Pedophilia - No Cure?

== The Search for a 'Cure' for the Incurable ==


== Why is Pedophilia not Receiving Help? ==
The media is an extremely powerful device. It can control hundreds of millions of people. The War in Iraq for example. People were all caught up on the 3,000 U.S. soldiers that had died there. The media controls that information but failed to report that over 85% of those deaths are falls and accidents, less than a handful of a few hundred actually died in combat. Compare that to 40,000+ combat-related deaths among the insurgents.

The extreme hype and ignorance of the masses creates a great deal of damage on society as well as limiting factors. People have access to the wide Internet and the ability to learn and research on their own but they don't use it unless they're in college. They use it mostly for entertainment. Humans seem to thrive on self-elevation as well. Since civilization began, there have been some type of low and filth. Poor people. Slaves. Race. Women. Now here in the 20th-21st century, we have a Western civilization that has done away with that. So they have to look for others to degrade. Part of our present society is not concerned with when or where you were born. No in a free economy with capitalism, people label your worth based upon your works.

Because of this, they have found criminals, in particular child molesters, to be the new form of low. It used to be on par with homosexuality. Just a few decades ago, both were extremely taboo. But we have a problem here. People label you as you do. They can no longer conceive anything else.

A thief for example. You are not a thief unless you actually steal something. Then you can be called a "thief". Until then, you're just wanting to steal and aren't a thief until you actually "do it". That is what society hangs on. Same with a Republican or redneck. People associate those persons with a lifestyle and list of actions, and sometimes a belief system.


But a homosexual is a person who simply has a preference and desire. Whether or not they act on them is irrelevant. But if you ask someone, "what is a homosexual?" they often think, "someone who has sex with someone of the same gender." Because our society labels people based upon actions. Now homosexuality is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and is generally accepted. You can't refuse to hire someone based upon their sexual orientation.


So a pedophile is tossed into the same ordeal. People place pedophile as someone who molests children. It's very difficult for people to get past that. They label all child sex offenders pedophiles. And since harming a child is, according to society, the worst thing on earth you could possibly do, you have your new scum of the earth, whether they act on their desires or not.



== Is Anybody Willing? ==
The only people willing to "help" pedophiles are going to be your Christian groups (and not all of them either). Unfortunately, 99% of them believe that you will be cured of your issues by becoming a Christian. They believe that God will cure a person of their sexual desires and form that person into a normal human being who only has sexual desires for an adult of the opposite sex.

It really isn't true, I don't think, because I've been a born-again Christian since the 5th Grade. And yet, as a Christian, I developed into a pedophile, no thanks to some of my fetishes. I even have genophobia (fear of sex).


So that leaves the rest of society. Well with this hype, nobody is willing to help pedophiles. They label pedophilia as a sexually disturbed person who needs "help", but none is offered. All the research that has gone into pedophilia has been about:
1. Finding out just who is a pedophile (how many are out there and just who are they?)
2. Finding out general things about pedophiles (e.g. how can we label them?)
3. Testing either by survey (or usually) testing sex offenders

No research is being done (or has been done) in looking for a cure. I met a man who had a sexual tendency towards young boys, for a few years of his life. Guess what? He's cured. He no longer has those tendencies. I have urged him to see a psychologist to be thoroughly examined. He's never seen a professional about it and rarely spoke to anyone about his problem. He still struggles with teenage boys who are thin, but he's getting over it.


For the longest time, scientists believed that a disorder called "female hysteria" existed. All the way up to the early 1900s even. It wasn't helped that men were the only scientists and researchers at the time. Proper scientific research has shown that it was just medical hype that built up to a whole lot of nothing. Now we know no such thing exists and is rather silly to think about.

Man believed that flight was impossible for the longest time as well. Well, back in 1903, that proved incorrect. Hell, just over a decade later, planes are being produced by the thousands and equipped with weapons to destroy one another and bomb targets on the ground.




== Can Anything Be Done? ==
All people need is the correction of the hype and ignorance, and the right motivation to actually research it. Then and only then can something be found. That man I met is my inspiration who reset my research into psychology. Psychotherapeutic methods exist out there, but society has problems using them (on anyone) but they do and have worked in other fields.

There is a law I believe that stands in the way of using prisoners for scientific research, in addition, all scientific research must be conducted at the consensus of the person and they must know the test and desired affect. However, by being able to safely put pedophiles in a research dedicated to personally learning more about the subjects and being able to conduct willing tests on them, some interesting discoveries might be found. A call to anyone who has turned, almost turned from any sexual paraphilia needs to be looked into and examined. There are also a few things that can be conducted as part of the testing. For example, psychotherapeutic treatments...


1. Flooding -- A treatment for phobias. A person who is claustrophobic is locked inside the truck of a car and driven around for 3 hours. A person with arachnophobia has a dozen spiders dumped on them, and they are strapped to a chair and forced to endure. Someone afraid of the dark is locked inside a maze with no lighting or windows. A rather controversial thing to do, but this was how I gained my genophobia.


2. Desensitization -- The one most used. It treats a patient by gradual exposure to lessen the effects. It also occurs when an emotional response is repeatedly evoked in situations in which the action tendency that is associated with the emotion proves irrelevant or unnecessary. For someone with fear of spiders. It can start with seeing a spider in a tight and secure container several feet away. After awhile, the container is brought closer every few days. Eventually, the spider is next to the person with the fear. Eventually even later, the spider might even have the case opened some distance and eventually brought closer. Given enough time, a person with arachnophobia will be able to handle a full-sized spider they know won't bite or sting.


3. Extinction -- The lowering of the probability of a response when a characteristic reinforcing stimulus is no longer presented. With classical conditioning, a patient eventually learns that the stimulus (fear/desire/etc.) no loner provides the desired effect. With operant conditioning, this is a method in which an [operant] response no longer occurs. A child using spit wads to irritate another for attention. If the second child ignores it, soon, the first child will have to learn that the desired result will not come (attention or irritation), and they will stop.


There's also immersion therapy, systematic desensitization, hypnosis, and a list of myriads of other things. The most important thing is to find the sources or core to the reasons and see if it's possible to root them out. Personally, I believe that nonexclusive pedophiles will have an easier time. The reason is because they seem to account for a majority of pedophiles who have other sexual tendencies towards adults.



We only think nothing can be done. Society has demonized pedophiles without even looking into a possibility for a cure. With the field of psychology and medicine every growing, we need to be able to put these resources to good use. Sometimes, by simply granting hope, we can help crank people to begin focusing on tasks towards the benefit of society rather than avoiding it in fear or being locked up and excluded from it.

We make fun of children who claim they don't like foods they've never tried before. Then why is it we can't find it childish to do the same thing for pedophilia (or any other paraphilia)?

Interesting article.

On a different note, I'm going to edit your last name out of your user name, because it's against forum rules to use your full name here. For your own safety.

Take care,

--Frayed

FrayedEndOfSanity wrote:Interesting article.

On a different note, I'm going to edit your last name out of your user name, because it's against forum rules to use your full name here. For your own safety.

Take care,

--Frayed

It's not my real name.

Oh? So why choose someone else's?

--Frayed

FrayedEndOfSanity wrote:Oh? So why choose someone else's?

--Frayed

There's over 3,000 people on Facebook with the name "Mark Young" (compared to about 320 on John Smith). Aside from the fact I personally like the name, it's also very common, in fact, it's one of the most common full names (middle aside) in the English-speaking world. So those are my reasons. Someone trying to find me, or my real Internet pseudonym will probably come up empty-handed.

Fair enough.

--Frayed