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Hi, Psychologist here. Does society have strong evidence that therapeutic interventions are reducing rates of, say, the most common disorders of anxiety and depression? Considering that the rates of these are going up, I don't think we can assume there's a hugely successful therapy to help those attracted to CSA images to change. Psychology is not a very good science principally because it offers few extremely effective answers in the real world.
In terms of medication androgen antagonists are generally used. This is because lowering testosterone generally leads to a lower sex drive. Here is an article about those drugs, including an offender who asked for them: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/01/what-should-we-do-about-paedophiles
TW: the article contains discussion of whether offenders are even psychologically disordered, when set within a historical cultural context of child-marriage. This paragraph is two above the illustration of people trapped within concentric circular walls, and starts "In the 2013 edition ...".
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Some research on success rates:
Thank you for such a well laid out response and the research to back it up. I rarely see people approaching the subjects of pedophilia, and how best to treat pedophiles, rationally and analytically.
It's understandable considering the harm they can cause to society that most can only ever view them as nothing more or less than monsters, and indeed, those that are incapable of comprehending the harm they cause and empathizing with those they could potentially cause or have caused harm to, are IMHO some of the more loathsome individuals.
That said, I think too often people are willing to paint others whose proclivities are so alien and antithetical to our own as not only monsters, but monsters that aren't worth understanding with any degree of nuance, that we ultimately do ourselves and future generations a disservice by not at least attempting to address the issue at hand in the hopes that the most harmful parts of our collective psyche are treated palliatively to the best of our ability.
Your annotated sources indicate that there is not nearly as clear a path forward as detractors to the "pedophiles are simply monsters and there's no reason to look into their motives further" would like to believe, while also, by the nature of the existence of the attempted treatments themselves, points out that there is more work to be done to hopefully find a more lasting and successful rate of treatment.
Like many of the psychological ailments plagueing societies today, you cannot simply kill and imprison the problem away. That is always a short term (albeit at times temporarily effective) solution. The solution to the problem of how to greatly reduce the occurrence of pedophilia will ultimately require more of this kind of research and will require more analysis and study towards achieving such ends.
Again, I thank you for your nuanced post, and commend you for taking your nuanced stance as well.
Isn't it more about power than sex many times anyway?
For people actually abusing? Spot on, most of the time.
For non-offending paedos? Nah… a horrible affliction.
Not always. There are people with brain injuries who suddenly develop an attraction towards kids and it's not really due to power dynamics or anything else.
I don't understand why we haven't used inhalable oxytocin as an experimental drug for people attracted to children and animals. It seems intuitive- children and animals generate oxytocin for humans automatically, and it's possible some people need a stronger stimulus to release oxytocin or may not have a lot of oxytocin endogenously. Oxytocin can be compounded at a pharmacy and has been used successfully for social anxiety.