The Phenomenon of Child Molestation
The Phenomenon of Child Molestation
This chapter analyzes child sex abuse as both a real and phantasmatic phenomenon in the West that has become prominent in the last 40 years. It theorizes the secular ritual of rehabilitation of child molesters in its relation to the changing legal and social regulation of adult child relations. Arising from this relatively new phenomenon are a set of significant issues: defining and diagnosing paraphilia, transforming taboos into illegalities, including sex in anthropological concepts of incest, understanding anew the significance of parricide in the Oedipal complex, redefining intimacy and perversion in the changing lifecourse of men, recognizing disgust in the transference with the phenomenon of child sex abuse, overcoming obstacles to knowledgeability about child sex abuse and child sex molesters, creating untouchability in definitions of transgressive sex, acknowledging evidence of the efficacy of treatment of child sex offenders.
Keywords: father incest, fieldwork, paraphilia, Oedipus complex, theory, sex panic, treatment, phantasmatic, renunciation, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
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