Therapy for pedophilia/pedophiles
"Therapy" for "mental illnesses" or "mental disorders," contrary to popular belief, is highly controversial, especially among those who are empirical researchers. Empirical researchers want to see facts, data, and proofs. They are not content with someone's personal conjectures or unproven theories about so-called psychological "problems" or "abnormalities".
Therapists assume that there exists some kind of "normal," and some kind of "abnormal" -- and that the therapist himself (or herself) has a clear understanding of these concepts. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Often therapists conjecture (they just "dream up") things about the nature of the people whom they treat, and then -- solely on the basis of their (unproven) "theories" -- the therapists embark on a (usually long-term) course of "treatment" for those whom they judge to be "abnormal" or "sick".
The failures brought on by depending on this method are legion -- for example, submitting runaway slaves to treatment -- those slaves suffering from the "mental illness" of drapetomania. Only a mentally disturbed slave would wish to leave the idyllic southern plantation where he was beaten daily, and kept in chains!
Masturbation was seen for perhaps a hundred years as being a sign of "mental illness", and children were often "treated" by "mental health professionals" of their day. The therapists would cauterize (burn with hot steel, and sometimes completely burn off) the penis or clitoris of the "mentally ill" child to "cure" them of their horribly "dangerous" "self abuse".
Horror stories abound, too, regarding "treatment" for the "mental illness" of homosexuality. Homosexual were sometimes castrated, or had parts of their brains surgically removed. These forms of "treatment" continued until very recently -- they were still being carried out until the mid-20th century!
Who decides what is "normal" and what is not "normal"? Researchers do. But there are two kinds of research -- first, research which is based on the scientific method (the same kind of research that has brought us all our modern conveniences) and which dates back to early Islamic scientific researchers of over a thousand years ago, or -- in the case of the Western world -- to several hundred years ago. This kind of research follows very strict rules -- rules which require that results be reproducible, that any theories prove that they have the ability to make valid predictions about if-this/then-that, and which require that any theories cannot have too many "exceptions" to the rules the theories provide. They follow what is called "the scientific method".
The second kind of research is called "clinical research". People -- the therapists (who may, or may not, have any qualifications, or have studied much about what their "specialty" is supposed to be) -- just hang a shingle outside their door saying "Psychologist," which invites potential patients to visit them for "treatment". Then the psychologist "studies" those patients (who are almost never normal people to begin with), and then the therapists develop their own personal "theories" about the patients "mental illness" (in other words, they just make up their own guesses about what the patient is experiencing, and why the patient is experiencing those things) and then the therapist develops their own "treatment programs" for treating the "patients". The success rate for these kinds of treatment tends to be very low, even though the treatment may last for a long long time.
Imagine if you went to a medical doctor with a physical complaint, and the doctor tried to just "guess" -- or "imagine" -- what was wrong with you -- without performing any valid tests -- and then the doctor began a long series of "treatments", subjecting you to never-before-attempted "treatment methods" to try to cure you (or just to see what happened!). Would you have much faith in that doctor?
Most of the current "psychological treatments" are based on "clinical patients" and "clinical studies" -- they are not based on any correctly performed empirical research. The patients are "guinea pigs" who are subjected to experimental (and unproven) "treatments" in an effort to "cure" them. The treatments often fail, but when they do (seem to) succeed, the actual "cure" may come from something that has nothing to do with the treatment, but instead comes from something else that is going on in the patient's life.
"Drapetomania" was a mental illness requiring treatment. Masturbation was a mental illness requiring treatment. Homosexuality was a mental illness requiring treatment.
But all those "mental illnesses" were found to have been created from the imaginations of the "clinical researchers" -- who were mistaken. Hundreds of thousands of people suffered sometimes horrible experiences at the hands of these so-called "mental health professionals".
Thankfully, those forms of "treatment" have been (for the most part) abandoned. Those so-called "patients" were not "mentally ill", so no "treatment" was actually necessary. The suffering caused by the treatments of the patients was all for nothing.
You may think that somehow we have learned from our mistakes, and we no longer make those kinds of errors. But this is not true. We still are "treating" people for "mental illnesses" -- for being somehow "abnormal" -- when, in fact, the assumptions of the clinical researchers are wrong!
Most of these mistaken assumptions and treatments today revolve around the question of people's sexuality. The most egregious (the worst) examples of this are regarding sexual behavior that involves young people -- adolescents ("children" from the ages of around 12 to 17), pubescent and peri-pubescent children (from ages of around 12 to 15, and of around 8 to 11), or between any young person with another person who is judged to be "an adult".
Pedophiles (those attracted to pre-pubescent young people) and pederasts (those attracted to pubescent and adolescent young people) are now being subjected to horrible treatments, not to mention their being put into locked cages with really and truly violent criminals, and surrounded by armed guards 24 hours a day.
Just because they find young people to be sexually attractive, stimulating, and exciting.
Some day, just as drapetomania, masturbation, and homosexuality were stricken from the list of "mental illness," so will pedophilia (non-violent, consensual relationships) will be considered to be just another form of "normality" for a small minority of people.
But until then, the suffering will continue. When will we really begin to learn from our past mistakes?
