You’ll want to read up on Inclusive Fitness. There’s a lot more to ensuring the next generation than just passing on your own genes. It can vary from warning calls (Which are actively bad for the one giving the warning. By your definition the real goal should be to quietly flee and let genetic competitors get eaten) all the way to eusocial structures. And it’s going to be really hard for you to argue that ants are an evolutionary aberration compared to anything else on the planet.
Having a non-procreative portion of a population can be an evolutionary feature, not a bug. In the case of humans I think it’s neither, but trying to base arguments in terms of natural selection and evolution is a doomed prospect.
I would submit that most people cannot help themselves when there is no available outlet for their sexual impulses. We are lucky enough to have options that don’t result in abuse. The impulse to have sex is only trumped by the impulse to eat and drink to stay alive (in normal circumstances)
Nope…not even close to what I am trying to convey. I’m saying that pedophiles cannot engage in any way their preferred sexual outlet (children) without it being considered abuse.
I was responding to your point that “if you can’t stop yourself from doing something like abusing children, that could be called a mental illness.” For the pedophile there may not be any other outlet. I’m willing to bet that any man surrounded by beautiful women that he could never touch would wind up abusing someone at some point in his life. Yet, I wouldn’t consider this guy to be mentally ill…although you could argue he is driven to mental illness due to his lack of an available sexual outlet.
Seems many of the criteria for mental illness hinge on how it affects your actual life. You can be a normal weirdo, but when you have problems holding jobs, keeping social contacts, or hurting yourself or others then it’s a disorder. For gay people that depends on their environment. If you’re in a third world hell hole being executed or bullied to suicide, mental illness. San Francisco, you’re cool.
I think maybe you should post cites for your argument or maybe read a little more about the issue. If you’re dealing purely in hypotheticals it really doesn’t matter. If you are trying to drive at the basic point that societal factors influence our determination of who is mentally ill, of course it does. That’s not a secret.
Of course the DSM defines mental disorder! I have no idea what you’re talking about, Martin Hyde. In fact, in the DSM 5, the definition is right there on page 20.
A shorthand definition, generally paraphrasing the longer DSM definition, is “A pattern of behavioral, cognitive, emotional or physical symptoms associated with distress, disability or risk for further suffering or harm.”. So, a pattern of symptoms along with impairment.
Further, each disorder is specifically defined as well.
Pedophilic Disorder is defined, in brief, as involving sexual fantasies, urges or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child. It requires that these have been acted upon or cause distress or interpersonal difficulty.
People being different does not make a mental disorder.
All this other nonsense about “behavioral health” versus “mental health” has nothing to do with the DSM or the definitions of disorder.
The DSM is a nosological classification for clinical and scientific purposes that also serves administrative functions, like providing a coding system for reimbursement of services, but the latter is not the primary function of the DSM.
There’s a lot of other baloney I should address, but I’ll stop here for now.
See, right there, you’re letting some question-begging leak into the discussion. The PURPOSE of sex (as far as the actual participants are concerned) is to achieve orgasms. It’s the brain that drives the decisions about when, where, and with whom to have sex, and the brain bases those decisions on the factors that are going to deliver the desired neurotransmitters to the pleasure centers.
The biological activities that result in reproduction are a side effect that sometimes takes place.
Feel free to educate me if you think I’m incorrect. And feel free to post cites for your arguments as well instead of trying to cut off debate just because you don’t have a coherent argument. Perhaps you should read a little more about the issue since you freely admit you know very little about it.
I don’t know if any studies have been done on the mental effects of the lack of any sexual outlet. I can only guess that the result would be some aberrant behavior that would be considered a mental illness if performed by a person who did have access to legitimate sexual outlets.
Regardless, this is not the point I was trying to make. My main point is that if pedophiles are “born that way” then I’m not sure that it should be considered a mental illness any more than homosexuality should. It is just unfortunate that the sexual outlet for the pedophile does, by definition, cause harm to another. Otherwise, aren’t the impulses the same for a hetero, homo, or pedo?
First of all, if you define aberration as a difference from the norm, in terms of sex 98% of us probably qualify.
Second, in our culture of the past century being openly gay might have reduced interaction, but if you read Aristotle you’d know that being averse to gay sex would have done the same thing back then, since that was how male friendship was done. You don’t know what the impact would have been 100,000 years ago. I’d think that heterosexual men would have had no problem given that it reduced competition, but I have no cites.
Is what I said hombre, in the behavioral health field very specific terms of art are actually quite important. The agencies and professionals involved use these terms very specifically. So, note that one, I did not say the DSM did not define mental disorder–I said it did not define mental illness. The term “mental illness” or “mentally ill” is rarely used anymore in the field because of the baggage associated with the term.
Also minor point, but my post from last year that I was quoting referenced the DSM-IV, not the DSM-V (not material to this discussion, just pointing out I was actually going from a different manual than what you’re reading from.)
I did nothing to cut off debate. I don’t agree with your speculation, so I explained why I disagree and I asked if you can back it up. If your response to that is “make me,” I’ll pass.
Do you have a cite that they are born that way? You keep speculating about this point but you haven’t backed it up or even acknowledged that it’s speculative.
