by Louise Ireland-Frey, M.D.

In her research with a pedophile, Dr. Louise Ireland-Frey was able to trace this history of pedophilia through seven life times. She details the background and therapeutic approaches employed in working with this patient over a period of several years. She discusses the methods of treatment, the employment of PLT techniques, and raises questions worthy of much further thought, discussion, and investigation.

Introduction

The term “pedophile” is a misnomer, for child-molesters do not love children; they only lust after the sights, touches, and activities involving certain parts of a young child’s body and receive intense pleasure from these. The rush of feeling appears to be neurologic like that of a purely physical orgasm or like the rush from an injection of heroin, with no true emotional component except as secondary to the physical and physiological ecstasy. These, however, are intense enough to cause the pedophile to behave and think like a true addict, with typical self-centered tunnel-thinking: “I like – I want – I need! –I must have! – I WILL GET!” This comes from a deep subconscious level with little or no conscious control, behavior bursting out impulsively, in many instances.

In the case of “Mac,” reported here with his permission, a lack of normal emotion was conspicuous, and there were many other divergences from normal attitudes and reactions which Mac himself recognizes, each time with surprise and bewilderment.

Some forms of aberrant behavior are considered incurable. I refused to allow myself to be “programmed” by this negative attitude when I found myself, although not well versed at all in psychiatric conditions of this sort, being presented with Mac’s case. I skimmed books, listened to tapes, spoke with others in the healing professions, but found little to assist me in planning Mac’s therapy Therefore I employed various types that might prove helpful: straight directive hypnotic programming and suggestions; post-hypnotic suggestions; regressions to birth and to early experiences in the present life; past-life regressions; contact with the minds of child-victims and their parents; Higher-Self contacts; Spiritual Advisors; and releasement of an obsessing entity.

Personality Sketch of the Client

 “Mac,” born in 1947, is an intelligent, well-educated, talented person. He is a respected member of several organizations, including a prominent church, and he does considerable volunteer work which is highly appreciated by those he helps. He is married and has two little daughters and a son. His wife has a part-time job outside the home. Outwardly they are a normal American family.

As a child in another region he often played with a younger brother (sexually), also with boy-cousins, and ever since has had compulsive urges to look at, touch, and handle small boys’ genital organs. There has been no sodomy nor any penile or oral contact with the children’s genitals. To Mac, his behavior has seemed perfectly normal and he has felt that persons without such instincts were abnormal. Yet he recognized that he must conceal this behavior or those others would “throw me in jail because they think I ought to be in jail.” This attitude puzzled him.

“I don’t like that word, ‘molestation’. I don’t feel it is that. Sometimes I only touch.” He meant stroking, manipulating, and what he calls fondling of the child’s body and sexual organs.

One counselor told him, “One doesn’t love with the hands; one loves with the heart.” Mac says he was surprised at this thought, and then appreciated the counselor’s “insight.”

Another counselor told him that he showed much resistance to changing his attitudes. Mac says he tried to reduce the resistance but admits that perhaps he was only masking it.

It was the second counselor who remarked, “Now that a complaint has been lodged against you publicly, maybe you will think of the consequences next time before you touch a child.” “But,” said Mac, “there is never any thought of ‘consequences.’ My hands just go out!” He lost confidence in this counselor, feeling that the counselor did not understand his problem. It was at this point that he came to me for therapy.

When his employer asked him to resign his job following newspaper reports, Mac was surprised and hurt. When the court ordered him to stay away from the day-school where his wife and other mothers worked, he felt deeply injured. The great anger of one boy’s father surprised him, too. He could not understand why the father should be angered. He honestly felt that he was no threat to anyone. Indeed, sometimes he felt he was doing the child a favor, loving and comforting him or giving him pleasure, projecting his own feelings. The problem was obviously on a very deep subconscious level. “But what is bad about it?” he asked in all sincerity.

