Psychiatric association debates reclassifying pedophilia

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In a step critics charge could result in decriminalizing sexual contact between adults and children, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) recently sponsored a symposium in which participants discussed the removal of pedophilia from an upcoming edition of the psychiatric manual of mental disorders. Some mental health professionals attending an annual APA convention May 19 in San Francisco proposed removing several long-recognized categories of mental illness - including pedophilia, exhibitionism, fetishism, transvestism, voyeurism and sadomasochism - from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Most of the mental illnesses being considered for removal are known as "paraphilias."

Dr. Charles Moser of San Francisco's Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality and co-author Peggy Kleinplatz of the University of Ottawa presented conferees with a paper entitled "DSM-IV-TR and the Paraphilias: An Argument for Removal." People whose sexual interests are atypical, culturally forbidden or religiously proscribed should not necessarily be labeled mentally ill, they argued. [...]

source: Article 'Psychiatric Association Debates Reclassifying Pedophilia' by Lawrence Morahan; www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=%5CCulture%5Carchive%5C200306%5CCUL20030611c.html; Cybercast News Service; 11 June 2003