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Historicizing affect, psychoanalyzing history: pedophilia and the discourse of child sexuality

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Abstract

Within the last two decades in Australia, Britain, and the United States, we have seen a veritable explosion of cultural panic regarding the problem of pedophilia. Scarcely a day passes without some mention in the media of predatory pedophiles or organized pedophile networks. Many social constructionist historians and sociologists have described this incitement to discourse as indicative of a moral panic. The question that concerns me in this article is: If this incitement to discourse is indicative of a moral panic, to what does the panic refer? I begin by detailing, first, how social constructionism requires psychoanalytic categories in order to understand the notion of panic, and second, how a psychoanalytic reading of history might reveal important unconscious forces at work in the current pedophilia "crisis" that our culture refuses to confront. Here, I will suggest a repressed discourse of child sexuality is writ large. I will argue that the hegemonic discourse of pedophilia is contained largely within a neurotic structure and that many of our prevailing responses to pedophilia function as a way to avoid tackling crucial issues about the reality and trauma of childhood sexuality.

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... In the words ofPaul,amanconvictedofchildsexualabuse,''FromwhatIheard in the news about people like me, it sounds like we're these ticking time bombs and then suddenly there's this switch that's tripped and we just metamorphis [sic] into horrible werewolf creatures'' (CBC Radio One, 2014). Political and social leaders often use this stereotype to inflame''moral panic''and to support reactive solutions lacking in empirical support (Angelides, 2004), rather than exploring more complicated but constructive, proactive, and preventative solutions. The stigma associated with pedophilic interests may serve as a social control that dissuades these individuals from engaging in sexual abuse behaviors involving children (Scruton, 2000). ...
... In addition,these concerns are often concurrently used by public figures to motivate public fear and apprehension (Angelides, 2004;Quinn, Forsyth, & Mullen-Quinn, 2004). Negative media coverage against individuals with pedophilic interests skews public opinion against providing resources for such persons (Adams, 2001). ...
... The American public is gaining exposure to the personal stories of non-offending individuals with pedophilic interests (CBC Radio One, 2014;Glass, 2014;Virtuous Pedophiles, 2015) in direct contrast to standard messages that instigate fear and moral panic regarding such individuals (e.g., Angelides, 2004;Quinn et al., 2004). Significantly less research has focused on those with pedophilic interests who have not engaged in child sexual abuse behaviors (e.g., Beier et al., 2009;Freimond, 2013;Goode, 2010;Långströmetal.,2013;Vanhoecketal.,2014) when compared to the attention paid to those who engage in child sexual abuse (e.g., Hall & Hall, 2007;Seto, 2008). ...
Article
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Adults with pedophilic interests are often viewed by the public as a homogenous subgroup based on what we know from those who sexually offend against children. The stigma associated with child sexual abuse may serve to deter such behaviors but may also interfere with the person’s stability and willingness to seek assistance in managing pedophilic interests. This article contrasts the sex offender response and prevention efforts typically employed in the U.S. (i.e., containment, registration, and notification policies and public education programs) with treatment programs aimed at preventing child sexual abuse in Germany, Belgium, and Canada. Five major areas are identified that should be further examined with regard to implementing preventative outreach and treatment programs in the U.S.: barriers to outreach and treatment programs, how to expand or reframe current preventative educational programs, implementation of such programs in light of current mandating reporting policies, promising treatment approaches for pedophilic interests among non-offenders, and ethical concerns relevant to preventative psychological interventions.
... In the words ofPaul,amanconvictedofchildsexualabuse,''FromwhatIheard in the news about people like me, it sounds like we're these ticking time bombs and then suddenly there's this switch that's tripped and we just metamorphis [sic] into horrible werewolf creatures'' (CBC Radio One, 2014). Political and social leaders often use this stereotype to inflame''moral panic''and to support reactive solutions lacking in empirical support (Angelides, 2004), rather than exploring more complicated but constructive, proactive, and preventative solutions. ...
... In addition,these concerns are often concurrently used by public figures to motivate public fear and apprehension (Angelides, 2004;Quinn, Forsyth, & Mullen-Quinn, 2004). Negative media coverage against individuals with pedophilic interests skews public opinion against providing resources for such persons (Adams, 2001). ...
... The American public is gaining exposure to the personal stories of non-offending individuals with pedophilic interests (CBC Radio One, 2014;Glass, 2014;Virtuous Pedophiles, 2015) in direct contrast to standard messages that instigate fear and moral panic regarding such individuals (e.g., Angelides, 2004;Quinn et al., 2004). Significantly less research has focused on those with pedophilic interests who have not engaged in child sexual abuse behaviors (e.g., Beier et al., 2009;Freimond, 2013;Goode, 2010;Långströmetal.,2013;Vanhoecketal.,2014) when compared to the attention paid to those who engage in child sexual abuse (e.g., Hall & Hall, 2007;Seto, 2008). ...
Article
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The Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale (SOTIPS) is a 16-item rating scale designed to assess dynamic risk among adult male sex offenders and degree of change at 6-month intervals during treatment. The purpose of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the SOTIPS in a construction sample of 759 adult male sex offenders who were under correctional supervision and enrolled in cognitive-behavioral community treatment in Vermont between 2001 and 2007. The scale showed acceptable interrater reliability. SOTIPS scores at 1, 7, and 13 months after participants began treatment predicted sexual, violent, and any recidivism, and return to prison at fixed 1- and 3-year follow-up periods (AUCs = .60 to .85). Combined SOTIPS and Static-99R scores predicted all recidivism types (AUCs = .67 to .89) and outperformed either instrument alone when both instruments had similar predictive power. Participants who demonstrated treatment progress, as reflected by reductions in SOTIPS scores, showed lower rates of recidivism than those who did not.
... This attitude creates an overwhelming weight on individuals who identify as pedophiles, as they seem to be targeted from a variety of angles -this is without even considering other areas of oppression they may be submitted to such as race, class, gender, religion, and culture. Since individuals who are pedophiles represent a minority of child sex offenders, and being a pedophile does not determine whether someone will sexually victimize a child, it is unclear why there is such profound blame on pedophiles (Angelides, 2008). ...
... As mentioned by Angelides (2008), the real issue with pedophilia is not pedophilia, but how society frames the issue of pedophilia. Society has created a moral panic surrounding pedophilia which has overridden the reality of child sexual abuse occurring more frequently among non-pedophiles and among non-strangers (Chenier, 2012). ...