I emphasized the social angle: “It is using human beings as objects for purely selfish purposes. It is using them like slaves, for your own desires or needs, not thinking of their thoughts, feelings, or welfare.” His blank stare revealed his inability to grasp this idea. Yet when he related how a minister had once used him for homosexual pleasure, he admitted, “I felt that I gave a lot more than I got.”

He is not homosexual in the sense of being gay. In fact, once he went to a Males Only video parlor that was showing homosexual hard-pornography tapes, just to see what his reactions might be. Some of the tapes were of child-pornography, as well. Mac said he was profoundly disgusted by all of them and left the place before the videos ended.

His personality is best described as being emotionally undeveloped, an example of the Peter Pan syndrome, of not wanting to grow up and hold responsibility—in Mac’s case, of sexual responsibility in particular. He himself recognized his sexual immaturity when he compared himself, at age 18, with boys of eight years, seeing himself more like the little boys than a teen-aged youth. Yet he had not really desired to become like the older boys.

Toward the end of the first year of therapy with me, more resistance began to surface. Repeatedly he phoned at the last minute to say he was delayed. Sometimes there would be two postponements within an hour. After a polite but rather direct confrontation about this habit, he made some improvement, phoning earlier to announce a delay, for instance. Once or twice he was almost on time.

I have wondered at times if he were a mild psychopath, so little sensitivity did he feel toward the children and no guilt nor remorse at all. His awareness of his wife’s stresses, too, is less emotional than intellectual. She not only feels burdened by having to be the chief breadwinner but is acutely embarrassed, ashamed, and angry about his “addiction.” Part of his therapy has been to educate him little by little. As we came to realize, perhaps never in all his lives, past or present, has he ever been given any definite ethical, moral, or spiritual teaching by a father or mother.

In this life, although his mother had enjoined him never to touch a girl, she had said nothing about not touching boys. Although both parents may have known about his sexual activities with his younger brother, neither one ever spoke to him or his brother. The only scolding he ever had was from an aunt who reprimanded him severely for encouraging a little girl cousin to dance nude (age about four or five) and touching her. The reprimand “hurt me terribly,” he said, and gave him a fear of the aunt that lasted many years.

More recently he reported having watched “Mr. Rogers” on the TV with his children. “It made me very angry when he said, ‘You are all right, we are all right,’ because that isn’t true! Some of us are NOT all right even though we always thought we were.” Again he felt deeply hurt and misunderstood.

Regressed to the birth experience, Mac found himself in breech presentation. His mother had wanted a girl, but the doctor had made a bet with her that this was a boy. When the breech presented, the doctor playfully “grabbed my genitals” and said triumphantly, “It’s a boy.” The baby’s subconscious mind associated the touch (the very first touch of a human hand, the first sensation from the outside world) and also the pleasure in the doctor’s voice, with the feeling that the male genitals were the most important part of his body and that an adult male obtained pleasure from touching the genitals of a smaller male. His mother’s disappointment in his sex was another factor in causing the child’s subconscious mind to turn toward the male, feeling rejection from the female.

Later the birth was rescripted as a head-presentation, with two loving and congenial parents who wanted a child and were glad to have a boy, etc. This rescripting might have been done earlier but the focus then was on past-life experiences, some of which were also rescripted. None of the past lives contained normal sexual patterns.

Other incidents and words from the present as well as past lives increased Mac’s feeling that the sex organs were the most important part of a male, but he did not associate any basic reproductive functions with them until he was in therapy. Mac had been unhappy when his organs began to increase in size at puberty; he wished to remain childlike physically, attracted as he was to the prepubertal organs of other boys. He married “because it was the thing everybody did at a certain age: get married,” but he had no pleasure in marital relations nor was he able to have intercourse without priming himself beforehand with fantasies of young boys. This was the situation in 1983, when Mac first came to me as a patient.

Methods of Treatment

Self-Directive Methods:

Shortly after beginning therapy with me, Mac took a sixteen-hour course in self-hypnosis as a foundation for further hypnotic work. He began to use self-written “programs,” working toward normalizing his sexuality, especially with regard to his relations with his wife and small boys, including his son. These were limited by his complete unfamiliarity with any true normal patterns but were at least a start. Most were reviewed and revised by me as seemed wise.

