Overview of Pedophilia

The third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM III, 1980) defines pedophilia as:

The act or fantasy of engaging in sexual activity with prepubertal children...a repeatedly preferred or exclusive method of achieving sexual excitement. If the individual is an adult, the prebuburtal children are at least ten years younger than the individual. If the individual is a late adolescent, no precise age difference is required, and clinical judgement must take into account the age difference as well as the sexual maturity of the child (p.574).

Historically, the approach to sexual deviancy in general and pedophilia in particular has been to view it as a disease arising out of psychopathological processes. According to Allgeier and Allgeier (1985), the problem with this approach is that it was an outgrowth of a more Victorian attitude which generally held that all sexual activity other than that reserved for procreation was also a disease.

Allgeier and Allgeier (1985) felt that the underlying Victorian attitude was very much a part of the first comprehensive book written on the sexual deviancies, this book being Krafft-Ebing's (1840-19

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ychophysiologic illness in the somatization sample and significantly more subjects with schizophrenia, manic depressive illness, organic brain syndromes, adjustment disorders, and serious medical illness in the nonsomatization group (p.305). Another study of somatoform disorder was conducted by Snyder and Strain (1989). In this study, the authors conducted analyses of 1,801 initial inpatient psychiatric consultations and 1,363 follow-up evaluations in order to examine whether certain demographic and clinical variables distinguished somatoform patients from other patients. Respectively, the authors identified 33 and 35 patients as having somatoform disorder. They found that somatoform patients were more likely than nonsomatoform patients to be female, Hispanic and to have Axis II comorbidity. Indeed, Axis II comorbidity was present in 94 percent of the somatoform patients. In another comparative study of somatoform disorder, Fabrega, Mezzich, Jacob and Ulrich (1988) assessed adult patients evaluated at a psychiatric clinic over a four year period. The authors compared somatoform disorder patients with patients diagnosed as suffering from depressive and anxiety disorders in which physical symptoms were prominent. The results o
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Koch Ingram, Jacob Ulrich, Fenton McGlashan, Disorder DSM-III, Chopra Beatson's, BPD Ss, Davison Neale, Specifically Kilmann, DSM-III Axis, McCarthy Sturt, personality disorder, borderline personality, borderline personality disorder, somatoform disorder, alcohol dependence, treatment borderline, depressive disorder, childhood schizophrenia, schizophrenic children, american psychiatric, depressive disorders, treatment borderline personality, major depressive disorder, american psychiatric association, historical current perspectives,
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