Research: Nonsexual aspects

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Many researchers have pointed out that pedophilia often involves feelings of love and romantic attraction. Although we cite examples from earlier research in roughly chronological order, since the 2020s there have been dedicated research studies published on the topic.

• Okami, P. & Goldberg, A. (1992). "Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators?," Journal of Sex Research, 29(3), 297-328.

  "Evidence further suggests that those persons whose primary sexual interest is genuinely pedophilic often exhibit a complex set of attitudes, beliefs, and perceived needs in regard to children of which sexual desire may be subordinate rather than superordinate (Groth, Hobson, & Gary, 1982; Howells, 1979, 1981; Lanyon, 1986; Ravitch & Weiss, 1962). Interactions between such persons and children sometimes have been characterized as "affectionate" and inclusive of many non-sexual components, some of which may be experienced by the child as rewarding (Groth et al., 1982; Howells, 1979: Ingram, 1981; Krivacska, 1990; Lanyon, 1986; Li et al., 1990; Money, in Geraci & Mader, 1991; Peters, 1976; Sandfort, 1984; Schultz, 1973)."

• Wilson, G. & Cox, D. (1983). "The Child-Lovers: A Study of Paedophiles in Society." London: Peter Owen Publishers, 1983.

  "From Table 4 [of our study] it can be seen that both physical appearance and personality characteristics are claimed as important determinants of the appeal of children to the paedophile, with personality descriptions being given slightly more commonly than physical descriptions. The most important personality trait that the men find attractive in children is their innocence and openness, this being expressed in a variety of different ways (lack of inhibition, honesty, simplicity, curiosity, openness to experience, willingness to learn, spontaneity, etc). Their warmth, affection, friendliness, charm, softness and understanding were also mentioned, although this might have referred to the particular children with whom the men were able to establish some relationship. Other descriptions related to energy level, e.g. vitality, vivaciousness, enthusiasm, mischief, liveliness. [...]

  Answers to the question concerning the kinds of relationships with children that are engaged in are summarised in Table 13, with some of the more typical and interesting responses given verbatim in Table 14. The most common descriptions were in non-sexual terms such as affectionate, caring, loving, gentle, intimate, platonic and fatherly."

• Plummer, K. (1981). "Pedophilia: Constructing a Sociological Baseline," in Mark Cook and Kevin Howells (eds.), Adult Sexual Interest in Children, 221-48. London: Academic, 1981.

  "The general problems [faced by pedophiles] are not distinctive to pedophiles but common to all people. For example, the problem of a lost love or an unrequited love may occur more frequently amongst pedophiles, but all people can in principle have such experiences. As one heterosexual pedophile wrote:

  "How can it ever be possible to convey to people that we can suffer the same pangs of jealousy, emotional distress, at being parted from a loved one, and suicidal tendencies (when it appears the child who is the object of affection seems to have vanished for ever) as "normal lovers" do. How can they understand the terrible loneliness of a crowded room because she is not there. Helpless, lonely, living in a world of hopeless frustration because the one you love is constantly absent and yet ever constant in dreams, awake or sleeping. How could we tell them of the tears that can be shed because a little seven year old girl is no longer there."

  Apart from the reference to a seven-year-old girl, that observation may be common to many people's lives, as may the following:

  "I get so desperately in love with these people. Any of them, you know. If I had any sort of relationship with anybody, in the first place I wouldn't have it if I didn't like the person, there comes a kind of possessiveness that nobody likes. I wish I weren't possessive. Nobody likes anybody who is possessive. But if you are by nature possessive you can't help being like that, and I always get very much in love with them. It sounds silly to express what you mean by being in love. I want that person all the time you know, and I don't find many people like that."

  Such problems could be illustrated many times. It is important to distinguish them because some sexually different people can see their lives being full of such problems, unique to themselves, whereas in fact such problems are widespread through many groups of society. [...]

  This is not to say that the adult loses interest in the child, it is to say that the erotic component now dwindles. Many pedophile relationships established in early years can continue till the twilight of life, but the eroticism ceases at puberty."

• Vogt, Horst (2006). Pädophilie; Leipzicher Studie zur gesellschaftlichen und psychischen Situation pädophiler Männe ("Paedophilia - Leipzig study on the societal and psychological situation of paedophile males"), Lengerich, Germany: Pabst Science Publishers. ISBN 3-89967-323-9.

  "Phenomenologically speaking, pedophiles are adults who fall in love with and at the same time erotically and sexually desire boys or girls."