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In order for communities to be strong, families need to strong and strong families are based on strong parent-child relationships but parents need support in order to be effective parents. This article describes a parenting programme based on strengthening relationships by introducing basic skills and knowledge and establishing networks within communities. Proud2bME® is a unique model developed in South Africa focusing on creating agents of change within a community to drive an agenda once the active intervention period is over. Ultimately, communities are trained to be responsible for the development and strengthening of their families to build communities.
... In countries like the United States, the political climate is such that researchers and treatment practitioners who share findings that challenge present-day beliefs about pedophilia can find themselves subject to censure and their institutional positions endangered (Mirkin 2000;Rind et al. 1998). Nevertheless a handful of scholars in the psy 1 and social sciences and the humanities have taken steps towards re-thinking both childhood sexuality and the category pedophile (Angelides 2004;Egan and Hawkes 2009;Jackson 1982;Kincaid 1992;Kincaid 1998;Malón 2011;Moser 2009;Moser and Kleinplatz 2005;O'Carroll 1982;Roudinesco 2009;Zander 2005;Zucker 2002). They have shown that public and expert discourses 2 about pedophilia raise important questions about how we in the English-speaking west think, and do not think, about children and childhood, about sexuality, about the family, and about the role of medicine and the criminal and justice systems in regulating them. 1 In his groundbreaking 1979 book The policing of families, Jacques Donzelot used the shortened term 'psy' to refer to psychiatry, psychology and psycholanalysis. 2 Historians of sexuality have shown that sexual types, such as homosexuals, pedophiles, and heterosexuals even, are social constructions (Katz 1995). ...
... In post-war America, concern that demobilised soldiers and economically liberated wives would not return to home and hearth led to the overwhelming stigmatisation of virtually every adult living outside the institution of marriage, with particularly dire consequences for lesbians and gay men (D'Emilio 1998;Minton 2002;Penn 1991). In his examination of the child sexual abuse panics of the 1970s and 1980s, Steven Angelides (2004) cites changing ideas about masculinity as causal, whereas Paul Okami argues that the expansion of child molestation rhetoric and research during the same period is due to anxiety about the late 1960s and early 1970s emergence of a more sexually permissive culture (Okami 1992). ...
Article
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Over the past two decades critics have challenged the validity of pedophilia as a mental disorder and have implored us to think differently about child sexuality as well as incidences of sexual contact and intimacy between adults and children or adolescents. This growing literature provides compelling evidence against using a medical framework for understanding and responding to pedophilia, yet most people in the English-speaking world still cling to a post-World War Two construction of the pedophile as a dangerous stranger, pathologically unable to control his insatiable sexual desire for young people. This article aims to address this particular dilemma. Drawing on the work of Ann Laura Stoler, it argues that the construction of the pedophile is a vector of normalisation processes, “a tactic in the internal fission of society into binary oppositions, and means of creating ‘biologized’ internal enemies, against whom society must defend itself”. As a social construction, the pedophile persists because it plays an important ideological function in modern society: it affirms the white, middle-class, ‘traditional’ heterosexual family as the ideal site for the production and reproduction of social and political norms.
... However, all later choices remain somehow based on the parental prototypes. According to the 'enigmatic signifier' theory of Jean Laplanche, the child is seduced by the mother, more particular by her total persona and thus also by her sexuality (Angelides 2003). It is difficult to acknowledge this openly, however, in the unconsciousness there remains a reservoir of full sensual love between parents and their children. ...
... It is the paedophile who triggers and reactivates the traumatic origin of repressed material. Angelides (2003) remarks there is a dual identification at the moment we are dealing with a paedophilic spectacle; the intergenerational aggressor incites associations of ourselves as children (the incestuous desires stemming from the Oedipus complex) and ...
Article
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This article examines how late modern Western society/culture deals with the utterly despised phenomenon of paedophilia. It will be argued there are ambiguous factors and forces, which are an inherent part of mainstream culture and the wider social fabric, that make an unequivocal stand against sexuality interfering with children somewhat hypocritical. The zealous efforts in battling sexual child molesters as the primordial danger for the innocence of childhood are seen as a strategy for overt redemption. A hidden agenda is detected by recovering complicit support from a diverse range of adjacent sources that defies the genuineness of guarding the sexual innocence of children.
... The desire to desexualize the relationship is obvious (Römer 2021: 88.). However, mechanism of defense help the discomfort to escape language and without symbolization there is no possibility of psychological integration (Angelides 2003;Römer 2021: 89). Split off in this way, the sexual must remain in the position of evil and dangerous. ...
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This article is based on the analysis of Telegram messages in right-wing channels and groups in Saxony, Germany, which were collected as part of online monitoring at the Else Frenkel-Brunswik Institute. The data shows present and ambivalent reference to the sexuality of "others", especially queer and homosexual people. Here, sexual fantasies form a key point of reference as a threat in the form of deviant sexuality. They are shown to be a strongly persecuted and persecutory topic. As part of the Authoritarian Personality, excessive interest in the sexuality of others is interpreted as a sign of the suppression of one's own sexual drives, which are in danger of slipping out of one's control. The psychological defense mechanism of projective identification comes into play here. Drawing on the considerations of critical theory and psychoanalytic social psychology, we use an empirical evaluation of right-wing online messages to investigate the significance that sexuality plays in authoritarian thinking. We also analyze the potential and limitations of these theoretical approaches for the analysis of current authoritarian phenomena. https://constelaciones-rtc.net
... Seksuaalinen kiinnostus lapsiin ja erityisesti lapsiin kohdistetut seksuaalirikokset voivat herättää voimakkaita tunteita, ja moni ammattilainen voi kokea omien tunnereaktioidensa säätelyn haastavaksi ja esteeksi lapsiin seksuaalista kiinnostusta tuntevien parissa työskentelylle. On puhuttu lapsiin kohdistuvien seksuaalirikosten herättämästä moraalisesta paniikista (Angelides, 2003), eikä ole syytä olettaa, etteikö tämänkaltainen reaktiotapa vaikuttaisi myös ammattilaisten kykyyn ja haluun luoda hoitosuhteita lapseen kohdistuneen seksuaalirikoksen tehneiden tai riskiryhmään kuuluvien kanssa. ...
