Pedophilia and psychiatry. Historical landmarks

Our aim is to question the value of psychiatry's current understanding and knowledge of pedophilia. A forensic report is quoted. Is the social function of psychiatry and its knowledge in harmony with the new images of child sex-abuse and pedophilia? Having underlined the frequency of child sex-abuse in the XIX C and sketched some characteristics in terms of law and statistics, the evolution of forensic reports, the question of false accusations of abuse, psychiatric influence in the forensic sphere, the psychopathology of abusers and a series of explicative models (monomania, phrenology, degeneration etc.) are studied. At the end of the 1880's pedophilia took its place in the general framework of sexual perversions as described by R. von Krafft-Ebing and others. The work of Freud and others renewed our understanding of sexuality and perversions from 1905 onwards, it provides contrasting images of pedophilia which are studied in detail. To conclude the author argues that the production of a psychiatric understanding of child sex-abuse and pedophilia is determined not by a request for health, but by legal and social requests for norms aimed at regulating social conduct concerning sexuality and children.