by Frank Tallis
It has been suggested that paedophiles mature early. This means that they will start masturbating at a time when attractive members of their peer group are prepubescent. Fantasies involving peers consolidate a sexual preference for children and some never grow out of it.
More complex psychological accounts of paedophilia emphasise emotional immaturity and avoidance of adult relationships. The need to be in complete control of sexual situations may also be a significant issue.
Attraction to children might be promoted by social and cultural factors. Ease of access to child pornography will increase opportunities for masturbatory conditioning and children are frequently sexualised in advertisements. In the Western world, thinness and hairlessness (both characteristic of prepubescent bodies) have become increasingly desirable. Labial reduction is becoming a popular form of cosmetic surgery and a neat, hairless vagina will make a woman look like a child. This new sexual aesthetic normalises what has hitherto been regarded as paedophilic.
No single theory explains paedophilia adequately. All approaches have their weaknesses. For example, the idea that paedophiles avoid adult relationships is clearly of limited merit because of the high percentage of sexual abuse perpetrated by fathers against their daughters. They do so opportunistically from within a marriage. Paedophilia is almost certainly a complex condition determined by many influences.
On the whole, paedophiles experience little shame. They lack conscience and in this respect resemble psychopaths. Guilt is minimised by justifications that distort reality: ‘Sexual abuse isn’t really harmful—children actually enjoy it—early sexual experiences get rid of hang-ups.’ Needless to say, given that paedophiles often groom potential victims they are typically resourceful manipulators.
Gordon accepted that sex with children was wrong. This was unusual. He also appeared to be extremely distressed by his thoughts and fantasies. I wondered whether he was actually manipulating me to achieve some obscure end that I would only discover at some later date; however, whenever I looked at him, I was persuaded otherwise. He was so depressed, so desperate. His voice, sometimes reduced to a dead monotone, could be chilling. It was the voice of a man who could imagine no happiness, no fulfilment and no future.
‘I give a lot to charity. Children’s charities…’
‘Because you feel guilty?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you said you’ve never touched a child.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘So what do you feel guilty about?’
‘My thoughts, my fantasies.’
‘Most people have thoughts and fantasies.’
‘Not about children.’
‘Perhaps not, but they have thoughts and fantasies that they wouldn’t want other people to know about. And in reality, they wouldn’t want to act on them either.’
‘I was always taught that thinking something is as bad as doing it.’
‘Were your family religious?’
‘Yes.’
To what extent are thoughts and behaviour morally equivalent? Most religions endorse the notion of equivalence, albeit with certain caveats. Presumably, this is because God sees everything. From His point of view a thought is an observable behaviour. Impure thoughts are as tangible as impure actions. But in a Godless universe, how bad is a bad thought? Our discomfort arises from an implicit assumption that if we think about doing something, we want to do it—and that having thought about it we are more likely to do it. This is probably true, but only to an extent. Sexual thoughts and sexual behaviour are not in exact alignment. We have sexual fantasies about people and situations that arouse us, but that doesn’t always mean that we want to enact our fantasies. Things that are risqué, forbidden or taboo are often the most exciting. Surveys show that many women have fantasies about rough sex, but none of them want to be raped. Men have fantasies about being cuckolded, but given male sexual jealousy very few really want their wives to sleep with another man.
Even though sexual fantasies are not necessarily predictive of sexual behaviour, if an individual has been having sexual fantasies involving children for at least six months, that will be sufficient to qualify for a diagnosis of ‘Pedophilic Disorder’ according to DSM-V criteria; however, these fantasies must be recurrent, intense and arousing, and be distressing to the individual.
‘How often do you have sexual fantasies?’
‘All the time—thoughts—images—they come into my mind—and they start me off. I try to block them. But they keep coming back.’ When we suppress thoughts, they tend to return with greater frequency. Suppressed thoughts will even influence the content of subsequent dreams, the so-called dream rebound effect. Gordon was probably making his problem worse. ‘I just can’t control myself. And if I can’t control my thoughts…’
He was looking stressed. I decided to ask him some less demanding questions. I had neglected to find out very much about his background so took his family and employment history.
Gordon’s father was a retired surveyor and his mother a housewife. They were both somewhat remote. Gordon had never felt very close to either parent and even though they were now getting old he rarely paid them a visit. ‘We don’t talk—we have nothing to say to each other.’ He had two older sisters whom he was very fond of. ‘They always made a fuss of me when I was a kid. They spoilt me.’ He had attended a convent primary school and then a Catholic secondary modern where he was considered a ‘bright boy’. Although he did well at school he didn’t go to university. He went straight from school into a low-level clerical job at a benefits office. He had been doing the same undemanding work for twenty years. ‘I try to keep my head down.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Promotion would mean more contact with people, more managerial duties.’