Article
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Kyselytutkimuksessa kartoitettiin Suomessa toimivien hoito- ja rikosseuraamusalojen ammattilaisten kokemuksia ja valmiuksia työskennellä potilaiden kanssa, jotka tuntevat seksuaalista mielenkiintoa lapsia kohtaan. Kyselyyn vastasi 352 ammattilaista, joista valtaosa oli psykologeja, lääkäreitä tai sairaanhoitajia. Tulokset osoittivat, että noin 20 prosentilla oli kokemuksia kyseisen potilasryhmän hoidosta ja että vastaajat kokivat varsinkin osaamiseen liittyviä mutta myös henkilökohtaisia puutteita valmiuksissaan. Lisäksi tulokset heijastivat systemaattisen tiedon ja verkoston puutetta ja sellaisten tarvetta, jotta tätä potilasryhmää parhaiten voidaan hoitaa.
... During the last three decades, the focus on sexual offences against women, men and children has increased tremendously in the public and pedophilia has become one of the most hatreds aeras in the field. Pedophile orientation follows a discourse of monster and moral panic that even affects a scientific attempt to understand the phenomenon and is a hinder to offer adequate psychological treatment (Angelides, 2003, Green, 2002, Langfeldt, 2010Prusak, 2020). Pedophiles have ended up in a monster discourse that makes it almost immoral to work with them, and there are no shortages of discourse providers in the media. ...
Article
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Analysis of the concept pedophilia and orientation demonstrated that these concepts are not derived from biological and medical science, but to social actions against our religious and legal repression of homosexual acts in the Jewish and especially later in the Christian culture. The findings require a completely new understanding in how we manage these concepts. How we use these terms today is a danger to legal certainty, research and therapy.
... Si certaines périodes dans les derniers siècles se caractérisent par une quasi-indifférence généralisée envers les actes de déviance sexuelle, d'autres se démarquent par la peur et le dégoût envers les mêmes comportements (Angelides, 2003 ;Zgoba, 2007 ;Jenkins, 1998). Ceci ne veut pas dire pour autant que certaines conduites sexuelles déviantes comme l'agression sexuelle par exemple ont déjà été jugées complètement acceptables. ...
Thesis
On July 29th, 1994, Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old girl from Hamilton Township in New Jersey is kidnapped, sexually molested and killed by what will prove to be the Kankas’ front door neighbor, Jesse Timmendequas. At the time, Megan’s assailant had already been twice convicted of sex crimes. Following this tragedy, Megan’s parents fought to obtain a law that would notify the public on the identity as well as the residency of sex offenders. Less than three months later, "Megan’s Law" was ratified. A state-wide sex offender registry was thus created, for which public notification was partly available. Our study focuses on this case, as we try to understand how the construction of sexual offending as a social problem led to the specific penal response that was Megan’s Law. To accomplish this, we analyzed the political discourse and arguments inherent to the case. Eight interviews with different political actors involved in the political debate leading to the implementation of Megan’s Law were conducted. Over 150 newspaper articles and some pieces of legislation were also analyzed. Our results highlight the essential role that the sociopolitical context had on the construction of sex offending as a social problem as well as the solution to which it was linked. Analysis of this case also indicates that the problem-solution dyad was constructed in conjunction, in a uniform time frame, for which the only detectable stages were those of the narrative concerning the death of Megan and the actual development of the law. In other words, Megan’s death was only a focal point that allowed certain political actors to turn into action already widely shared concepts. The study concludes by linking Canada’s sociopolitical context to the one found in our case study, and suggests that a similar construction of the sex offender problem can easily be considered. Though nobody wishes for the occurrence of an event comparable to that experienced by Megan Kanka and her family, this element appears to us as one that would propel this construction to a public arena, provided of course that a person or a group of people make the issue the topic of public debate. Le 29 juillet 1994, Megan Kanka, une jeune fille de sept ans de la municipalité de Hamilton au New Jersey, est enlevée, agressée sexuellement et tuée par ce qui se révélera être son voisin d’en face, Jesse Timmendequas. À l’époque, l’assaillant de Megan avait déjà fait l’objet de deux condamnations pour agression sexuelle. Suite à cette tragédie, les parents de Megan luttèrent pour la création d’une loi qui révélerait automatiquement au public l’identité et le lieu de résidence des délinquants sexuels. Moins de trois mois plus tard, la « Loi de Megan » était ratifiée. Ainsi un répertoire étatique centralisé de délinquants sexuels en partie disponible au public fut créé. Notre étude se centre sur ce cas et tente de comprendre comment une construction particulière de la délinquance sexuelle comme problème social mena à la réponse pénale spécifique qu’était la Loi de Megan. Pour ce faire, nous analysons les discours et argumentaires politiques en lien avec l’affaire. Huit entretiens avec différents acteurs impliqués dans le débat politique menant à la création de la loi de Megan furent effectués. Une analyse de plus de 150 articles de journaux et de quelques projets et textes de lois fut également effectuée. Nos résultats soulignent d’abord le rôle primordial qu’avait le contexte sociopolitique autant sur la construction du problème social de la délinquance sexuelle que sur la solution qui lui était liée. L’analyse du cas nous indique également que la dyade problème-solution s’élabora en conjonction, dans un cadre temporel uniforme, dont les seules étapes détectables sont celles du narratif de la mort de Megan et de l’élaboration concrète de la loi. En d’autres mots, la mort de Megan ne constituait qu’un point focal qui permit à des acteurs de mettre en pratique des concepts déjà largement partagés. L’étude conclue en liant le contexte sociopolitique du Canada à celui retrouvé dans notre étude de cas et suggère qu’une construction similaire de la délinquance sexuelle comme problème peut facilement être envisageable chez nous. Si personne ne souhaite l’occurrence d’une situation comparable à celle vécue par Megan Kanka et sa famille, cet élément nous apparaît comme étant celui qui propulserait réellement cette construction sur la place publique, à condition bien évidemment qu’une personne ou un groupe de personnes en fassent une question à débattre.
... Das, was wir als Pädophilie bezeichnen, zwingt uns dazu, uns gleichzeitig als Erwachsene und Kinder zu identifizieren (vgl. auch Angelides 2003). Das heißt, wir sind gezwungen, uns mit unserer eigenen kindlichen Sexualität und der unserer Kinder zu beschäftigen -auch mit den bewussten und unbewussten inzestuösen Wünschen von Kindern und Eltern. ...
