In society today there is understandably alot of hatred to the more grusom crimes. IE rape, pedophila, domestic violence etc. But though I have no difficulty understanding this and feeling it myself to an extent I do also wonder if we are grouping all of these people into the same monsterous category.
To clarify, with the example of pedophiles, it is widley said in the psychiatric community that the actual condition of being attracted to children is beond their control. However what is in there control is acting upon it. From studies that I have read on the subject people who are attracted to children but who have never acted upon it are terrified of anyone finding out and can often become depressed, even suicidal, where as thouse who do act on it and who have a colder disposition to their actions are by comparrison less depressed, and more angry. Do we as a society shape the behavious of such people? By shutting the door on them and not attempting to help them to overcome their “demons” are we sending them a message of hate that they will in turn return to us, leading us in a circle that causes more hurt to their victims? Or is it a nesessety, are these people not only to blame but beond our control to influence?
I don’t know, I have a really hard time empathizing with pedophiles; really any sort of child abuse. For the life of me I cannot understand how an adult can assault a child. I do understand that their condition is very well due to circumstances beyond their control, i.e. being abused themselves as children or whatever. That in itself is tragic, and something for which they are not to blame. I can sympathize with that and encourage any victim of abuse to get the help they need.
But as we all become adults, part of the maturation process involves acquiring self-discipline and self-control. They must realize they are a danger to others and they do have opportunities to get help before acting on their impulses. Once they’ve given in to their impulses, however, my sympathy goes out the window. If it’s possible to get them help while they are incarcerated, fine, but I believe the rate of recidivism is high for pedophiles.
Maybe it would be beneficial to try to make confidential, low-cost psychiatric help more widely available to potential pedophiles; I would support that. But after the fact, I would advocate the harshest possible punishment.
I would agree with that. My problem lies with the stigma that it is wrong to have the feelings, much as it cannot be wrong to get angry witha a spose or to become turned on by the thought of forced sex. All of these feelings are thoughts of something terrible it is true, but if the person who has these uncontrolable feelings thinks of the feelings themseves being “bad” or “evil” it makes them think that they are already evil, bwefore they even commit an act. Such thoughts of self loathing take away from the severity of committing such an act. IE
“I have these thoughts So I am evil”
“If I am already evil, why should I not commit the act”
I do however have a dilema when considering how it would ever be possible to release the stigma of thoughts from the act. As alot of people would misinterpret it as thinking that those who have the thoughts should be relaxed with them and then it could go the other way.
You’re right, that is a huge difficulty. While I don’t understand those feelings, I can’t really stand in judgment of someone’s feelings. We’ve all had feelings we would never act on and that we wouldn’t want to be judged for.
I don’t know how you would begin to eliminate that stigma, though. It would be awfully tough to drum up tax dollars to run a public service campaign reaching out to pedophiles. I think you’d have to start out with strong hard evidence that such a campaign truly would lead to effective preventative treatment. I’m sure studies have been done but I’m not familiar with any specific results.
I have wondered, when I hear about spousal abuse or child abuse, what are the perpetrators thinking? Do they believe in their hearts that what they’re doing is perfectly normal, because their perspectives are skewed, or do they know what they’re doing is wrong but they do it anyway? It just blows my mind sometimes the horrific things people are capable of.
I like to think, that the abusers are not thinking at the time and that these terrible acts happen in the most heated of moments and are instantly regreted, as though I have no personal experience of these acts I have had many a time when I have said things I have not meant in a heated discussion, and so I feel like I can almost relate to the feelings, though I cannot ever immagine causing physical pain to the person in frount of me. I haver also heard that anger impeeds our reasoning and that we are “at our most stupid” when we are angry.
However in the case of pedophiles and rapists this cannot often be the case by my reconing, as often the crimes are planned and the perpertrator very patient to get what he wants.
Which is why I have come to the conculsion at the moment that these people already belive themselves to be evil because of how society views their feelings, and so they simply give in to their urges, accepting that they are evil before the act rather than becoming it after the act has occured. So I dont think they belive that what they are doing is normal, they are just slotting into the alocated space that we have provided for them, in alot of cases I would wager, making it much easier to commit such a terrible act.
(The use of the word evil can be misinterpreted here, I use it because of the way society depicts these deeds, but if prefered substitue the word for bad, wrong, immoral. etc)
What you say about anger sounds right on to me. I have said some pretty regrettable/stupid things when angry; for some abusers it probably is a lack of control in the heat of passion.
Then there are those who are true sociopaths, who are completely apathetic to the ramifications of their actions. They are beyond treatment, in my opinion, the only thing to do with them is to remove them from society permanently.
But for that other group, the ones who feel they’re already evil so they might as well go ahead with it, maybe it would be possible to chip away at that stigma, but I think that would be a very difficult task.