ABSTRACT
Krafft-Ebing's monograph on sexual psychopathy dates back approximately to the same period in Germany. From 1886 he began to deal with a group of perversions characterised by an erotic inclination for childhood, which he named erotic paedophilia. Krafft-Ebing described a phenomenon whose spread was often overlooked: brothels which offered male youths and adults to satisfy the sexual appetite of 'normal' adult paedophiles existed in many European cities. The extensive psychiatric literature gives very little space to paedophilic behaviour, which is restricted to the group of perversions, steeped in moral judgements. There is a lack of any real desire for knowledge in order effectively to overcome the theories of degenerationism and heredity, which have been set up as a sort of instinctive imaginary teratology. In the American Psychiatric Association's first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) paedophilia was categorised as 'pathological sexuality', and in DSM-II it was considered a 'sexual deviation'.