... For Jenkins, 'the issue of sex offenses is personalized, and once identified, monsters can be defeated, captured, and killed' (Jenkins, 1998: 237). James Kincaid (1998) and Steven Angelides (2003Angelides ( , 2005, in different ways, suggest the construction of a figure like Ferguson involves the projection of otherwise prohibited incestuous and paedophilic desires, and requires the erasure of childhood sexuality through discourses of childhood innocence and sexual abuse. Less contentiously, I agree with Jenkins and Kitzinger that such media discourses, and the protests that they instigate and/or follow, strengthen communities while deflecting the problem of child sexual abuse from heteronormative masculinity. ...
Article
From 2003 until 2012 the Australian media closely followed child sex offender Dennis Ferguson as he appeared in and was expelled from numerous local communities. Unattractive, alone, and obstinately unwilling to acknowledge his crimes, Ferguson conformed to dominant representations elsewhere of the stranger paedophile that demands ongoing governmental intervention. This article closely examines media and political discourses in which Ferguson has operated as a metonymic focal point for public considerations of child sex offending in Australia across the last decade, defined in relation to various conceptions of safe, responsible community. It considers public debates about how best to respond to the release of such offenders and the significance of Ferguson to the development of new Australian law and policy applying to sex offenders as an exceptional population, including extended supervision and continuing detention orders, and post-release institutions. As such, the article argues for close attention paid to the figures which garner media and political attention and around whom new policy approaches are developed, including their limiting effects for addressing problems such as child sexual abuse.
... Throughout the past two decades in the West we have been amidst a moral panic over paedophilia (Angelides, 2003), and this phenomenon, in conjunction with ongoing concerns over child sexual abuse, has only lent weight to crude theorizations of adult/child relations via sovereign readings of power (Angelides, 2004). However, I am far from convinced that an epistemology of sovereign power is either accurate or helpful, quite the contrary in fact. ...
Article
This essay considers sexual offence legislation that automatically criminalizes sexual relationships between teachers and students where the latter are over the general age of consent. Examining an Australian criminal case, it critiques the model of sovereign power informing such legislation, suggesting that it forecloses critical questions of subjectivity and intersubjective dynamics. Far from innocuous, the author argues that this model of power and its foreclosures misrecognize the teacher–student relationships under scrutiny and often create far greater harm than do the sexual relationships themselves. An alternative model of multi-dimensional inter/subjective power relations is proposed as a way of analysing interpersonal relationships, giving due weight to adolescent agency, encouraging responsible sexual citizenship and preventing unnecessary prosecutions and collateral damage.Subjectivity (2009) 26, 87–108. doi:10.1057/sub.2008.32
... I share this unease about the erasure of subjectivity in some of those applications of gender studies inspired by social constructionism and poststructuralism, even as I am thoroughly indebted to a good deal of the excellent research produced by these fields. I have argued elsewhere (Angelides, 2003), like Roper, that the omission of the psychic dimension in sociological and historiographical analyses often flattens out accounts of the human subject, society, and history, and leaves each of these formations devoid of affect and psychical dynamics. Other vital subjective elements such as ideals, values, fantasies, defenses, and desires are also often discounted, as Mark Bracher (1993) points out, as are the " interpellative forces … of discourse that cannot be reduced to a function of representation " (p. ...
Article
This article offers a reading of a recent Australian teacher-student sex scandal in order to interrogate the relationship between gendered subjectivity and cul-tural codes of gender. The questions of whether gender ought to make a dif-ference to how we understand instances of so-called "intergenerational sex" and whether cultural codes accurately reflect sexual subjectivity are posed. It is argued that while cultural codes are not external or equivalent to subjectiv-ity, this does not mean that they are not expressive of elements of subjectivity. The article concludes with the suggestion that the failure to attend to the nexus of the social and the psychical not only serves to strengthen a very recent and particular set of historical, political, and ideological forces but also risks cre-ating foundations for misreadings of the history of male adolescent subjectiv-ities.
Thesis
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De vraag die centraal staat in deze thesis is: “Waarom zien mensen die ‘pedojagen’ zichzelf als een goede burger?”. Het opsporen, vernederen en beschadigen van (vermeende) pedofielen en pedoseksuelen zijn namelijk – net als pedoseksuele handelingen – gedragingen die strafbaar gesteld zijn bij wet. Waarom neutraliseren en idealiseren pedojagers hun strafbare handelingen terwijl ze tegelijkertijd pedofilie en pedoseksualiteit verafschuwen? En wat maakt hun acties tot moreel juiste handelingen? In deze thesis wordt beargumenteerd dat pedojagers zichzelf identificeren als goede burger omdat ze pedofilie – een fenomeen dat inherent gelinkt wordt aan ‘monsterachtigheid’ – proberen uit te bannen middels een ‘nobele’ jacht. Eerst wordt kort weergegeven wat pedojagers zijn en hoe het verschil tussen de begrippen ‘pedofilie’ en ‘pedoseksualiteit’ in de volksmond systematisch verkeerd wordt begrepen. Vervolgens wordt geanalyseerd waarom er een diepgewortelde maatschappelijke weerzin jegens pedofilie bestaat en hoe deze voortkomt uit motieven ter bescherming van het kwetsbare kind en uit onzekerheid over de eigen seksualiteit. Tot slot wordt geanalyseerd hoe deze weerzin daadwerkelijk kan leiden tot (soms gewelddadige) burgeracties waarin pedojagers zich moreel verheffen boven de (inhumane) jagende pedofiel.
