Needs work like addiction; no need is really real; a Buddha who rests beyond karma is indifferent to all needs: touch, food, acceptance, sexual expression, pride, etc. We might choose to respond to our needs as a gratuity: as a way of making the perfect Universe that needs nothing even better, we do this, if at all, to give to ourselves and others in a way that enriches life. Were someone experiencing a sense of ease, joy, fun, life-affirmingness and contribution to well being, then all is very well; whereas, were someone doing or being or having in a sense of anger, anxiety or jerkiness, clinging, grasping, seeking, or hoarding, or with vendiction, defensiveness or reactivity, then there is suffering and there is a problem.
In some Oriental cultures, because of the culture-specific values attached to the head, it is considered taboo to touch someone’s head outside special circumstances – especial a child’s head.
In some cultures, particularly Northern, because of the culture-specific values attached to the genitals, it is considered taboo to touch someone’s genitals outside special circumstances – especial a child’s genitals.
An analogy that sometimes comes to mind for me when I am wanting to understand how needs, action, and thinking enmesh is imagining an empty soda pop can dropped from a bridge: the path of least resistance is always taken, the spanners the can tings and dings off on it’s way down represent held beliefs and assumptions affecting the chosen strategy for meeting needs.
If no one rocks the boat, the slave ship can be expected to continue on it’s course indefinitely.
@ dfhsdhd
Your extensive response deserves more time than I can afford; I used to get embroiled in these kinds of discussions online and found it took up far too much time and was not worth it. So please don’t infer my lack of response to mean anything other than a recognition that, to discuss this matter with you would be futile b/c you have a certain set of beliefs that you either developed after reading people such as Tolle and the other authors listed, or you found that these authors share your already established belief system.
I have nothing against Tolle and, in fact, a number of my patients read him. I’m all for anything that can help people live a more self-actualized, healthy, productive, adaptive life that can also have positive benefits for other people. I am therefore happy that these patients have found inspiration in his writings. The same can be said for anyone who truly gets “The Big Book” and lives their life in accordance with it–rather than merely quoting from it without any appreciation for what it all really means…kind of like people who are proud that they can cite philosophers but have not really done anything in their own lives worthy of mention. So, I am not disagreeing with your perspective because people such as Tolle aren’t exactly what one would call a credible mental health professional; he’s more of a philosopher IMO and, as long as he connects his words to real actions–which he does much of the time–I have respect for some of what he states. Other stuff seems far too esoteric to be practical, hence it is fascinating but not exactly beneficial in a real-life sense.
Now, one thing that concerns me is when people find solace not in neologisms but in revisions of words that have already been defined and accepted. To take such a word and define it differently, one must be able to show that his/her new definition is superior to the existing one; merely modifying it to suit one’s own needs is not a credible endeavour. To wit:
There are two kinds of harm. One is pain, the other is anguish. Pain comes from tissue damage. Anguish comes from thinking. The example of penetrating a two year-old seems to me to be Straw Man Fallacy, because this would be the behavior of a sadist, not a pedophile. Pedophiles are interested in caressing, mutual masturbation, oral sex, or intercrural sex; not penetration of the anus or vagina – certainly not of a toddler. Masturbation or intercural sex do not cause pain; what is left of ‘harm’ then is anguish; the anguish of pedophilic sex is produced from the social structure as described above in “1”.
This involves “your” (likely derived from one of the cited authors–thank you for the list, btw) definition of “harm” and “pedophile.” How can “you” arbitrarily define a pedophile as you have? Whose definition is that? NAMBLA’s? I would argue “yes.” Only a pedophile–defined nearly universally (aside from pedophiles) as a sexual preference for children–would describe it as you have. That kind of a definition is, my friend, a rationalization–defined as a lame justification for one’s “unacceptable” thoughts, feelings, urges, motives, behaviours–for something that can cause significant harm to children. To claim that sexual intercourse with children is the act of a sadist and not a pedophile is pure double speak or manipulation of reality to suit one’s own unhealthy needs; in this case, it is unhealthy because it is causing serious harm to an innocent child.
One does not need to be a clinical psychologist to recognize an excessively rigid belief system that will not change because to do so would be to acknowledge that the person has some very serious issues that, in modern civilized society, are considered unhealthy, immoral, and mentally/sexually disordered. Nothing I nor anyone else says will change your thinking because to do so would be like changing your entire self-concept–which is too frightening of a proposition for you. Therefore, I will not engage further purely out of the realization that I would be wasting hours of my life trying to discuss something with someone who is literally incapable of seeing things any other way, lest he lose touch with his self-concept.