‘And why would that be a problem?’
He looked out of the window. The glass was streaked with bird droppings. ‘I feel like an imposter, a fraud, and when you get to know people, even superficially, they ask questions. Where do you live? Who do you live with? What did you do on the weekend? And I get uncomfortable. Most men of my age are married. The fact that I’m not raises issues immediately. People wonder why not. It’s natural I suppose.’
‘Do you have friends?’
He seemed oddly flustered. ‘It’s difficult—you know—what with…’ His head turned and he looked directly at me. ‘Friendships are about honesty, aren’t they? How can I be honest?’ His gaze slipped away and the rash on his neck ignited.
‘Gordon?’
His monotone thickened with emotion. ‘I want to walk into the canteen at work and not be frightened of getting into a conversation. I want to see more of my sisters. I want to sit with their children and enjoy their company, I want…’ He stopped, dug the nails of his right hand into the skin of his left and added: ‘Maybe I want too much.’
I didn’t think so.
Empathy is the power to imagine what it’s like to be another person and it is one of our most important attributes. Almost everything we do involves forming an idea of what other people are thinking and feeling. We acquire the ability to infer the subjective states of others when we are four years old. Psychologists call it ‘theory of mind’. Listening to Gordon, I was acutely conscious of his pain, his isolation, misery, guilt, torment and fear. His self-loathing was like a noxious acid eating into his being. He had never experienced sexual satisfaction. He had never been kissed or touched. And he had never known true intimacy. I felt sorry for him.
I have seen many victims of childhood sexual abuse as patients and know how damaging it can be. I have had to watch them wailing for their lost innocence, for their ‘inner child’—still trembling in darkness, listening to approaching footsteps and waiting for the bedroom door to crack open.
How could I feel sorry for Gordon?
I was once treating a surgeon who suffered from depression. One day, he was particularly distressed. He was tearful and unable to communicate. It was like he was enveloped in fog.
‘I’m such a mess,’ he mumbled. ‘Such a fucking mess.’ Then his cell phone buzzed. ‘Excuse me. I need to take this call.’ He listened and his expression sharpened. He stood and began to pace around the room. It was obvious that his colleagues back at the hospital were in the middle of some sort of crisis in the operating theatre. My patient was suddenly a calm and commanding presence. He seemed to grow in stature, filling out his suit and standing tall. His voice was steady as he talked through various possibilities and made a series of quick-fire suggestions. His language was precise and technical. After a lengthy pause he said: ‘Okay? Good.’ He switched off his phone and sank back into his chair. The muscles in his face slackened and his features melted like candle wax. ‘I’m such a fucking mess.’ His voice broke and he started to cry again.
Being a professional is like having a split personality. You are an individual, but you are also an office, a position, a means of getting a job done. I was not seeing Gordon as me, the person with my name, but as a psychotherapist, and psychotherapists have to suspend judgement to do their work.
Was Gordon a bad person?
Culpability is associated with agency and choice. A person is blameworthy when they choose to do wrong. If a man of irreproachable character suffers a brain injury and starts to molest children, we don’t condemn him with the same vehemence reserved for dispositional paedophiles. We attribute his behaviour to brain damage and consider him unfortunate rather than bad. But in reality, it may be that dispositional paedophiles are in much the same position. Indeed, it may be that none of us have choice concerning any of our actions. And if that is the case, where does that leave culpability? How can anybody be meaningfully described as a bad person?
The French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace, whose life spanned the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was the first person to describe the principles of scientific determinism, a mechanistic account of causality that supposes that all outcomes follow on from preconditions. Scientific determinism is completely incompatible with the idea of free will. The brain produces the mind, and every brain state is determined by a preceding brain state. Although we think we make choices, our choices are in fact inevitable. We are free only to make the choices we end up making. Laboratory studies show that brain activity associated with performing actions starts approximately half a second before experimental subjects are aware of deciding to make those actions. It would seem that your brain decides to stand up or sit down before you do.
If there is no such thing as free will, all behaviour is predetermined and the idea of culpability is meaningless.
Scientific determinism has been criticised by philosophers who believe that laboratory studies (which focus on simple decisions, like deciding to move a finger) are too simplistic, and that we do exercise free will—or at least something very much like it—when we make complex decisions (like deciding whether or not to get married). There are also some highly speculative theories that permit free will to exist by transposing ideas from quantum physics into neuroscience. At the subatomic level our brains might not function deterministically. The quantum world is probabilistic and flexible. Preconditions are vague and capable of producing many alternative outcomes.
Even if we reject scientific determinism, we are probably less free than we imagine. We don’t choose our DNA and we don’t choose how our brains get wired. We don’t choose our neurotransmitter levels, our hormones, our families or our early life experiences. Given that a human being is shaped by so many factors, no one really ‘chooses’ to be a paedophile.
