Sexualised Child Attraction

One common outcome to the child’s difficulties is that he displaces his sexual feelings about the mother onto an object. The object thereby becomes sexualised. This leads to the creation of a fetish. The main underlying emotions are jealousy (self-pity mode) and fear. A fetish is a displacement of sexual desire. Or he may channel his sexual arousal onto children, the rationale being that if he is finding it difficult to be sexually aroused by mature people, he will find it easier to be sexually aroused by immature people. Such a person is not necessarily a paedophile.

I restrict the term paedophile to a person who actually does have sexual relationships with children. For example, a person who gets sexual stimulation from looking at sexual images of children but has no abusive contact with them is not a paedophile.

Sexual Interest in Children

Why does an adult male become sexually interested in children? This occurs when hatred is added to the fear and self-pity mix. The hatred comes from his relationship towards the mother. As he grows up into adulthood, he becomes wary of adult women, with the result that he finds it difficult to have normal sexual relationships with them. Now he may become sexually attracted to young girls, especially if he also has voyeuristic tastes. If this interest intensifies, then he becomes orientated to children. He finds that he sexually relates to girls in the same way that he would like to (but cannot) relate to adult women. Since he has not bonded with girls, so he does not fear them; he fears an adult woman’s personality but not a girl’s personality. The aspects of his mother’s femininity that attract him are usually projected onto girls: for example, if he likes his mother wearing miniskirts, then he likes young girls who wear miniskirts. I call this choice sexualised child attraction. The main underlying emotions are hatred and fear, especially the hatred. When child attraction is intense, the underlying emotion that is most intense is hatred towards mature women. This outcome is displacement of sexual choice.

I use the term sexualised child attraction to separate it from the normal, non-sexual, attraction to their children that parents usually have.

In general, the kind of displacement activity he directs his sexual interests to will depend on the varying intensities of fear, jealousy and hatred that he feels towards the mother. The function of the fear is that it switches sexual desires away from conventional patterns of desire to non-conventional ones. The person overcomes the fear by switching to something that can generate excitement in him. He can now seek excitement by exploring the forbidden, especially sexual practices that are beyond the (Western) pale: an example is the life of the 19th century traveller in the Middle East, Richard Burton, who translated erotic Arabian tales into English. Or he can seek excitement by watching child pornography.

If the male child has a problematic relationship with the father, then this may create issues with either masculinity or authority. If the child’s masculinity becomes a problem for him, he may eventually learn to dislike the traditional forms of it; instead, he may prefer to espouse non-traditional forms and become effeminate and/or gay. If the male child has a problematic relationship with the mother, he may gravitate to non-traditional forms of femininity and become transgender, or some other aspect of the trans spectrum of gender choice. However, in this article I am only interested in exploring sexualised child attraction.

Bonding and Validation

In sexual relationships based on attraction (and not on other considerations like wealth and status), the binding ingredient is some aspect of the bonding process. Normal bonding occurs through the three-stage process of imprinting, identification and transference [³].

The stage of imprinting produces the emotional attachment of the child to an adult, usually a parent. The stage of identification uses parents and peers as role models, for character building. The stage of transference means the transfer of beliefs and values of parents and peers to the child. Normal bonding is the primary way that a person achieves validation by society.

Weak or faulty bonding (due usually to some form of abuse or neglect by parents or significant adults) means that the child’s social validation is faulty or even non-existent. To overcome this faulty bonding, the child may focus on ways to attain validation by other means. The three factors of bonding can lead to different ways of trying to attain the validation, depending on which factor is accentuated. I mention three particular ways.

a). Identification Factor
An emphasis on exploring non-materialistic ideals. Here the main factor is identification with an idealised celebrity or an idealised teacher. The other two factors are subordinate.

b). Transference Factor
An emphasis on exploring gender identity. Here the main factor is transference and the man’s idealised beliefs about femininity or the woman’s idealised beliefs about masculinity. The other two factors are subordinate.

c). Imprinting Factor
Emphasis on fetishes or on exploring sexualised attraction to children. In the latter case, imprinting is likely to be the main factor, focusing on the man’s idealised beliefs about child sexuality. Idealised sexuality mainly means sexuality without fear. The factors of identification and transference are subordinate.

Most adults are attracted, non-sexually, to children, and this is needed for the children’s own psychological growth. This attraction also corresponds with the stages of bonding. Some adults like the company of kids, and can be comfortable at their level; this interaction can be called the Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland scenario. This way centres on identification issues. Other adults, usually parents, are very good with kids; the kids own identities are respected and fostered. This way centres on transference issues between adult and kids.

Some adults are attracted to the sexuality of kids. This is the problematic stage of bonding. This way centres on imprinting issues of the adult. A key factor to a sexualised child attraction is what I call regressive imprinting.

Regressive Imprinting

Ordinary imprinting is based on jealousy in self-pity mode. Imprinting is the way of overcoming self-pity by enabling a child to bond to an adult person – that person becomes the emotional support that neutralises the self-pity.

How does regressive imprinting work? In my way of thinking, this is the process of adult regression to an early stage of his childhood, usually under the impact of an intensely negative stimulus such as prolonged depression or a subconscious memory of a sexually-abusive episode that he experienced in childhood. These states of mind intensify underlying self-pity. Whilst under the influence of the negative stimulus, some aspect of sexuality in another child grabs his interest and excites him. His self-pity has changed to jealousy (self-pity mode). Now the child appears sexually alluring to him (the child matches in some ways his image of desirable male or female sexuality) and he may become sexually aroused. If this arousal happens several times then it indicates that he has bonded to that child’s sexual image.

