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I was curious to know if an adult can have an attraction to children sexually without acting on it. Or is this perversion of viewing children as sexual gratification in and of itself, something which arises out of having a personality disorder like having NPD or very high phsycopathic traits?
3 posters
Question about pedophilia
trueself1- Posts : 41
Join date : 2015-06-24
cherrylipgloss- Posts : 8
Join date : 2016-03-31
Hi 
I know you're waiting on Richard, but I happened to read an article discussing this not long ago.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1760-5-things-i-learned-infiltrating-deep-web-child-molesters.html
Hope that helps a bit
I know you're waiting on Richard, but I happened to read an article discussing this not long ago.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1760-5-things-i-learned-infiltrating-deep-web-child-molesters.html
Hope that helps a bit
trueself1- Posts : 41
Join date : 2015-06-24
thank you
Monkeys'n'Fireworks- Posts : 6
Join date : 2016-06-07
Hooo Boy. Trigger topic for a lot of people for sure. And lots of taboo there. It's a good question though. Please forgive me if I seem a little cavalier in answering here, I find challenging and taboo questions rewarding to talk through and explore as concepts. We learn in the areas we don't know about, so...
Personally, I do think it's possible. It may even be something commonly felt by a lot of people to some subtle degree, and may just be a part of the package of being animals-- and tribal animals at that. As hunter-gatherers, sexuality becomes a much more social phenomenon than it does in our modern culture.
I suspect that it may be one of those things that we collectively hate to admit about ourselves, but the feelings are there in the primitive part of the brain. I think many people have felt this way in moments, as gross and scary as that sounds.
And, To some degree, this is part of being a normal and functioning man in the sense that men are generally attracted to markers of youth that correlate to fertility. That includes things like Neotany (child-like physical characteristics), which women display in a greater amount on average than men.
That's not to say that every man is a pedophile, but rather that it's normal for men to value markers of youthfulness as attractive. Last I had heard, "teen" is the world's most popular porn genre. By extension, it does make sense that some men may kind of get carried away with these feelings or values and find girls who are a little too youthful attractive.
To me, I look at history, and I see that pedophilia has been a part of many, many cultures for millenia-- most cultures in fact, and it's still with us today with all we know in this modern and scientific world. That implies that it may not be as uncommon and deeply disordered as we'd like to think. Either that, or there are A LOT of people with latent psychopathic tendencies out there, which could be true as well.
Like the other shadows of being primates we can see so clearly in our recent history-- violence, tribalism, dominance, rape, exploitation of others for short term reward-- sexualizing children may be another one of those lingering shadows to be reconciled that is more common as a feeling than we realize. Most people have had violent feelings on occasion, or feelings of xenophobia without acting on these feelings.
Are all these urges fundamentally psychopathic & disordered? That, to me is the bigger question. I admit that i feel a bit guilty and afraid sharing an opinion like this on a site where people deal with very real trauma. But I also think these things need to be discussed and made clearer.
Personally, I suspect that these urges are behaviors that used to be useful in the past evolutionarily, and no longer serve us in this modern culture. We are torn between being successful primates as a nervous system and modern human beings as a social system. And there is a lot about being a primate that is dark, relatively speaking.
My point: I think it's possible to have a 'feeling' like that pass through a relatively healthy adult's psyche without it meaning they will act on it, and I think that such feelings do occur to people who are otherwise probably pretty normal, relatively. A good Example of this is provided in the link shared above, where the article mentions that there are a faction of pedophiles who are aware of how wrong it is to feel the way they do, and feel guilt and remorse about it. If 100% of pedophiles were extreme NPD's and Psychopaths, this would not be possible, as they would have no empathy or fear of repercussion.
IMO, Like other "Shadow" aspects of the psyche, these are traits to be recognized, brought into the light of awareness and integrated by healing work instead of being acted on. In a mentally & emotionally healthy person, these feelings probably don't exist often, in the same way the violent urges probably don't exist that often.
I sincerely hope I'm not upsetting anyone too much by my opinion here, but if I am, please do let me know. I'm here to heal too.
Personally, I do think it's possible. It may even be something commonly felt by a lot of people to some subtle degree, and may just be a part of the package of being animals-- and tribal animals at that. As hunter-gatherers, sexuality becomes a much more social phenomenon than it does in our modern culture.
I suspect that it may be one of those things that we collectively hate to admit about ourselves, but the feelings are there in the primitive part of the brain. I think many people have felt this way in moments, as gross and scary as that sounds.
And, To some degree, this is part of being a normal and functioning man in the sense that men are generally attracted to markers of youth that correlate to fertility. That includes things like Neotany (child-like physical characteristics), which women display in a greater amount on average than men.
That's not to say that every man is a pedophile, but rather that it's normal for men to value markers of youthfulness as attractive. Last I had heard, "teen" is the world's most popular porn genre. By extension, it does make sense that some men may kind of get carried away with these feelings or values and find girls who are a little too youthful attractive.
To me, I look at history, and I see that pedophilia has been a part of many, many cultures for millenia-- most cultures in fact, and it's still with us today with all we know in this modern and scientific world. That implies that it may not be as uncommon and deeply disordered as we'd like to think. Either that, or there are A LOT of people with latent psychopathic tendencies out there, which could be true as well.
Like the other shadows of being primates we can see so clearly in our recent history-- violence, tribalism, dominance, rape, exploitation of others for short term reward-- sexualizing children may be another one of those lingering shadows to be reconciled that is more common as a feeling than we realize. Most people have had violent feelings on occasion, or feelings of xenophobia without acting on these feelings.
Are all these urges fundamentally psychopathic & disordered? That, to me is the bigger question. I admit that i feel a bit guilty and afraid sharing an opinion like this on a site where people deal with very real trauma. But I also think these things need to be discussed and made clearer.
Personally, I suspect that these urges are behaviors that used to be useful in the past evolutionarily, and no longer serve us in this modern culture. We are torn between being successful primates as a nervous system and modern human beings as a social system. And there is a lot about being a primate that is dark, relatively speaking.
My point: I think it's possible to have a 'feeling' like that pass through a relatively healthy adult's psyche without it meaning they will act on it, and I think that such feelings do occur to people who are otherwise probably pretty normal, relatively. A good Example of this is provided in the link shared above, where the article mentions that there are a faction of pedophiles who are aware of how wrong it is to feel the way they do, and feel guilt and remorse about it. If 100% of pedophiles were extreme NPD's and Psychopaths, this would not be possible, as they would have no empathy or fear of repercussion.
IMO, Like other "Shadow" aspects of the psyche, these are traits to be recognized, brought into the light of awareness and integrated by healing work instead of being acted on. In a mentally & emotionally healthy person, these feelings probably don't exist often, in the same way the violent urges probably don't exist that often.
I sincerely hope I'm not upsetting anyone too much by my opinion here, but if I am, please do let me know. I'm here to heal too.