I am not an apologist for paedophilia. Sexual abuse destroys lives, and highly traumatic sexual abuse sometimes leads to suicide. It is a heinous crime. However, as a psychotherapist, you can’t refuse to see patients because you happen to find them repellent. You have to find compassion somewhere. I found mine in the fracture lines that weaken our moral certainty, in the gaps in our understanding of free will.
I thought the likelihood of Gordon offending was relatively low. But this was only an opinion based on what he had said, how he had said it and how he had looked at the time. More significantly, there were no children in Gordon’s immediate environment and he had stopped visiting his sisters. He would have little opportunity to offend. The frequency with which he was masturbating was unusual for someone so depressed. Low mood usually reduces desire—but there are always exceptions.
One day, in the middle of a session, he said: ‘I’m sorry. I need to talk to you about something…’
‘Oh?’
He ran a finger around the inside of his shirt collar. ‘I said that I didn’t have any friends. Well, that’s not quite right. There’s a couple I see occasionally—they live quite close—Barry and Jane.’
‘Okay.’
An unresolved tension persisted. His rash had climbed up his neck and spread onto his face.
‘And you see…’ He clasped his knees. ‘They have a daughter.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Six.’
Was this why he had come for treatment? So that he could abuse the child and displace some of the blame onto me? He had clearly stated that he was worried about losing control and I had done nothing.
He guessed my thoughts. ‘I’m not… I’m not making a confession.’
‘Okay.’
‘Her name is Molly.’
‘And…’
He lost his nerve and his expression became blank.
‘Gordon—you were saying?’
I prompted him, but he didn’t reply, and when, finally, the glimmer in his eyes signalled his return, he looked at me and his gaze was also a plea, a request: he wanted to be put out of his misery. His pain was immense, operatic and fuelled by deep, deep despair. I can’t read minds and always advise against the over-interpretation of outward appearances, but it was obvious that he was in love—like Tristan or Romeo or Werther—madly and tragically in love. I was observing the human animal impaled on the horns of its defining dilemma, struggling to reconcile the inherent contradictions of its nature which in this particular instance were at their most extreme. Gordon was strung out between heaven and earth, pulled in opposite directions by the soul and the id.
Gradually, he began to self-disclose, between long and terrible silences.
He had met Barry in a local pub. At the time, Barry was unemployed and Gordon had given him advice on how to negotiate the benefits system to his best advantage. In due course, Gordon had been invited to dinner, where he was introduced to Jane and Molly (then only five years old). He immediately became obsessed with Molly. When he talked about Molly, he did so in a way that reminded me of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice, which is about an old academic’s unrequited love for a beautiful boy. The academic watches the boy for hours and his yearnings are expressed in the poetic sentiments of Platonic mysticism: the boy is perfection, the boy is truth.
Molly was Gordon’s Platonic ideal. But what did he want to do with this ideal?
When I put this question to him he looked away, because, however much he tried to justify his feelings and ennoble his desire, in the end, he wanted to have sex with Molly and she was only six years old.
‘I know that it’s hopeless,’ he said. ‘I know that it can never be.’
Gordon had been socialising with Barry and his family for a year. In the summer, he had joined them in the park for picnics. He had watched the play of sunlight on Molly’s long blonde hair and wondered how long he could go on living in a world where love was impossible, a world in which the full expression of love would hurt or perhaps even destroy the object of his love.
‘I’d rather die,’ he said with sincerity. ‘I could never do that to her.’
One of the most debated cases in the history of psychotherapy is that of Ellen West, a young woman who suffered from an eating disorder, depression and a range of other problems. She was treated by Ludwig Binswanger, an early practitioner of existential psychotherapy. In 1921 Binswanger released Ellen from hospital,
knowing that suicide was very likely. Three days later she poisoned herself and died. The controversy surrounding this case concerns Binswanger’s reflections on the outcome, which he viewed as ‘authentic’. Ellen had exercised her right to make a choice and it may have been the right one for her. A similar argument is made by supporters of assisted suicide for terminally ill patients.
If Gordon chose to commit suicide, would that be an existentially acceptable result? It isn’t one that I could ever feel comfortable with, but I can see that it has a certain utilitarian appeal and how a meaningful sacrifice undertaken to protect others might be redemptive.
When Ellen West left hospital, her health improved dramatically. She seemed happy and ate well for the first time in years. Had she made her choice and finally found peace?
‘I’d rather die,’ Gordon repeated. And I had no doubt that he meant it.
Although I was attempting to treat Gordon’s depression, there was no avoiding the fact that his low mood was directly related to his hopeless obsessive love for Molly and his paedophilia. It was necessary to address the principal problem directly.