Along these lines, most of what you wrote is based on the opinions of certain people who appeal to you. Yes, psychology is also based on opinions; even “research” is usually simply a means of creating studies to try to support one’s opinions. So it is a matter of which opinion one chooses to hold, with the hope that the decision is based on at least some good research and/or observation of human functioning. To claim that pedophilic tendencies are at the root of civilization is a dubious leap of inference. It’s the same as Freud’s over-emphasis of sexual urges rather than “attachment” or social/nurturant needs/desires. But that brings us back to your highly subjective definition of pedophilia as a “good” thing, rather than recognizing it for the sickness it is when the urges are acted on. Yes, the “sickness” is an opinion but it also has a lot of good research, science, and clinical observation behind it.
Because of time, I will simply comment on a few simpler issue and then bid you adieu:
First, I engage in proper psychotherapy, employing a number of powerful techniques based on various orientations in which I was trained. This is very different from “counselling work.” It’s not a matter of mere semantics but education. Second, you or Ramana Maharshi are so wrong to claim we all begin accepting of pretty much all tastes. We are genetically programmed to prefer certain tastes and to avoid others because, as the theory goes, these preferences developed out of “natural selection”: certain tastes suggest the food is good for us while other tastes indicate potential harm. The same goes for smells. So if you/Ramana want to try to use such an analogy, at least be more accurate.
As for “interpretation,” “narratives” etc., yes I am well aware of these issues and lecture on them extensively. I also lecture on Freud and make reference to his concept of “polymorphous perverse.” But I also provide documents to show how much of Freud’s work in the area of sexuality was driven by his own neurotic needs and beliefs. A great source is Jeffrey Masson; although he may be one of the most arrogant men on the planet and took liberties with a number of his inferences–hence some of what he has written has been discredited–much of his work has not been adequately challenged or disproved. Don’t get me wrong: I am a quasi-Freudian (not neo-Freudian) as I have trained in several therapies based on his work, along with very different orientations/therapies as well. However, I also did my research to try to see where his claims may have been dubious and thus I am not a zealot and do not take much of what he said literally.
Again, an extensive dissertation on these issues is beyond my time, as my professional practice keeps me very busy. I have read what you wrote and, while some of it may be interesting and some of it may have merit, I am not going to waste time trying to discuss things with someone who has chosen to accept certain belief systems which are only that: belief systems–some of which may in fact be based on solid psychological, anthropological, historical, evolutionary work. But other aspects are more philosophical or theoretical opinions and perspectives that make sense to the authors and to their readers or disciples…which you could just as easily apply to my own stance I acknowledge.
Dude… I don’t like people touching me full stop now… let alone when I was a child - most humans fulfil their wants and needs first, at the expense of what is best for the species… try thinking first for once.
re. Bonoboism [alloparenting & polysexuality] versus capitalopatriarchy; (anti-Cantor “cross-wired”);
"Oxytocin -- promotes nurturing behaviors toward children and bonding in couples...."
Vasopressin -- supports pair bonding: in men it may provoke aggressiveness toward sexual rivals."
Rick Hanson, [i]Buddha's Brain[/i]
Reminds me of the Henry Harlow monkey experiments. Infants raised without physical contact from other monkeys react violently when introduced into population and touched by another. The use of perambulators, cribs, and “independent sleeping” (Farber) in contemporary Anglo society reproduce Harlow’s experiments. Harlow concluded touch deprivation was the single most pathogenic influence on monkey development, equivalent to life-long solitary confinement. Similar conclusions from James Prescott: touch deprivation in childhood fuels war-society, see The Origins of Love & Violence.
Did anyone associated with the DSM even made such a claim?
Has anyone claimed that there is evidence in support of that proposition ?
We should perhaps stop using the term pedophilia and focus on non-consensual sex. Which has potential to cause more damage if the victim is younger.
The term pedophilia seems to be more of a value judgment then anything else.
What if a so called “pedophile” feels attraction to kids but does not act on it ? Is still a disease ? If you’re a psychologist then you probably know that mechanisms trough which people start feeling attracted to people of their age as opposed to someone younger, are not yet understood.
It seems to me the OP writer has gone off topic and is no longer writing about the topic, but defending active pedophilia where the child is sexually engaged with by the adult.
Since we previously had that interesting discussion, you of all people, Moreno, can understand my suggestion that pederasty and hominid evolution✝ are intimately connected. It’s not off-topic to understand the zoomed-out cultural milieu DSM 5 is happening in?
