Exordium

The Apocalypse does _not_ stop time. Time cannot stop.

 

EDIT: Time isn't just something we have on Earth. Time is everywhere. Just because we are not here to experience it doesn't mean it isn't there. The rest of the universe will continue to grow as time progresses.

Time doesn't really exist. It isn't built into the basic physical laws of the universe. Whether time can end or not is irrelevant, because it does not exist in the first place.

I suppose psychoanalysis could be considered a combination of science with intuition, or "art", but psychology is a science in my opinion.

 

I have heard there are magnetic treatments to treat depression. Any comment on that?

I don't know much about this. The procedure is known as rTMS (repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation)' date=' and it is still considered an "alternative" treatment. Here's a Passage from [i']The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression[/i] by Andrew Solomon:

(rTMS) uses magnetism to create metabolic stimulation mych like that caused in ECT, but at lower levels. ... While electric current has to be turned quite to get through the skull and scalp to the brain, magnetic fluxes travel through quite easily. So ETC causes a brain seizure, and rTMS does not.

I found this article on the net which deals with using rTMS to treat schichophrenia:

http://info.med.yale.edu/psych/clinics/rTMS.html

No kidding memory loss! A guy where I used to work had it done for intractable depression. We had known each other five months and chatted often. When he got back from the hospital after a several of these treatments, he smiled a bunch but he couldn't remember my name or that of many others. He also seemed unable to reestablish himself in his work routine. Eventually he quit and went on disability.

How long ago was this?

This sounds like a typical case in that ect is often used as a last resort, after all other treatments have failed. It has some benefits other treatments do not have, such as immediate or almost immediate results. It is often used to treat elderly folks for depression.

Btw, forget what you've seen in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest": ect does not cause muscle spams or convulsions, despite its name -- not anymore. In fact, the patient doesn't really feel anything at all during it.

Yes' date=' folks there are pedophile emancipation groups. They want you to know that they are just ordinary guys.

 

These folks also say that they are just "loving" children and that if they are merely persuading them rather than forcing them then it's all okay.[/quote']

 

 

Many pedophile organizations like NAMBLA try to "infiltrate" gay rights groups in order to try to gain more acceptance and respectability for their "cause".

 

This is a very dangerous development and it is the responsibility of all gay/lesbian right groups and activists to dissasociate themselves from organized pedophiles -- because the fact is that when NAMBLA tries to come across as a "gay" group, it inevitably leads to an increase in public homophobia and non-acceptance of gays.

 

A pedophile who has sex with a 12-year boy is no more a "homosexual" than you would call a male (a human being who would do this cannot be called a man) who rapes a 12-year old girl a "heterosexual".

I agree in part. But in even loving and protective homes' date=' the unthinkable can happen. Still, prepetrators do seem to target more vulnerable children. Having a good home probably does provide some protection even from perpetration by outsiders.

[/quote']

 

I think you misunderstood this part of my previous post. I meant to say that children who grow up in loving and supportive homes don't become pedophiles themselves. Of course this does not protect them predators outside the family.

 

However the sad fact is that the most common abuser is the child's parent.

 

 

There is also a rather different profile when it comes to gang rape. Contempt for women and peer pressure often motivate this behavior. Strangely enough, I once knew a guy who admitted to participating in a gang rape. He was the husband of a close friend of mine many years ago. We were all quite astonished when he revealed this incident to us and went on to justify his behavior by saying the woman had a slutty reputation to begin with. It is as if he was able to objectify her using this thinking and exonerate himself of having done anything bad

 

Unbelievable.

 

If I were your friend, I would immediately file for divorce, report him to the authorities and get a restraining order against him. People can often be prosecuted for violent crimes years after the fact.

forgive me if i am wrong but is a sexual preference like being a pedophile preventable, or is it the same as sexuality? e.g straight, lesbian and gay. do these individuals have a choice or is it instinct? how is the definition of pedophile described in the law and psychology?

Pedophilia isn't a natural sexual orientation, it's a mental illness. But nevertheless each pedophile is always responsible for his/her own behaviour.

