Yesenia Bravo
March 13, 2013
LaGuardia Community College
Professor Greco
DSM4 Disorder In class we were asked to look into the DSM4-TR and to pick a disorder that we want to write about. A disorder that I found rather interesting to myself was pedophilia. This disorder stuck out to me because not many people talk about it and also because I have little to no knowledge on this topic. Pedophilia is a disorder that involves abnormal interest in sexual activities with children of any age; some victims are adults as well. Pedophilia could be a fantasy or a sexual act where prepubescent children are preferred and forced to perform oral sex, or have sexual encounter with their attacker. Victims of pedophiles are commonly of the same sex as the attacker, but victims vary from young to old, boy or girl. There are many symptoms of pedophilia. Most of them suffer depression, frequent sexual urges, mood disorder and attraction to children. Another symptom is having the urge to dominate ones partner. To many theorists this symptom explains why most pedophiles target children. Pedophiles view children as weak and targets that can be easily dominated. If the victim of pedophilia is a family member of his/her attacker, it’s easier for the attacker to gain the trust of their victim and have easy access to them. Most of children victim’s know there attacker, nearly half of the cases reported are a family member. The children pedophiles usually target are prepubescent. The reason for the victims to be prepubescent is because they are "fresh" and "innocent" to the attackers. There has not been a gene discovered for pedophilia as of yet. Some people think that pedophilia is the result of being