Since links are not allowed, persons interested in those discussions my wish to google for,
“Barbarian Pederasty”
“Incest-taboo & Capitalism”
“Aristotle & 1400 -1700g”
“Spectrum of Sexual State form”
To understand why this stuff is relevant, consider last year’s #OCCUPY movement. One of the hopes and dreams of #OCCUPY was that a new means of production will affect a radical shift in political organization: specifically the end of marshaling labor with money and the start of a Linux economy that uses computers to organize labor, sort of like a non-dictatorial Project Cybersyn. In 399 BC, Socrates was executed for “corrupting the youth” and the old system of enculturation: pederasty, was replaced with a new system: pedagogy: education based in monetarism. Deleuzoguattarianism maintains that mental illness has always only been what was required of anyone to keep-up with the flow of capital. With the proliferation of coin money, the suppression of pederasty and it’s replacement with salaried pedagogs followed. This process is still underway in the most remote areas, for example Central Asia, where currently in Afghanistan the culture of bachabaze boys is being stomped-out and the culture of universal education is arriving. However – since the development of computers has in some ways obsoleted monetarism, the pedagogic culture that was based on coinage (and war*) can’t continue unaffected. Therefore, DSM 5, which is a reflection of current cultural trends, is beginning to depathologize pedophilia.
Reading list: J.Philippe Rushton and C. Davidson Ankey, Brain size and cognitive ability: Correlations with age, sex, social class, and race
Men, women, children, barbarians, slaves, coloreds and Whites all have the same brain size.
David Graebers, Debt: The First 5000 Years
Coin money was invented to facilitate military campaigning.
what I remember from that discussion is that you failed to respond to certain points and disappeared from the forum. Some of the points you failed to respond to dealt with the selective way you use bonobo behavior and human evolution. In that interesting discussion you repeatedly psycholanalyzed me, instead of addressing points. And here in this thread, you appear with a new name and do precisely what I said to Magsj which is go off your own topic. If the OP here is correct, the DSM still considers the behavior you would like to engage in or perhaps engage in as a mental disorder. I prefer to look at it as a moral issue, especially in a case where the person mounts semi-intellectual arguments to justify behavior repeatedly demonstrated to cause suffering in children. Bonoboes are polysexual, and are attracted to adult bonoboes at the very least also. So bringing them up as support for pederasty, actually only provides another angle for diagnosing such behavior as a disorder. I don’t accept the argument, but if we are going to base our sexuality on the behavior of bonoboes then the vast majority of pederasts are suffering from a disorder of some kind. They cannot seem to find sexual pleasure when the power/experience is more or less equal between the partners.
Oops. Sorry if my writing wasn’t clear Moreno. I’m using “Bonoboism” is a special way; not per say to refer to our hairy simian cousins. By Bonoboism I mean the pre-tribal mode of communal polysexual alloparenting that preceded hierarchical incest-taboo family-unit and market capitalopatriarchy. Since the patriarchy is a memetic neurotic Parasympathetic conditioned response to perceived lack, it tends to relax in warm sunny places and in times of perceived abundance. The one system is based on fear, the other on love and compassion. Since the DSM evolved from US Army manuals, it’s encouraging to see changes that seem progressive, and moving ‘back’ toward Bonoboism.
(I made a new userID because I couldn’t remember my old password.)
I ain’t no blood-clart monkey experiment so don’t presume anything about the way I was brought up, which has nothing to do with underage dealings so stop defending that position - there are enough people around of consensual age to get sexual gratification from but you are obviously blinkering yourself of that fact for your own gains, so please don’t think we are stupid enough for you to try and justify anything to us - does it make you feel better/accepted if you can justify your actions?
No, I was pre-emptively preventing such a claim HERE, as certain people will likely try to make it.
See above.
Okay, but you have to then determine at what age someone can give proper and informed consent for sex. In certain provinces in Canada, what constitutes a “child” or “ability to give consent” for various matters (not just sexual) can be 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, etc. So at what age can someone give consent? I don’t see how your approach negates this conundrum.
The mechanisms underlying most sexual processes are not well understood. We have lots and lots of theories, a lot of supposed “research” on humans and experiments using animal analogues, and many clinical experiences. And the answer is still “We don’t know” for most things.
As for your question about not acting on an attraction to “younger” people, I believe I addressed that in a previous post. To be clear, I am okay with not calling it a disorder if someone has some a predisposition but has never acted on it and having it does not cause them significant distress or impair their functioning.
re. origin of culture and humanity in pedophilia/pederasty,
“In ninety-five percent of all primate species the father does nothing for the kid… So the evolution of the size of the brain required an evolution of love… Love has been the primary driver of the evolution of our brain, certainly over the past several million years.”
Rick Hanson; “The Neurology of Awakening” at Unity In Marin, 2011
Okay, someone has to say it–this should not be misconstrued as my engaging further with dfetc…–I love my dog very much. I take care of him. I nurture him. I protect him. I feed him. I have a secure attachment with him. I have no urge to rub his genitals or to allow him to lick mine…
Emotionally triggered reactivity corroborates my hypothesis that the capitaliopatriarchy is a neurotic conditioned routine of the Parasympathetic Nervous System (against an earlier/relaxed Bonoboism based on gentle and compassionate communalism, alloparenting and polysexuality).