Directive Programming by the Therapist:

Directives in hypnosis were given to cancel out unnatural desires, and positive suggestions and information about natural feelings and actions were offered, including numerous biological reminders that the sex organs of any species are not intended for active use until they are mature and even then not biologically intended for use as playthings. Illustrations, narratives, and various analogies were also offered, such as chicks slowly developing in the egg until eventually breaking out; caterpillars becoming first a pupa and then a mature butterfly, etc. Mac revealed that until now he had never associated the genital organs with reproduction—even though he must have known, intellectually, inasmuch as he has children.

Strong aversive suggestions were also deeply implanted as a safeguard for any little boys he might attempt to touch, and for himself, lest he fall afoul of the law again. Post-hypnotic suggestions were given, too, for him to use from the conscious level when having marital relations with his wife or when tempted by a child.

Regression Therapies for Present-Life Events:

Regressions to events in the present life related to Mac’s “addiction” included the birth experience; fecal incontinence in early childhood; followed by years of chronic constipation during which he received many enemas from his mother, who was “less a nurse than a plumber.” Sex-play with his younger brother “made up such a large part of my life that I didn’t have many other activities.”

There were several experiences at school in which fear, anger, and helplessness when tormented by older boys were associated with “This will make a man of you.” A leaflet designed to teach the girls the basic facts of menstruation and pregnancy was denied to the boys but Mac stole one and read it. He found it disgusting, what parts he was able to understand, and he felt sorry for girls. He wanted no part in it.

During lambing season on the farm, Mac assisted his father and older brother when the ewes had difficulty. The father was neither skillful nor gentle, and again Mac felt sorry for females that had to undergo such pain and bleeding.

The greatest shock of all was when, at age 10, he asked his older brother how babies got started and was told, “The man pees into the girl’s vagina and leaves something that starts to grow.” Mac’s revulsion was so intense that he turned and ran, finding a place where he cried and cried. “I wanted to deny it—that people are like animals. I didn’t want to be any part of it…There wasn’t the natural step of understanding.” This experience came up twice spontaneously during therapy.

Past-Life Regressions:

1. The origin of Mac’s antipathy to heterosexuality was found in a life in Ancient Greece when the functions of excretion, and also, to Mac, by implication of reproduction, were taught as being unclean and were therefore covered by pretense that they did not exist, such things being taken care of by the gods. When the boy, walking in the country with a group of older boys, began to urinate at the roadside, there was a threat of mutilation, of “chopping it off,” if he did not go far off to urinate. In young adulthood he wondered why any man should want to deposit something from the penis into a woman, the penis being considered unclean. “I’ve learned that that which comes out of the body is unclean. Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

2. In England in the Middle Ages, Mac found himself a homeless orphan of ten who was picked up by a man on horseback, taken to a castle, and allowed to fall asleep on a fur rug near the fireplace. He was wakened to find a penis, “a large penis,” right in front of his face. “Bite it, just a little bit,” said the man. The startlement was enough to cause the lad to vow never to shock and frighten any little boy with his penis like that…Later the lad, walking in the forest, found himself trapped on a bridge by rough fellows at each end. “They want me, want my body, to be a servant and to play with sexually.” The men in the band consisted of two types, one of coarse heterosexual men who teased and tormented the boy, jeering as he came nude from bathing in the river, forcing him to drink strong bitter ale and laughing at his grimaces, telling him, “You’ll like it when you get to be a man like us.” But he did not want to become a man like them. The other type in the gang were the “gentle” homosexual men who fondled and caressed him. He liked them; but they lost interest in him when he reached his teens. At that time he left to seek a life of his own. There were no women in his life nor any heterosexual knowledge except hearing other men boast of their exploits with women in the towns.