Thesis
Vorliegende Dissertation greift in zeitgenössische Debatten queerer und feministischer Politiken durch die Analyse von Gegenwartsliteratur ein. Hatte die zweiten Frauenbewegung vertreten, dass im Zentrum politischer Veränderungen stets persönliche Veränderungen stehen, nutzt die Arbeit mit diesem Ausgangspunkt ein scheinbar anachronistisches Paradigma, um solche Narrative zu kritisieren, die Queerness sowie queere Politik und Theorie im Präsens, lesbischen Feminismus dagegen in der Vergangenheit positionieren wollen. These ist dagegen, dass die utopischen Impulse des lesbischen Feminismus der zweiten Frauenbewegung sich mit aktueller queerer Politik überschneiden und dass beide auf zu differenzierende Art Praktiken und Konzepte von Intimität in den Vordergrund stellen, die auf soziale Transformationen in größerem Maßstab verweisen. Die Erkundung der komplexen Weisen, in denen Politik durch Intimität praktiziert wird, erfolgt hier am Beispiel der Figur der Lesbe in der zeitgenössischen Anglo-Amerikanischen Literatur, speziell in Auseinandersetzung mit der Literatur der kanadischen Schriftstellerin Ann-Marie MacDonald. Mit Figur oder Trope der Lesbe im Zentrum der Analyse ist ein spezifischer historischer und politischer Kontext signalisiert. Die Lesbe sowie lesbian existence als eine feministische Praxis bieten einen produktiven Ausgangspunkt, weil beide im Lauf der Zeit oft und teils simultan als das Abjekt oder das idealisierte Objekt von sexueller und Genderpolitik konstruiert worden sind. Darüber hinaus markiert lesbischer Feminismus einen bestimmten zeitlichen Ort sowie eine politische Funktion und besetzt einen bestimmten Platz im feministischen und queeren Imaginären. Aufgabe der Dissertation ist es, die Potentiale herauszuarbeiten, die heute noch immer von der Figur der Lesbe und vom lesbischem Feminismus ausgehen, ohne dabei deren teils unbequeme Beziehung zum beachtlichen Einfluss der Queer Theory aus den Augen zu verlieren.
Article
Zusammenfassung Einleitung Mediale Darstellungen der Pädophilie ändern sich. Im Kontext von therapeutischen und Selbsthilfeangeboten entstehen seit Ende der 2000er-Jahre Repräsentationen kontrollierter Sexualität, die sich von Verwerfungen als „Monster“ und als „Bandenkrimineller“ unterscheiden. Forschungsziele Der Beitrag untersucht die Struktur und rekonstruiert die Bedingungen und Effekte des medialen Diskurses. Er fragt erstens nach Rhetoriken, die eine andere Repräsentation möglich erscheinen lassen. Zweitens diskutiert er, wie vor dem Hintergrund der historischen Abwertungen und Verwerfungen ein pädophiles Subjekt medial neu bzw. anders konstituiert werden kann. Methoden Untersuchungsgegenstand sind 33 Print- und audio(-visuelle) Reportagen, die pädophile Teilnehmende an therapeutischen und/oder Selbsthilfeangeboten porträtieren. Diese werden innerhalb der Phänomenstruktur der Grounded Theory analysiert. Ergebnisse In den medialen Repräsentationen wird Pädophilie ursächlich als Gefahr entworfen und zugleich negiert: Das Potential des sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs wird ausgewiesen, erscheint aber als nicht zwingende Folge der sexuellen Disposition. Intervenierende Bedingung dafür ist die medizinische Rahmung als überzeitliche, unveränderbare Sexualität, mit der eine prekäre Patho-Normalisierung ebenso wie die Möglichkeit der Kontrolle auf der Handlungsebene einhergeht. Die Problemlösung der sexuellen Kontrolle wird in den Reportagen anhand von drei Subjektpositionen nachgezeichnet: der leidenden Seele auf dem Weg zur Therapie, dem vom eigenen Gewissen verfolgten Empathiker und dem herausgeforderten, sich aber aufopfernden Helden. Gesellschaftlich ergibt sich aus Mitgefühl und rationaler Abwägung eine Aufforderung zur Entstigmatisierung. Schlussfolgerung Der Beitrag rekonstruiert eine Gegen-Emotionalisierung und technokratische Kontrollversprechen als Entstehungsbedingungen eines neuen legitimen pädophilen Subjekts. Dieses konstituiert ein Gegenbild zu vorherigen Darstellungen, unternimmt eine teilweise Normalisierung und deutet in Teilen Idealisierungen des Pädophilen als Kindern besonders zugewandtem Subjekt an.
Article
The introduction situates the historiography on queer intergenerational sex in the realm of scholarship on queer history, the history of childhood, and the literature on the significance of chronological age. It lays out three broad schemas that have organized queer intergenerational sex—looking at it as a phallic economy where boys submitted to older men in ways that were akin to women; as a function of pederastic or pedophilic desires; and as abuse—and also explores the overlap and permutations among these categories. It then introduces the six articles in this forum, elucidating their central arguments and the contributions that they make to this dynamic field.
Article
The history of sexual relations between children or youth and adults in the United States has received limited attention in part because of the strong taboos against discussion of the topic. The growing moral panic about pedophilia in the 1980s, which coincided with the first wave of American historiography of sexuality, had a silencing effect. Historians of the family first broke the silence by researching the history of incest within the family, focusing on father–daughter relations. Later, in the 1990s, historians of childhood argued that age should be considered as a category of analysis within the history of sexuality. Many scholars have explored the role that age played in structuring same-sex male encounters, especially at the turn of the twentieth century. Others working in a range of disciplines have historicized the rhetoric of the “sexual psychopath” or the “pedophile,” and its effects. Much work remains to be done on multiple aspects of this topic.
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Difficulties related to distinction of sexual norm and pathology affect the possibility of a precise and competent definition of the paraphilia category. The modern notion of paraphilia still bears a moral evaluation, implicating an existence of a proper, true love/friendship. However, attempts to define the term “paraphilia” so that it emphasises the medical aspects of the deviant sexual attraction, are till now unfortunate. The contribution presents a review of discussions carried out by modern foreign authors on the problem of a more precise definition of the paraphilia category; it shows the difficulties arising in the process of solving the stated problem. It examines the social perception of sexual violence, disputes on distinction between pedophilia and ephebophilia, possibility of zoosexual orientation, connection between paraphilias and other disorders, and disputes on definion of the paraphilia category for new revisions of classifications of diseases.
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Despite the cultural specificity of aspects of attachment theory (Layton, 2006) it remains influential. Disorganized attachment and the alien self are linked to borderline phenomena and attacks upon the body (Fonagy et al., 2002), including sexual attacks (Straker, 2002). Recently (Fonagy, 2006, 2008; Target, 2007) used the concept of the alien self to explain sexuality in general. This article challenges this extension as it again ignores cultural specificity, presents psychoanalysis as the arbiter of “normal” sexuality, and entrenches heteronormativity. It also lends itself to inadvertently condoning sexual harassment, as evidenced in a case study presented by Fonagy (2008).
