ABSTRACT
The term pedophilia literally means love of children and the pedophile attends a psychiatric clinic either because he is bothered by sexual desire for children or has been charged with a sexual offence involving a child. Superficially the anomaly seems straight forward but there are several practical problems that create considerable ambiguity in understanding this behavior. First, there is uncertainty about the definition of “child”. Age may be used to distinguish the child from the adult but various authors suggest 12, 13, 15 and even 18 years of age as a cutoff point. Others indicate puberty as the end of childhood or use age differences between the offender and victim as a criterion. A spread of 7-or-10 years and as few as 4 years age difference have been suggested to define pedophilia. Thus research and therapy on pedophilia covers a very heterogeneous group of men.
