nl_e17

Is pedophilia a mental disorder
agrees with Green, but disagrees with Schmidt's moral statements. Rind also refers to the
dynamics in the power balance and disagrees that there always should be an imbalance.
Most objectionable from a scientific and philosophy of logic perspective is
Schmidt's willingness to test a universal proposition with a single confirming
hypothetical case. Appropriate testing would consist of determining whether
disconfirming empirical cases can be found. I provide such cases. [...]
These cases, involving five men who had sex as boys around age 10 with men,
dispute Schmidt's claim that there can never be sexual consensus between
prepubescents and adults.
Michael Seto
views pedophilia as a disorder, but the DSM has not defined it well. One should not define
behavior as an illness. And one should define pedophilia so that it only concerns a sexual
desire for sexually still immature pre-pubescents.
Robert Spitzer & Jerome Wakefield
criticize Green. They agree that not all pedophile behavior refers to a mental disorder, only
some behavior does. But they miss clear definitions in Green's argument. Clear definitions
should discriminate between normality and disorders.
Kenneth Zucker,
who, as the Editor of the magazine, has opened the special issue, now, with the "Z" in his name,
ends the list of peer commentators by giving the history of the DSM from 1973, the year that
homosexuality was removed from the DSM list. However, there are too many differences
between homosexuality and pedophilia. Thus, the arguments cannot be the same. One should
study how DSM defines a mental disorder and then see if pedophilia fits with this definition or
not. Other arguments are irrelevant. The end of the debate is still unsure.
A comment from the reporter
Several peer commentaries reject the cross-cultural argument, by saying "we don't live in
Polynesia in a far-off age" or so.
In my view, this seems to me a typical case of Americanism: the ultimate in the (post-)modern
Western way of thinking:
'We have found the light of the real truth; other cultures have for ages walked in the darkness
of the wrong insights.'
In my opinion, this is not true.
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