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In this article the author discusses what he considers to be an ultrastructure of Michel Foucault’s pedagogisation of sex, which is the expanding normative imagination of bodies and sexualities as and in curricula. Here the author proposes an inclusive reading of ‘curriculum’ that departs from the specific scholastic definition, one that embraces the total cultural apparatus that prescribes bodies’ chronologies. Body curricula are explored by their being implied in diverse pedagogical paradigms articulating a body’s development, specifically its sexual development. As a test‐case, he illustrates how alternating stories of ‘first sexual experiences’ correspond to alternating tales of the body in/as a curricular order, the order that renders bodies ‘curricular’ and, as such, subject to pedagogical praxis. In an attempt to open up such body curricula to an anthropological digestion, he describes three paradigms of storying virginity, alternatively plotted as a ‘war’, a ‘complex’ and a ‘ride’.
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GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 10.2 (2004) 141-177 In the 1970s the child protection lobby and feminism together spearheaded a painstaking interrogation and politicization of the social problem of child sexual abuse. By the 1980s a powerful discourse of child sexual abuse was working hard to expose the widespread problem of incest in the patriarchal family and was vigorously contesting legal definitions of abuse that ignored or downplayed nonpenetrative sexual acts. The myth of stranger danger was found to be a patriarchal ruse as feminists produced an array of statistics revealing that fathers, other male relatives, and male acquaintances were the primary perpetrators of child sexual assault. Drawing on the rhetoric of radical feminist antirape and antipornography movements, a new approach to abuse emerged that expanded the definitional terrain of sexual abuse as well as eroded distinctions among the acts it comprised. Feminists were particularly influential in challenging the notion that children subjected to sexual abuse were somehow complicit in the crime (by seducing adults, "asking for it," or fabricating charges) or that child prostitutes and children involved in pornography or intergenerational sex could knowingly consent to such activities. In a significant reversal of the common twentieth-century tendency of victim blaming, the innocent, powerless, blameless, and unconsenting "victim" and "survivor" of sexual abuse became key cultural terms. The "rediscovery" of child sexual abuse—perhaps more accurately called a "reinterpretation"—has been profoundly important for Western culture. Few would dispute that patriarchal social structures, male sexuality, and power relations between the sexes and between adults and children have been subjected to much-needed critical scrutiny or that our reexamination of the dynamics of child sexual abuse and its detrimental effects has generated valuable insights into diagnosis, therapeutic intervention (for both offenders and victims), and management. However, significant gains are often accompanied by equally significant losses. This essay suggests that, despite admirable efforts to empower children and protect them from the harmful consequences of sexual abuse, they have in one particularly notable way been disempowered and disarmed by the child sexual abuse movement. I argue that the discourse of child sexual abuse has expanded at the expense of a discourse of child sexuality. Rigorous attempts to expose the reality and dynamics of child sexual abuse have been aided, if not in part made possible, by equally rigorous attempts to conceal, repress, or ignore the reality and dynamics of child sexuality. This placing of child sexuality under erasure has had deleterious consequences at both the level of everyday practice and at the level of theory. First, the desexualization of childhood has damaging psychological and psychotherapeutic consequences for child victims of sexual abuse. Second, with "child sexuality" figured only as an oxymoron in the feminist discourse of child sexual abuse, its erasure ensures that the categories of "child" and "adult" are kept distinct and at a safe epistemological distance. For queer theorists trained to unpack the mutual imbrication and constitution of binary oppositions, this is highly problematic. As will be shown, not only does queer theory have much to offer theorizations of the relationship between analytic axes of "sexuality" and "age," but there may be an instructive methodological lesson for queer theory to glean from failed feminist attempts to hierarchize sexuality by way of a linear and sequential logic of age stratification. Although various cultures and societies have always recognized in children what...
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Recent articulations emerging from the media unequivocally position paedophilia as a contemporary moral panic. Concurrently, a continuing collapse of 'the paedophile' and 'the homosexual' in representations of paedophilia operates to reinforce the construction of paedophilia as occurring outside of the home and family. By applying a Foucauldian analysis to articles in the Sydney Morning Herald, this paper problemarises the construction of the paedophile as a 'personage, a past, a case history and a childhood' and excoriates the discourses which construct the paedophile as the folk devil par excellence.
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This enthralling and provocative book provides a new grounding for the understanding of sexual rights. It argues that all varieties of sexuality under capitalism are materially constructed out of the complex interrelationship between the market and the state. The examples of different sexual rights and lack of rights that it examines include the experience of male homosexuals, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexualists and children. Meticulous, focused and challenging, it will be required reading for anyone interested in modern human sexualities.
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In Freudian Repression, Michael Billig presents an original reformulation of Freud's concept of repression, showing that in his theory of the unconscious he fails to examine how people actually repress shameful thoughts. Drawing on recent insights from discursive psychology, Billig suggests that in learning to speak we also learn what not to say: language is thus both expressive and repressive. He applies this perspective to some of Freud's classic case histories such as 'Dora' and the 'Rat Man' and the great psychologist's own life to show the importance of small words in speech. By focusing on previously overlooked exchanges, even Freud himself can be seen to be repressing. Freudian Repression also offers new insights on the current debate about recovered memories and the ideological background to psychoanalysis which will guarantee its interdisciplinary appeal to psychologists, language theorists, discourse analysts, students of psychoanalysis, literary studies and sociologists.
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All teenagers have sexual lives, whether with others or through fantasies, and an important part of adolescence is thinking about and experimenting with aspects of sexuality. But when are teens ready to become sexually active and when are their parents ready to accept their teens being sexually active? This article explores this question as well as the many taboos and stereotypes that surround our beliefs about teenage sexuality. Teens' attitudes toward sex I believe that before teens become sexually active they need to ask themselves several important questions including: whether they are engaging in sexual activity for themselves; whether they feel rushed by a partner or the situation; whether their bodies feel ready; whether they trust their partners; and whether they would be comfortable saying no, even at the last minute. As part of my research for my book, The Sex Lives of Teen-agers, I had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of teens about what their sexuality means to them. Some answered that it made them feel lovable, or more adult. Some described in-tense physical pleasure. Some told how it nurtured intimacy with another person or fulfilled a desire to become pregnant, or promoted status in their peer group, or allowed for a surrender to desire or to another person. For some it brought relief from boredom or escape from life's pressures or an opportunity to test out biological equip-ment. For others it involved reenactments of a sexually trau-matic event from the past, or was useful as a tool for barter in obtaining money or material goods. Some characterized it as an expected part of a current relationship, a representation of "true love," a useful weapon, or a personal expression of growth and spirituality.
