriously re-offend than those who are not and therefore should be treated differently at parole hearings. There is also no treatment that is thought to work on any level.

[reprise85]

Really my interest in this field lies with developing interventions for children and teenagers who have are likely to sexually offend and stopping this behavior. Which is currently basically seen as impossible, especially for those who also have psychopathic traits.

Part of the problem is illuminated in this article re: mandatory reporting. But I wouldn't do away with mandatory reporting. There has to way to intervene with children at this stage. Even if they have already offended, since many of these kids start offending as teenagers or even earlier, there should be a way to treat them. But there isn't really.

But for those like "Adam" in this article, there should absolutely be a support network for men with these problems that treats them with dignity and respect and not malice for thoughts in their heads.

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Poots

That's not the point I was trying to make.

Ok so what was your point?

[reprise85]

I read an interesting article about sexually abused children that were so sexualized that they did sexual things constantly and could not be around other kids at all or even in public in some cases, for example they would not stop masturbating no matter where they were and would molest any other kid they were with. I don't think a kid is born with that. In this case it was a component of many behaviors grouped under reactive attachment disorder (RAD), which is common in abused children. But I do believe that there is both a biological and social component to pedophilia in at least some cases. Trying to find the article, it was very interesting and I'm paraphrasing it badly.

[reprise85]

Back when I was starting therapy and was obsessed with understanding what happened to me I read a book about child "psychopaths". It included interviews with children who were considered to be obviously budding psychopaths (you can't officially be called that until you are 18). There was a certain age, from around 5-9, where children were developed enough to explain their thoughts and fantasy but not developed enough to know what they were thinking was generally considered "wrong", and they would very bluntly talk about murdering their parents and pets in detail. It was really fucked up. Those interviews are what solidified for me that a large part of this is biologically based.

[Mayfuck]

Originally Posted by Eulogy

Homosexuals have sex with other consenting adults.

probably true along the same rates of heterosexual rape if not more.

[Mayfuck]

i'm not buying the whole pathology of pedophiles regardless of age without accounting for a culture that normalizes "teen" pornography and other infantilizing behavior that is so prevelant with the mainstreaming of that whole fetish (which many of you approve of in daily practice). i'm agreeing with reprise85 but i recognize that there's a whole societeal indoctrination to these psychopaths. its fataslist to just blame it on 'genetics'

[reprise85]

Explicit child pornography as described in the article where a child is abused and tortured in front of a camera is on another level to "barely legal" type pornography. Both are terrible but as someone who has witnessed the former, there is a discontinuity between the two that I don't think can really be appreciated by putting them in the same category.

Not condoning infantilizing pornography of any kind. I think it is hard for people to appreciate just how terrible child pornography when they only think of things like that instead of some terrible scene involving a toddler being sexually tortured. It takes a special kind of fucked up to like that kind of thing and when you talk about psychopathic pedophiles, this is the kind of thing they like. Going back to the original story, Adam is not the same as this sort of hypothetical man or woman and should not be treated the same way.