His prevailing mood of jealousy (self-pity mode) enables him to bond to that child. The bond is the first stage of the bonding process, that of imprinting, which always contains sexual overtones. Usually his interest is centred on the sexuality of the child. Hence the sexuality of the child becomes imprinted on him. This sets the stage for the sexual orientation to kids.

If some particular aspect of the child became the centre of his interest, this may take priority in the way he sees children’s sexuality. For example, if the hair colour was very important, he may only bond to kids that have that same hair colour (rather like a fetish).

The function of imprinting is that it enables the person to manage the self-pity mode of jealousy. The bonding means that from now on he can use sexual images of children as his way of escaping from the self-pity. Instead of being listless and feeling that the world is one of unending dreariness, he becomes excited and energetic. Children’s sexuality changes his old dreary world into a new world of captivating and alluring delight, with additional spicy enjoyment coming from the knowledge that such delights are socially forbidden.

Three Kinds of Child Attraction

I split up sexualised child attraction into three likely kinds. The first kind is passive and is that of voyeurism; children’s sexuality is felt to be exciting, along with sexy, non-abusive soft-pornographic images of kids. This kind is not problematic to society.

What is the likely cause of voyeurism? When the person was a child, some aspect of sexuality in another child excited him. Perhaps he looked up a girl’s dress and saw her knickers. The excitement represents a catharsis [4]. Then in the stage of jealousy (mode of self-pity) that follows the catharsis, he bonded to that kind of sexual stimulus. This sets the stage for the development of voyeurism. Most people (for example, parents) see children in underwear, but they do not develop voyeurism. It is when the child or adult becomes excited by seeing children in underwear that voyeurism begins its growth.

The other two kinds of child attraction are active ones: these are paedophilia, where sexual abuse of the child occurs. Child attraction has become child obsession. There are two kinds of paedophilia because the offenders fall into two categories: those that can reform themselves, and those that do not want to reform. So the motivations are different.

The reformable paedophile is the person who uses children as a way of exerting power. The adult may have a deep sense of being powerless, and may, if children are easily accessible to him, try to create a feeling of power by molesting them. The adult feels powerless because he did not receive sufficient social approval from his parents, and so his focus on children is his way of getting revenge. Because he seeks social approval, he is centred on jealousy, has moderately good social skills, and this makes him reformable.

The paedophile who seems immune to reform is likely to be focused on sexualised child attraction because of regressive imprinting. He is likely to be centred on narcissism and so does not seek social approval. His social skills are usually poor and so he finds it hard to change. The motivation of this kind of paedophile is the subject of the next article.

What makes sexualised child attraction so fascinating for some adults? One central reason is that the adult does not need to be wary of children’s sexuality. For a heterosexual male, sexual relationships with adult women may be difficult or unfulfilling for him.

With adult women, the man finds that identification and transference are troublesome and difficult. These aspects of his subconscious mind are more negative than positive in tone. At the base of his feelings towards women is fear. Whereas, by focusing on children he can relate to female sexuality without any overtones of negative identification and transference. Hence the sexuality of kids become a way of bypassing the bonding issues of his past.

When a man becomes excited by female sexuality, then this often initiates a catharsis. If he has problematic feelings about adult women, then the catharsis begins a reversal of values. Now he will be interested in phantasies of women as sluts and slaves, as his negative feelings begin to surface. The cathartic reversal of values is a negative one. However, if he is interested in children’s sexuality, then the cathartic reversal is a positive one, since there are no negative feelings in his subconscious mind about the sexuality of kids.

So for a child-orientated adult, his feelings towards the sexuality of kids can be quite different from his feelings towards the sexuality of adult women. When relating to kids, there are no issues of fear. He doesn’t have to face fear! He can put aside his wariness. He can experience sexuality without fear.

There is often an age cut-off to his sexual feelings towards kids. Young kids may fascinate him. However, when the girls get older and start to manifest adult characteristics, then his subconscious mind takes notice and starts to exert its negative influences on his sexual arousal. Fear creeps back into the picture and he starts to become wary of them. And so his interest in older girls wanes.

[³]. I have three articles on the Bonding process on my book Living in Times of Change, beginning with Overview of Bonding. [3]

[4]. Catharsis is a feature of Abreaction. I have six articles on Abreaction on the Home page. [4]

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Ian Heath
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.	Some Definitions In considering the origins of sexual orientations that are different from traditional norms, we have to look at the emotions that parents and society engender in the child. I start my analysis for a heterosexual male child with the assumption that he has a problematic love-hate relationship to the mother [¹]. This means that though he loves her, she has some personality characteristics that he strongly dislikes. For example she may be unsympathetic when he injures himself or she may be excessively fault-finding. So he feels that he does not get the emotional support from her that he needs. This creates fear and self-pity within him to the extent that as he becomes an adult he may divert “normal” (that is, socially-acceptable) sexual arousal into unusual channels. These two emotions interact so that the self-pity, which changes to jealousy (mode of self-pity) in order to cause the arousal, is then re-directed by the fear into the strange channels [²].
Sub - Headings
Sexual Interest in Children
Bonding and Validation
Regressive Imprinting
Three Kinds of Child Attraction
References