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Why has homosexuality always fascinated and vexed psychoanalysis? This groundbreaking collection of original essays reconsiders the troubled relationship between same-sex desire and psychoanalysis, assessing homosexuality's status in psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as the value of psychoanalytic ideas for queer theory. The contributors, each distinguished clinicians and specialists, reexamine works by Freud, Klein, Reich, Lacan, Laplanche, and their feminist and queer revisionists. Sharing a commitment to conscious and unconscious forms of homosexual desire, they offer new perspectives on pleasure, perversion, fetishism, disgust, psychosis, homophobia, AIDS, otherness, and love. Including two previously untranslated essays by Michel Foucault, Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis will interest cultural theorists, psychoanalysts, and anyone concerned with the fate of sexuality in our time. Contributors: Lauren Berlant Leo Bersani Daniel L. Buccino Arnold I. Davidson Tim Dean Jonathan Dollimore Brad Epps Michel Foucault Lynda Hart Jason B. Jones Christopher Lane H. N. Lukes Catherine Millot Elizabeth A. Povinelli Ellie Ragland Paul Robinson Judith Roof Joanna Ryan Ramón E. Soto-Crespo Suzanne Yang
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Child abuse, incest, child molestation, Halloween sadism, child pornography: although clearly not new problems, they have attracted more attention than ever before. Threatened Children asks why. Joel Best analyzes the rhetorical tools used by child advocates when making claims aimed at raising public anxiety and examines the media's role in transmitting reformers' claims and the public's response to the frightening statistics, compelling examples, and expanding definitions it confronts. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from criminal justice records to news stories, from urban legends to public opinion surveys, Best reveals how the cultural construction of social problems evolves.
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Mods and Rockers, skinheads, video nasties, designer drugs, bogus asylum seeks and hoodies. Every era has its own moral panics. It was Stanley Cohen’s classic account, first published in the early 1970s and regularly revised, that brought the term ‘moral panic’ into widespread discussion. It is an outstanding investigation of the way in which the media and often those in a position of political power define a condition, or group, as a threat to societal values and interests. Fanned by screaming media headlines, Cohen brilliantly demonstrates how this leads to such groups being marginalised and vilified in the popular imagination, inhibiting rational debate about solutions to the social problems such groups represent. Furthermore, he argues that moral panics go even further by identifying the very fault lines of power in society.
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The author argues that seduction is not primarily a fantasy but a 'real' situation, which lies at the heart of the other two allegedly primal major scenarios: castration and the primal scene. This statement is not to be confused with an event-based realism, as, for this to be achieved, a third category of reality must be postulated. This reality, constantly misconstrued by authors as corresponding to material and psychological reality, is that of the message conveyed and, more specifically in the case of analysis, the enigmatic message. To establish his position the author re-examines Freud's presentation of the Schreber case. The sexual other and his intrusion are the essential points of Freud's analysis in the first part of his study. In the second part, however, desexualisation (in the name of love) and a return to the ego, as the centre of the whole process, both being evident in the 'primary' sentence from which Freud proposes to derive everything: 'I (a man) love him (a man)'. This leads us to a consideration of Fichte's concept of Bekanntmachung, the 'announcement' by the other and to an argument that the message stemming from the other is irreducible to a projection by the subject, within the three domains of primal seduction, paranoia and religious 'revelation'.
Article
The author offers a survey of his general theory of seduction, elaborated in order to give an account of the origin of the psychic apparatus and the drives, starting from the adult-infant relation. This theory supposes that, in the sexual domain, such a relation is asymmetrical, the sexual message originating in the adult other. The author develops here the consequences of such an originary primacy of the other, especially for the notion of sublimation and the process of the analytic treatment. The analytic situation and method, as invented by Freud, implies a radical change of perspective in the philosophical and anthropological conception of the human being, in forcing us to move from a self-centred, 'Ptolemaic' vision, belonging to the old philosophy of the subject, to an other-centred, 'Copernican' vision.
Article
Until recently sex and gender issues were thought to be biological or natural rather than political. The feminist movement largely changed perceptions of gender, and the gay and lesbian movements significantly altered conceptions of sex, so that what were once seen as permanent moral standards are now viewed as historical and political constructions. As views of these groups have moved towards social constructionism, perceptions of child sexuality have become more absolutist. Current attitudes towards child sexuality and representations of it resemble historical attitudes towards women and homosexuals. This article argues that there is a two-phase pattern of sexual politics. The first is a battle to prevent the battle, to keep the issue from being seen as political and negotiable. Psychological and moral categories are used to justify ridicule and preclude any discussions of the issue, and standard Constitutional guarantees are seen as irrelevant. The second phase more closely resembles traditional politics as different groups argue over rights and privileges. Feminist and gay/lesbian politics have recently entered the second phase, while pedophilia is in the first.
18. I have borrowed this formulation of "(dis)positions" from Mark Bracher, Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism
  • Tim Dean
  • Beyond Sexuality
Tim Dean, Beyond Sexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 96. 18. I have borrowed this formulation of "(dis)positions" from Mark Bracher, Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,1993) p. 19.
Feminism, Child Sexual Abuse Child Sexuality and the Culture of Melancholia " (un-published manuscript) for a discussion of the way these unresolved and unsymbolized affects are producing melancholic cultures of considerable proportions
  • See
See Angelides, " Feminism, Child Sexual Abuse. " 85. See Steven Angelides, " Child Sexuality and the Culture of Melancholia " (un-published manuscript) for a discussion of the way these unresolved and unsymbolized affects are producing melancholic cultures of considerable proportions.
According to Freud, the typical de-velopmental events identified by psychoanalysis as most likely to give rise to traumatic situations for every child are birth, separation anxiety, castration anxiety, loss of love objects, and loss of super-ego love (Inhibitions
  • Freud
Freud, New Introductory Lectures, p. 127. According to Freud, the typical de-velopmental events identified by psychoanalysis as most likely to give rise to traumatic situations for every child are birth, separation anxiety, castration anxiety, loss of love objects, and loss of super-ego love (Inhibitions, 1926 [1925]).
