Pedophilia: Etiologic models

Abstract

Pedophilia is defined as a recurrent sexual attraction towards pre-pubescent children. It is a serious and ubiquitous problem with clinical, social, moral and legal implications.The aim of this poster is to describe the factors that are most often associated with this paraphilia and to analyse some of the proposed etiological theories. In the past, etiological theories gave more importance to environmental factors, but recent studies have emphasized more and more the importance of neurobiological factors.Even though several factors have been identified, there are very few certainties when it comes to their role in the etiology of this disease and most of the proposed theories have a speculative nature.