For example, the American Psychiatry Association does not consider homosexulity a mental illness, but they do include pedophilia in their diagnostic manual.

As for the law, well, most civilized have outlawed sex with indivuduals under 16 or 18 years of age.

 

Yes' date=' to the abuse probably, but the abuse suffered by them is not always sexual abuse. Recently there was a study in which many sexual abusers who claimed they were sexually abused as children recanted when faced with a polygraph test.

[/quote']

 

Well, the terrible fact is that abused children often are subjected to more than one kind of abuse. But I still believe that no child who has grown in a supportive and loving home can become a pedophile or a sexual sadist of some other kind.

 

 

Knowing this, you no doubt also know about power rapists. An adult is, by virtue of being an adult, more powerful than a child. I think power is more often the motive but that sex and violence can be the one of the payoffs as well. I have come to disagree with the traditional feminist accessment (which I used to hold) that rape is all about violence. I think it is more complex than that. In a strange sort of way, I think child sexual abuse is often about payback. I think it is hardly a coincidence that so many abusers choose victims who are the same age as the abuser was when he/she felt most victimized. My theory is that the abuse is a reinactment of sorts.

 

I can definitely agree that rape is about payback and revenge. There exists a type of rapist who has been raised by an abusive single mother, unable to form healthy relationships with the opposite sex, and who uses rape to avenge himself of his mother and womanhood in general.

 

 

Agreed. But why do they not want to change? So many other criminals can be rehabilitated. Why can't they?

 

I think we should look at the time a person seeks treatment for pedophilia. If someone comes to a psychiatrist's office or checks himself into a mental hospital, and states that he has violent sexual urges towards children and fears he may not be able to control himself much longer -- well, this is the type of person who needs and deserves our help, and can actually benefit from it.

 

On the other hand, if a pedophile is caught after years of abusing who knows how many kids (therefore causing them irreparable trauma), and he then throws up his hands and says: "I'm mentally ill! I need help!", well...

 

I think the reason pedophiles are hard to cure simply because what they do gives them pleasure, and because it is still, despite everything, easy to get away with doing what they do. Children don't vote, they don't pass laws and they don't pay taxes. Pedophiles do.

 

Would you agree to imprisoning juvenile offenders? Often this behavior begins at puberty. It is almost untreatable then as well. Yet we let juvenile offenders go when they are 18 despite the fact that, if they are not caught, they will have many many years to prey upon children,

 

This is a very hard question. The fact is that the recividism rate for pedophiles, especially those focused on children of their own sex, is staggeringly high. I think at the moment it is more important to contain this phenomenon than to debate about what causes it. To answer your question, people under 18 can be monsters too, and letting them loose in society will only cause harm -- as terrible as that sounds.

... and therefore I'm unable to vote in polls, start threads, etc...

Can anyone help?

I am wondering how people view pedophiles and child sexual abusers.

 

Do you think they are insane?

Do you think they are repeating a cycle of abuse?

Could pedophilia simply be another sexual preference?

 

My apologies for the empty message above this one.

My answers to your question are: unvalid question, yes, no.

I believe that pehdphilia is a mental illness, yes, but pedophiles aren't insane in the sense that they don't know what they are doing, or do not understand that it is wrong.

All child abusers have themselves suffered chronic and systematic abuse themselves as children. That is the only way to produce a pedophile. There is no genetic code for it -- people don't become pehophiles "naturally".

Finally, I don't think pedophilia is a sexual act, it's an act of violence, like rape.

Can pedophiles be treated? Usually not. In a psychotherapy the patient must be a participant in the treatment, not a recipient of it. But most pedophiles are only willing to undergo treatment to minimize the consequences of their actions, and to be able to repeat them as soon as possible.

What to do with them? I'm tempted to say that 9mm of hot lead to the back of the neck would be the easiest, cheapest, quickest and the most efficient solution. But I'll go with incarreration until the late middle age, when most pedophiles lose their urges.