Internet pornography and paedophilia

Abstract

Various indices of use of Internet pornography have drawn attention to the extent of adult sexual interest in children; clinical experience and now research evidence are accumulating to suggest that the Internet is not simply drawing attention to those with existing paedophilic interests, but is contributing to the crystallisation of those interests in people with no explicit prior sexual interest in children. Drawing on clinical experience in a specialist NHS outpatient psychotherapy service, the author argues that a dichotomous notion of paedophilia is no longer tenable, and any model of paedophilia needs to take account of eruptions of a sexual interest in children in those who appear not to be consistently paedophilic and who have had adult-to-adult sexual relationships. This phenomenon is analysed in two ways: first, by considering how it is that the adult sexual adaptation might ‘unravel’ under the influence of Internet sex to reveal underlying paedophilic currents and second, by revisiting general and psychoanalytic theories of paedophilia and by considering how predisposing factors to paedophilia might be amplified through access to Internet pornography.

Keywords::

• perversion
• Internet sex
• adult sexual adaptation
• child pornography

Notes

^1. The law in England and Wales makes a distinction between sexual images depicting adults over the age of 18 and those depicting individuals aged 18 years and younger (unless aged 16 or 17 years and married to the accused) (www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/45).

^2. Seto, Hanson and Babchishin (2011) from a meta-analysis of nine samples of Internet-only offenders, with follow-up periods of 1.5–6 years, found that 3.4% recidivated with a further child pornography offence and 2% with a contact sexual offence against a child.

^3. Diagnostic criteria include intense, recurrent, sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviours involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger). To meet the diagnostic criteria, the person must be at least 16 years old and at least 5 years older than the child or children (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

^4. To protect confidentiality, all identifying information has been omitted, and some personal details have been changed.

^5. In keeping with psychoanalytic convention, the term ‘fantasy’ will be used to denote a consciously experienced scenario and ‘phantasy’ will be used to denote an unconscious, inferred object relationship characterised by specific wishes or fears.

^6. Defined as erection in boys and genital play in girls.

^7. Glasser's (1979) notion of the core complex describes how, in response to separation from the primary object, there can be a longing for fusion and merger with the object, which arouses a fear of being engulfed and annihilated by the object and hence hostility towards the object of desire. However, to enact the hostility and to destroy the object threatens loneliness, isolation and depression. Such core complex anxieties are often manifested clinically as fears of being trapped or taken over in intimate relationships and within the transference.

^8. Having collaborated with BBC Radio 1 in the construction of this survey, I have permission to report the results.