• Schmidt, G. (2002). "The Dilemma of the Male Pedophile," Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31(6), 473-477.

  "Pedophiles are men whose sexual wishes and desires for relationship bonds and love are focused either primarily or exclusively on children who have not reached puberty, whereby the relative importance of each of these three areas–sexuality, relationship, and love–may vary, as it does with other people as well."

• Li, Chin-Keung (1990). "The Main Thing Is Being Wanted," Journal of Homosexuality, 20(1-2), 129-143.

  "Pedophilia is not primarily a matter of sex, but of love, of being wanted, of childhood enjoyment, of things that the adult world cannot provide. […] Whether they feel that they are born pedophile, or that pedophilia is a normal and legitimate variation of human sexual expression, most of my informants have stressed the experience of love, affection, or closeness in their encounters with children. The sense of emotional contact with another human person is as important as, if not actually more important than, the excitement of sex. Among these informants, four have explicitly articulated their experience with children in terms of romantic courtship and love. […] To some pedophiles, their relationships with children are constituted by an intense love and affection."

• Lautmann, Rüdiger (1994). Attraction to Children. Ingrid Klein Pubs. Inc., Hamburg. ISBN 3-89521-015-3.

  "It's not chronological age that's decisive [for pedophilic attraction], but rather a combination of physical and personality characteristics. Therefore, the pedophile takes seriously those young people with whom he could fall in love."

• Crawford, D.A. (1981). "Treatment approaches to paedophiles," in M. Cook and K. Howells (Eds), Adult Sexual Interest in Children. London: Academic Press, p. 184.

  "For the majority of pedophiles, however, the notion of excessively high levels of sexual drive and overpowering sexual urges motivating their offences seems inappropriate. The feelings they report towards children are more often ones of love and tenderness, emotions which are not reportedly eliminated by castration." (Quoted in by Dennis Howitt.)

• Bailey, J. Michael (2009). "Was Michael Jackson A Pedophile?," scientificblogging.com, July 1.

  "Hebephilia and pedophilia are sexual orientations, just like normal heterosexuality and homosexuality. Also like normal sexualities, they are not just sexual. Not only do straight men have sex with women, they also fall in love with them, court them, bond with them, and sleep in the same bed with them, often without anything overtly sexual occurring. There is no reason why hebephiles and pedophiles would not also have feelings of love and attachment, as well as sexual attraction, towards children."

• Seto, Michael (2012). "Is Pedophilia a Sexual Orientation?", Archives of Sexual Behaviour, 41, p. 233.

  "Some studies have found that some pedophilic sexual offenders (in particular, those who select unrelated boys) score higher on measures of emotional congruence with children than other sexual offenders (Underhill, Wakeling, Mann, & Webster, 2008; Wilson, 1999). Finkelhor (1984) defined emotional congruence with children as the extent to which sex with a child fulfilled emotional needs. Emotional congruence can also include the degree to which someone prefers the company of children, enjoys child-oriented activities, and feels his emotional and intimacy needs can be met by children (Wilson, 1999). Some pedophiles not only seek sexual contacts with children, but seek romantic relationships with them. For example, Li (1991) interviewed 27 pedophiles and found that many characterized their contacts with children as part of loving relationships. Wilson and Cox (1983) interviewed 77 members of the Paedophile Information Exchange in the United Kingdom, and found that more respondents characterized their relationships with children as affectionate, loving, intimate, and 'close' (n = 25) than as genitally-oriented (n = 18). Some respondents claimed their relationships with children were platonic, suggesting that sexual attraction was not the primary motivation."

• Martijn, Frederica et al. (May 2020). Sexual Attraction and Falling in Love in Persons with Pedohebephilia, Archives of Sexual Behavior 49(2), pages 1305–1318.

  Building on a 2018 survey that focused on MAPs with a low AoA and appeared to reveal that falling in love with a child was very common, Martijn et al. write in their 2020 abstract:

  Few studies of pedophilia or hebephilia have included questions about romantic attraction. We conducted an anonymous online survey of 306 men who self-reported as sexually attracted to children. The majority (72%) of participants reported they had fallen in love with a child in their lifetime. Participants reported greater feelings of attachment to children than feelings of infatuation. Though sexual attraction and falling in love were strongly correlated, they were not synonymous. Participants who reported pedohebephilia (defined in this study as attraction to prepubescent and pubescent children) were more likely to have fallen in love with a child than participants who reported pedohebe-ephebophilia (defined as attraction to prepubescent, pubescent, and post-pubescent minors). Also, participants with an exclusive attraction to children were more likely to have fallen in love with a child than participants who were equally attracted to children and adults. The results of this study were consistent with the suggestion of Seto (2012) that pedohebephilia could be considered a form of sexual orientation for age, which includes both sexual and romantic attraction.