Reading list: Lori L. Oliver et al, “Sexual Arousal and Arousability to Pedophilic Stimuli in a Community Sample of Normal Men”
9 out of 10 normal men are sexually aroused by prepubertal children; (88.7%).
One more presumption about me and I’ll lock this thread up, as you are not replying to my posts but just presuming about my state of mind whilst writing said posts… the easy option for you, I’d say.
A paradigm shift in attitudes toward pedophilia is happening now?
The old positions were entrenched and polarized; at one end were emotionally charged mob reactions like ‘he should be castrated’ or even ‘he should be hung’, while at the other end were observations such as those by academic Arne Frederiksen in Paedophilia, Science, and Self-deception: A Criticism of Sex Abuse Research that, “[v]oluntary sexual relations between children and adults do not cause any psychological harm other than the problems associated with discovery and intervention.”
These days, a moderate middle-ground position is also emerging? For example, the organization B4U-ACT is reaching out to both mental health professionals and also minor-attracted persons with a message “that persons who are sexually attracted to children can be contributing members of their communities and that they deserve to be treated with respect. All clients should be treated in a caring, non-judgmental, and respectful manner. We see minor-attracted people as whole human beings, not as dangerous criminals or “deviants.”” And that “[s]ome minor-attracted people seek services to help them deal with issues that result from society’s negative reactions to their sexual feelings. Others seek assistance and support in finding satisfying lives and relationships while living within the law.”
Similarly, articles have appeared recently on the German Zeit Online and English salon.com: “Der Getriebene” [“The Driven”] and “Meet pedophiles who mean well” presenting a moderate middle. The German article follows a pedophile “Jonas” and discusses a therapy center, Das Charité-Projekt, he attends; while the English article interviews “Devin and Edwards” about their project “Virtuous Pedophiles” (virped.org). Both of these ventures present a similar ideology, to quote virped, “We do not choose to be attracted to children, and we cannot make that attraction go away. But we can resist the temptation to abuse children sexually”.
This image of the courageous yet tragic helpless, morose and chaste pedophile will be understandable to the general public who are also self-loathing and auto-repressed. From Das Getriebene, “[h]e will not get any merit for it. He can not even expect a pat-on-the-back. No one must ever know of the fight, which he must wage, as long as he lives.” (my trans) This new middle-ground image of pedophilia may sell well to the masses who believe they are passive in the creation of their desires and must endure themselves? In the long run, to paraphrase Eckhart Tolle, ‘egoic consciousness is only an evolutionary stage’: very few people have insight into that they first lay down and accept goals and values, and then after punish and reward themselves emotionally for failing or meeting those objectives. Unlikely will most pedophiles or therapists or the general public gain enlightenment in the Noble Truths and the nature of Upādāna shortly, therefore egoic consciousness and it’s mode of expression: the patriarchy, with it’s sexual orientations and pedophilia-taboo, will yet continue for some time. The apparent paradigm-shift happening away from emotionally charged mob reactions and toward a tolerant, if depressive and repressive, middle-ground as expressed by new organizations like B4U-ACT, Das Charité-Projekt, and “Virtuous Pedophiles” can be understood as representing a progressive next-stage of evolution in the flowering of human consciousness.
Which would mean not satisfying those sexual feelings. Nothing’s changed there. And that there is an organization with what you call a moderate position doesn’t mean very much. The Klan has an organization. Anyone can have an organization.
Note again that what you are calling the moderate position is against the act.
Projection or delusion.
Moderate groups of sexual abuse survivors very likely do not call for castration, and that’s good. But they do not approve of the acts because there is no good way to prevent emotional damage.
This is a highly contraversial topic, and abominal to most as to me too.
My personal theory is that it’s has come to be out of practicallity. In primadorial time we were very war like and we might also have had terrible decimation in population due to famine, sickness, etc, therefore it was practical that some would see an option in repopulate through this aboniable means.
Foucault’s response was that, “[t]his notion of consent is a trap”. That’s because contractualism is something that happens on the level of egoic consciousness: the capitalopatriarchy; whereas, what is true is happening at the level of the “desert of the real” (Baudrillard). Foucault gave this interview in 1978, in the context of the 1977 petition to repeal Age-of-Consent laws from the French penal code; among others, that petition was signed by Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Roland Barthes. A similar paradigm shift as was happening in 70’s France seems to be occurring today.
"This notion of consent is a trap, in any case. What is sure is that the legal form of an intersexual consent is nonsense. … When we say that children are ‘consenting’ in these cases, all we intend to say is this: in any case, there was no violence, or organized manipulation in order to wrench out of them affective or erotic relations. … We took great care to speak exclusively of an indecent act not involving violence and incitement of a minor to commit an indecent act. We were extremely careful not to touch, in any way, on the problem of rape, which is totally different.”
Michel Foucault, “Sexual Morality and the Law”, Semiotext(e)
J.Philippe Rushton and C. Davidson Ankey,