What is the psychological reasoning behind pedophiles?
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Hey there!
These days there is a fair amount of research put into the possible origins of pedophilic preferences. You can see a list of relevant academic papers in the [research section](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskVirPed/wiki/science) of the [r/AskVirPed](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskVirPed/) subreddit.
What’s still missing from the list is one of my favorite and most neuropsychologically comprehensive papers on the subject: [The Neurobiology and Psychology of Pedophilia: Recent Advances and Challenges (Tenbergen et al., 2015)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4478390/).
Modern clinical understanding of pedophilia has taken a step away from seeing it as purely something you could “acquire” through life events and conditioning, and towards something that is inborn to some degree due to changes in the brain during fetal development or otherwise difficult to distinguish functionally from attractions towards adult body schemes.
Please bear in mind that none of this means that it would be okay to choose to abuse a child. Adult-child sexual acts are inherently abusive towards the child and can easily cause tremendous long-term harm and suffering for anyone forced to endure such crimes.
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