In the sense that they’re all sexual impulses, yes. But most people don’t want to get their rocks off at the expense of harming another person. For healthy people that’s generally a dealbreaker.
“Mental disorder” versus “mental illness” is a semantic quibble without any real meaning. Both are used to refer to the constructs that represent the aforementioned patterns of symptoms and associated impairment, although stigma, politics and preferences do shape the frequency of use of terms like illness versus disorder.
As a professional involved in the behavioral health field who knows the folks on the workgroups of certain sections of the DSM 5, and who was involved in some of the discussions with the workgroups, I’m pretty confident of my read on issues of what the terms of art - and science - are in this area.
I have copies of III-R, IV and 5 on my shelf. The definition is functionally the same across them. (Note, by the way that DSM 5 has dropped the convention of using roman numerals.)
If you don’t agree with my speculation then argue otherwise, or get a cite, instead of telling someone to “read a little more about the issue”. Your attempt at condescension does little to hide your lack of relevant information or inability to make a coherent argument.
According to James Cantor, Ph.D., an international expert on pedophilia and the editor-in-chief of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment:
I’m not convinced that pedophiles want to “get their rocks off at the expense of harming another person”. You must realize that the pedophile has zero possibility to find an appropriate sexual outlet…anything that turns them on is either abuse or illegal. I would imagine that a normal heterosexual male that found himself in this kind of situation, where women are completely off-limits and even porn is illegal, may be driven to do something that may be considered harmful to another person in order to satisfy this very basic urge.
It has plenty meaning, mental illness is a term frequently used in society at large. Mental disorder, much less so. Behavioral disorder is definitely the trend I’ve seen in being the approved, PC nomenclature. Most State agencies these days use the terms “behavioral” or “mental health” none focus on terms like “illness” or “disorder” even much at all.
That’s cool, so you agree mental illness is not formally defined in the DSM. I worked for the State agency in my State that dealt with people covered by DSM diagnoses, and the administration there was extremely concerned for what you call semantic quibbles BTW. They had an entire working group on coming up with the preferred term for people who were previously classified as “MR/DD” in official documents.
And you can confirm that IV and 5 do not define “mental illness”, correct?
Do you believe that you’re creating a realistic comparison between what society considers consensual behaviour between adults and what is generally non-consensual behaviour between an adult and a minor?
In other words, if sex between adult humans was abhorent behaviour because humans can procreate/recreate by alternative means, then the person in your example would be causing harm to another person and would likely be considered by society to be criminally responsible and mentally ill.
That’s a great point and it’s also the point I’m confused about. I think we can all agree about the criminal responsibility of the child molester. My question is whether the pedophile should be considered mentally ill if pedophilia is a sexual orientation just like being hetero or homo. While the public at large may be justified in using the term “mentally ill” to describe the pedophile, is the medical field equally justified in considering them mentally ill just because if they were to act on their impulses someone would be abused? What about the pedophile who never acts on the impulse…is this person mentally ill?
Also, we should not confuse pedophilia with child molesters. There is obviously overlap but not all molesters are pedophiles or vice-versa.
A related question is whether the scientific community should consider homosexuality to be a mental disorder (to get back to the OP) since the behavior is “abnormal”? I’ve seen numbers suggesting the percent of pedophiles could be 4 or 5% while I’ve seen two recent studies that put the total homosexual population at around 2-3%. The thing that confuses me is how we can call one an illness because of the possibility of harming another. Surely there has to be a better way to define “illness”.
Whether or not a pedophile acts on his inclinations, I believe he is considered mentally ill because what he is predisposed to do will be harmful to a member of society we put in a special protected class (children) - and for good reason I might add. Neither hetero- nor homo-sexuality is defined as a mental illness because neither involves or harms minors and is generally practiced between consenting adults.
This sounds to me very much like a distinction without a difference.
Look: I wasn’t condescending to you. I was seriously suggesting you read some more on the subject. Sorry you took this as an affront, but that wasn’t what I was doing. I like to think it’s always obvious when I’m really condescending to people. Cantor’s research is interesting and I don’t know how widely accepted it is at this point, but it’s a solid start at least. If that holds up I still think it’s valid to call it a mental illness because the effects of abusing a child are different from the effects of having sex with a consenting adult and because it does seem to me that the behavior itself is less voluntary.
And I think we’re using the same term different ways here. In a couple of posts you’ve appeared draw a distinction between abuse and sex with children. There’s no distinction. If an adult has sex with a child, it’s child abuse. I’m not saying child molesters hurt their victims in other ways because they don’t have an accepted outlet for their impulses or whatever. I am saying that molesting a child is abuse in itself, and no, I don’t think healthy adults would choose to do that kind of damage to someone even if they were really horny.
You state this as if homosexuality or pedophelia are some sort of new phenomenon. Neither one is and has probably been around as long as humans and their ancestors have been using sex to procreate (and recreate).
In (relatively) modern society we’ve had enough experience to know that homosexuality between consenting adults does not cause demonstrable harm (though it seems to upset many people greatly), while pedophelia does cause serious harm (and so people generally agree that it’s wrong to fuck children). Thus an adult being unable or unwilling to keep from having sex with children is, by general agreement, mentally ill.