• Vaerwaeter, B. [Pseudonym] (2022). The Pedophile as a Human Being: An Autoethnography for the Recognition of a Marginalized Sexual Orientation Controversial Ideas 2 (1). DOI:10.35995/jci02010003

  "[...]it is important to recognize that there is such a thing as pedophilic love, that fits in the spectrum of feelings that are generally denoted as romantic, even though falling in love with a minor is peculiar in some aspects.[...] pedophilic love may be more related to how adolescents experience love and romantic attraction, than to long-lasting feelings of love for someone who has been a partner or a soul mate for an important part of one’s life. What is more difficult to demonstrate, but must nevertheless be considered, is that pedophilic love may show some characteristics of the affection that is felt by parents for their young children; a concerned and protective reflex that is associated with strong emotional involvement, which is only partly reciprocal. Apart from being less reciprocal, pedophilic love clearly is also more ephemeral than love between adults, since the advent or progress of puberty inevitably has a profound, even destructive, impact on such feelings. But the fact that it is so short-lived is not bizarre or unethical by necessity: it could easily be viewed as an accelerated version of the common case of a couple separating because one or both of them feel that at the time when they started their relationship, their partner was very much a different person."

• Levitan, Julia et al. (2024). Minor-Attracted Men's Lived Experiences of Romantic Attraction, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.

  Abstract Excerpt: "This online qualitative survey study collected 74 self-identified minor-attracted men’s anonymous accounts of romantic attraction to minors. [...] Overall, romantic attraction to minors resembles romantic attraction to adults."

  "Taken altogether, as prior studies on romantic attraction to minors have also concluded (Martijn et al., 2020; Mundy, 2022), the current study adds tentative support for one construal of attraction to minors as an age/maturity-based sexual orientation (Seto, 2012, 2017). This said, further research is needed to test the romantic component of attraction to minors. As one example, Mundy (2022) proposed that MAPs’ purported “romantic” attraction to minors may instead reflect a cognitive-emotional congruence with minors (i.e., an exaggerated tendency to cognitively and emotionally self-identify with minors and maintain attachment to childhood). The diverse features of falling in love described by participants in this study suggest that romantic attraction to minors involves more than just a cognitive-emotional congruence"

Newgon: The authors found that Sternberg's "triangular theory of love" (consisting of three components of passion, intimacy, and commitment) characterized participants' descriptions of falling in love "so well that, despite our inductive approach, two analysts independently recognized and documented links to this model while coding and generating candidate themes."

Excerpt Gallery Library

Nonsexual aspects are featured in the following library of graphics for sharing on social media.

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  A warning about the political nature of Psychiatry
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  Moser and Kleinpatz - Paraphilia is a questionable concept
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  Haeberle on paraphilia
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  Americal Psychiatric Assiciation's DSM-5 Manual says pedophilia can be an orientation
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  Charles Moser on the subsequent coverage and bumbling by the APA
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  DSM-5 another graphic
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  Some chronophilias
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  Seto - extended chronophilias
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  High Emotional Empathy (Schuler et al, 2019)
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  Mirkin on methodological flaws and gay analogy
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  Gaither: How does the idea of pedophilia as an orientation stand against the evidence?
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  Blanchard/DSM debate opinions on drawn material - relevant to Lolicon-MAP Equivalence Debate
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  Sociocultural perspective on pedophilia as a disorder - Chenier
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  Orientation or Disorder?
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  Development of pedophilia, choice and abused-abuser myths
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  The myth of psychopathy
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  Retarded or perturbed pedophile myth
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  Nonsexual aspects
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  Non-offending pedophilia and impulse control
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  The efficacy and consequences of attempts to treat Pedophiles
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  2017 UK Gov review of attempts to reform sex offenders via "treatment"
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  Dutch Rapporteur: "On Solid Ground" Prevalence of pedophilia in a criminal sample, broken down
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  Lievesley/Lapworth 2021 - State of play with female MAPs
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  Even in an online sample of MAPs (biased towards low AoAs), hebephilia is very common.
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  Hebephilia is also common in the gen-pop
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  Neoteny - a review (source unknown)
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  Rind and Yuill on adaptive hebephilia
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  Rind and Yuill (cont'd)
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  Rind and Yuill (cont'd)
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  Rind and Yuill (cont'd)