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Web End = Arch Sex Behav (2015) 44:11091116 DOI 10.1007/s10508-015-0542-0
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Web End = SPECIAL SECTION: DSM-5: CLASSIFYING SEX
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Web End = Hebephilia: A Postmortem Dissection
Patrick Singy1
Published online: 18 April 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract In 2008, the concept of hebephilia, which denotes an erotic preference forpubescent children,was suggested by Blanchard and his team for inclusion in the DSM-5 (Blanchard etal.,2009).Fouryearslater,theAPAsBoardofTrusteesopted for the status quo and rejected that proposal. This essay sheds light on the reason for this rejection. I consider three important questions related to hebephilia: Does hebephilia exist? Is it a disease? And what would have been the social consequences of including it in the DSM? I argue that if Blanchard failed to convince others that hebephilia should be included in the DSM-5, it is not because he focused too much on the rst question and was unable to offer a convincing answer to the second one, but because he made the mistake of dismissing the third one as extraneous. The DSM is not intended to be a pure research manual, and a category like hebephilia cannot be evaluated without taking into account its potential forensic impact. In part or in whole, the decision to include a new diagnostic category in the DSM is, and always should be, a political decision.
Keywords Hebephilia Pedophilia Paraphilia DSM-5
Forensic psychiatry
Introduction
The category of hebephilia denotes an erotic preference for individuals who are in the Tanner stages 23. The Tanner stages describe the development of puberty, from 1 (prepubertal) to 5
(fully mature). They are determined by visible characteristics, such as the size of the breasts and genitalia or the presence of pubichair.Duetonaturalvariation,thecorrespondencebetween physical characteristics and age can only be approximate, but Tanner stages 2 and 3 roughly correspond to ages 1115. Hebephilia thus falls between pedophilia, which is the erotic preference for prepubescent children, and ephebophilia, which was rst described by Hirschfeld (1906, p. 198) as the non-pathological erotic preference for young people between the ages of 16 and 20. Most people agree that pedophilia is a disease (for...