On Paedophilia

Cosimo Schinaia is a psychiatrist who worked as Director of Mental Health Centre of Central Genoa for many years. He is a training and supervising psychoanalyst of SPI (Italian Psychoanalytical Society) and a full member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He has published many scientific papers for both Italian and international journals and books, including ' Dal Manicomio alla Citta'; 'Il Cantiere delle Idee'; and 'Pedofilia Pedofilie: La Psicoanalisi e il Mondo del Pedofilo'. He currently lives and works in private practice in Genoa. Antonella Sansone is a research/clinical psychologist particularly imterested in pre- and post-natal life. She is a yoga practitioner and this reflects her belief in the importance of the mind and body unity and balance as a foundation of health. As a baby massage teacher she believes that mindful massage for infants has the potential to regulate the mother-baby psychobiological rhythms and thus be a vital part of the bonding process and a reassuring extension of the womb experience.

'The report of a paedophilic act may arouse at a conscious level profound pity for the victim, and disgust and violent retaliatory wishes toward the often demonised perpetrator. At a deeper, perhaps preconscious level, there may be a pang of guilt about the failure to protect the sexually vulnerable and immature child from the sexually mature adult. At an even deeper, unconscious level, there may be a hint of primal terror in response to the breach of a timeless foundation of society, namely the maintenance of the sexual boundary between the generations. The paedophilic act is difficult to think about because it disturbs our normal orientation to reality. It is not uncommon for us to defend against these strong, disturbing feelings and fantasies at a conscious, preconscious, and unconscious level by projection, denial and repression. Even psychoanalysts, with our special interest in the unconscious, have written relatively little about paedophilia. Cosimo Schinaia's book On Paedophilia is an exception. It is an impressive, scholarly, and much needed addition to psychoanalytic literature on this neglected subject. In his Introduction, Schinaia responds to the meagre psychoanalytic bibliography on paedophilia by asking: "why have psychoanalysts not been interested in the issue of paedophilia, and specifically in the psychopathology of the paedophile"? He not only proceeds to address that question, but through the eleven chapters of his book Dr Schinaia and his colleagues proceed to deepen and broaden our knowledge of the psychopathology of the paedophile.'- Donald Campbell, child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst working in the National Health Service and in private practice. He served as Chairman of the Portman Clinic and is past President of the British Psycho-Analytical Society.

• Foreword -- Introduction to the English Edition -- Introduction -- Social and cultural aspects which foster paedophilic behaviour -- Myth and paedophilia -- Fairy tales and paedophilic fantasies -- Notes on the history of paedophilia -- Paedophilia in medical and psychiatric thought -- Psychoanalysis and paedophilia -- Contributions to the definition and typology of paedophilic personalities and behaviours through fiction -- The paedophilic relationship -- A case of paedophilic perversion -- A case of paedophilic perversity -- The working group