Pedophiles
Pedophiles
Pedophiles are individuals who have a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children.
Etymology and definitions
Title page of the tenth edition of Psychopathia Sexualis (1899, translated)
The word pedophilia comes from the Greek παῖς, παιδός (paîs, paidós), meaning "child", and φιλία (philía), "friendly love" or "friendship".[16]
The term paedophilie (in German) started being used in the 1830's among researchers of pederasty in Ancient Greece.
It was further used in the field of forensics after the 1890's, following Richard von Krafft-Ebing's coinage of the term paedophilia erotica in the 1896 edition of Psychopathia Sexualis.
Krafft-Ebing was the first researcher to use the term pedophilia to refer to a pattern of sexual attraction toward children who had not yet reached puberty, excluding pubescent minors from the pedophilic age range.
In 1895, the English word pedophily was used as a translation of the German word pädophilie.[17]
The term pedophilia was hardly used by 1945, but started appearing in medical records after 1950.
By the 1950's and throughout the 1980's, the word pedophilia started being increasingly used by the popular media.[17]
Infantophilia (or nepiophilia) is a sub-type of pedophilia; it is used to refer to a sexual preference for children under the age of 5 (especially infants and toddlers).[18][9]
This is sometimes referred to as nepiophilia (from the Greek: νήπιος (népios) meaning "infant" or "child," which in turn derives from "ne-" and "epos" meaning "not speaking"), though this term is rarely used in academic sources.[19][20]
Hebephilia is defined as individuals with a primary or exclusive sexual interest in 11- to 14-year-old pubescents.[21]
The DSM-5 does not list hebephilia among the diagnoses.
While evidence suggests that hebephilia is separate from pedophilia, the ICD-10 includes early pubertal age (an aspect of hebephilia) in its pedophilia definition, covering the physical development overlap between the two philias.[22]
In addition to hebephilia, some clinicians have proposed other categories that are somewhat or completely distinguished from pedophilia; these include pedohebephilia (a combination of pedophilia and hebephilia) and ephebophilia (though ephebophilia is not considered pathological).[23][24]