Power Relations and the Emergence of Language
  • Cathy Urwin
Cathy Urwin, " Power Relations and the Emergence of Language, " in Henriques et al., Changing the Subject.
The History of Child-hood Sexuality. " 41. Lynn Ponton, The Sex Lives of Teenagers
  • Fishman
Fishman, " The History of Child-hood Sexuality. " 41. Lynn Ponton, The Sex Lives of Teenagers (New York: Plume, 2001).
New Foundations for Psychoanalysis, David Macey (trans.)
  • Jean Laplanche
Jean Laplanche, New Foundations for Psychoanalysis, David Macey (trans.) (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 89-90.
Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Soci-ety's Betrayal of the Child
  • See Evans
See Evans, Sexual Citizenship; Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Soci-ety's Betrayal of the Child (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1984);
Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Crisis Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex
  • Philip Jenkins See
See also Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996; and Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
PFL 11; Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduc-tion to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique
  • Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud, " Negation " (1925), PFL 11; Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduc-tion to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1999), pp. 112-113.
Dares to Speak The Hysteria over Child Pornography and Paedophilia
  • Gilbert Interview
  • Lawrence A Stanley
Interview with Gilbert Herdt, conducted by Joseph Geraci, in Geraci (Ed.), Dares to Speak, p. 31; Lawrence A. Stanley, " The Hysteria over Child Pornography and Paedophilia, " in Geraci (Ed.), Dares to Speak, pp.
Scholar's Pedophilia Essay Stirs Outrage and Revenge
  • Jodi Wilgoren
Jodi Wilgoren, " Scholar's Pedophilia Essay Stirs Outrage and Revenge, " New York Times, 30 April 2002.
Boy-Love and Pedophilia–The Contemporary Storm Dares to Speak: Historical and Con-temporary Perspectives on Boy-Love (Swaffham: The Gay Men's Press
  • Vern Bullough
Vern Bullough, " Boy-Love and Pedophilia–The Contemporary Storm, " Inter-view by Joseph Geraci, in Joseph Geraci (Ed.), Dares to Speak: Historical and Con-temporary Perspectives on Boy-Love (Swaffham: The Gay Men's Press, 1997), p.172. See also Best, Threatened Children, pp. 180-181.
The Drive and Its Object-Source: Its Fate in the Transference
  • Jean See
  • Laplanche
See also Jean Laplanche, "The Drive and Its Object-Source: Its Fate in the Transference," in John Fletcher & Martin Stanton (Eds.), Jean Laplanche: Seduction, Translation, Drives (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1992), pp. 190-191;
The Best Kept Secret, p. 98. See also Lindy Burton for an account of around thirty studies on child sexual assault between the 1930s and 1960s that recognized child sexuality
  • Quoted In Rush
Quoted in Rush, The Best Kept Secret, p. 98. See also Lindy Burton, Vulnerable Children (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 87-98 for an account of around thirty studies on child sexual assault between the 1930s and 1960s that recognized child sexuality.
Or as he noted in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood A mother's love for the infant she suckles and cares for is something far more profound than her later affection for the growing child. It is in the nature of a completely satisfying love-relation, which not only fulfill every mental
  • Freud
Freud, Three Essays, 145. Or as he noted in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (1910), PFL 14: " A mother's love for the infant she suckles and cares for is something far more profound than her later affection for the growing child. It is in the nature of a completely satisfying love-relation, which not only fulfill every mental
Towards Rethinking Moral Panic: Child Sexual Abuse Conflicts and Social Constructionist Responses
  • Chris Atmore
Chris Atmore, "Towards Rethinking Moral Panic: Child Sexual Abuse Conflicts and Social Constructionist Responses," in Christopher Bagley & Kanka Mallick (Eds.), Child Sexual Abuse and Adult Offenders: New Theory and Research (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999).
For discussion and references to child sexuality in decades prior to the 1980s, see P
  • See Constantine
For a summary of research on child sexuality until 1983, see Constantine, " Child Sexuality " (1983), pp. 55-67. For discussion and references to child sexuality in decades prior to the 1980s, see P. Jenkins (1998);
Rape: The Politics of Consciousness
  • Susan Griffin
Susan Griffin, Rape: The Politics of Consciousness, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986);
Laplanche is attempting to draw out what is already there in Freud's work, but which remains mired by the limitations of his time and discourse. For instance, in An Outline of Psychoanalysis Freud says " By her care of the child's body she [the mother] becomes its first seducer
  • Jean Laplanche
  • Life
  • Jeffrey Death In Psychoanalysis
  • Mehlman
Jean Laplanche, Life and Death in Psychoanalysis, Jeffrey Mehlman (trans.) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 [1970]), p. 48. 57. Laplanche is attempting to draw out what is already there in Freud's work, but which remains mired by the limitations of his time and discourse. For instance, in An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940 [1938]), PFL 15, Freud says " By her care of the child's body she [the mother] becomes its first seducer " (423).
Feminism, Child Sexual Abuse" for a discussion of some of the social and psychological problems this erasure of child sexuality creates
  • See Angelides
See Angelides, "Feminism, Child Sexual Abuse" for a discussion of some of the social and psychological problems this erasure of child sexuality creates.
The Satanism Scare Aldine de Gruyter, 1991); Chris Atmore Towards Rethinking Moral Panic: Child Sexual Abuse Conflicts and Social Constructionist Responses
  • J Richardson
J. Richardson et al. (Eds.), The Satanism Scare (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991); Chris Atmore, " Towards Rethinking Moral Panic: Child Sexual Abuse Conflicts and Social Constructionist Responses, " in Christopher Bagley & Kanka Mallick (Eds.), Child Sexual Abuse and Adult Offenders: New Theory and Research (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999).
For a comprehensive reading of Laplanche's theory of seduction and the enigmatic signifier, see John Fletcher The Letter in the Unconscious: The Enigmatic Signifier in the work of Jean Laplanche
  • Sigmund Freud
  • An Autobiographical Study
Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study, PFL 15, p. 220. 50. Freud, Three Essays, pp. 151-152. 51. For a comprehensive reading of Laplanche's theory of seduction and the enigmatic signifier, see John Fletcher, " The Letter in the Unconscious: The Enigmatic Signifier in the work of Jean Laplanche, " in Jean Laplanche: Seduction, Translation and the Drives, edited by John Fletcher & Martin Stanton (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1992), pp. 93-120.