3. Arabia, 1730. Rescued as a small orphaned child by a nomadic trader, he was “dressed in finery” and kept to be a servant and sex-toy for the man as part of his display of wealth. Sexual activity consisted of fondling and “visual satisfaction.” There was genuine, if superficial, affection until the boy reached puberty. When the boy was seventeen he was put out to fend for himself. He thought he should find a child to “rescue” for himself but he died from drinking bad water before fulfilling this plan. There were no women in this life except those at camps who wanted money, offering to “sell themselves.” His master seldom “bought” from any, except occasionally from one whom he had known before, a pretty woman at one camp who sometimes teased the boy in a maternal way, he thought. Women were mysterious, seldom seen, always clothed in long concealing garments.

4. Austria. The only child of a well-to-do upper class family, the boy was forbidden the companionship of the wise, friendly Oriental gardener and in his loneliness turned to the young children of neighboring families. Complaints from the neighbors about his inappropriate actions made the parents decide, when he was seventeen, to kill the sex urge” before he could disgrace the family. As the mother stood by to oversee, a man servant performed a crude sterilization, crushing “the tubes connecting the testicles” with a rock. (In the regression, instructions of the therapist prevented Mac’s contacting pain).

“He called them jewels: ‘I don’t enjoy doing this but it’s for your own good. You’ll still have your jewels, but they won’t sparkle as they did.’ But he enjoyed handling my genitals, I could tell…I didn’t have much choice.

A few years later he was sent to an isolated residential facility, a cottage where he and eight or nine other men were supervised by a dominant woman, “to protect society from us.” Again there were no women in his life except for this housemother, “and she’s out of our reach, above us. She gives, and we accept what she gives.” She had authority over the men and felt protective and responsible for them. “There was no sexuality except for the penis itself…”

5. England, near London. Living by the city dump and living off of it, Mac had built himself a “domicile” from scraps and had furnished it with “treasures” that had been thrown away: pictures, chairs, etc. He made money by finding and selling things to people who “came to acquire.” He felt that he was part of the Maintenance of the dump. He saw many people every day, but few women came and they all seemed old, heavily clothed, no impression of youth or prettiness possible—all mysterious and distant. At a tavern Mac sometimes frequented he saw women “selling their wares”: “I buy their refreshment (drinks) but not beyond that. I’m not sure what their wares might be or how to go about it…Ignorance. No sexual life of any kind…I guess I learned from this life that the human body is not very important, bathing is not important.” This life provides an extreme contrast to the Greek life with its overemphasis on “cleanliness” and the physical body’s importance as only a vessel for mind.

6. Appalachia, USA. Again, Mac was a boy, this time a classmate of the girl who in the present is his wife. She, taught by her parents, held high ethical and moral values whereas he and the other children lied, cheated, and stole without guilt because of a total lack of parental training. He was attracted by her idealism. Asked in the regression to go to a normal sexual relationship with a person of the opposite sex, Mac found himself sitting on a fence beside the girl. He slid his hand along the fence until it touched her and then he placed it on her knee—and she giggled. This was the “normal sexual relationship!”

7. (Future time in present life) When the wording was changed to, “Go to a normal sexual experience with an adult person of the opposite sex,” Mac found himself in the future! During a plane ride, the hostess seemed to be attracted to him. Following her lead and responding, he had what was perhaps his first really normal heterosexual intercourse. Avoiding the implications of possible infidelity or the death of Mac’s present wife, the naturalness of the hypnotic experience was utilized for post-hypnotic suggestions that could assist normal feelings during sexual unions with his wife, who is trying to be patient through Mac’s long period of slow maturation. Mac did think of these implications of the progression and expressed fear that his wife might someday leave him: “It frightens me.” This aspect was dealt with by presenting the various options, first to Mac, then to his wife in separate sessions. Both felt they would be together a long time.

Regressions to Present-Life Contacts with Children and/or their Parents:

These regressions were to increase Mac’s sensitivity to the feelings of his young victims, especially as to their loss of trust in him; their fear, embarrassment, or shame; their feelings of helplessness or anger or both; and the anger of the parents and their subsequent suspicion of him.

After first getting the incident as an ordinary regression, the wording used by the therapist was simply, “Now go back to the beginning and let your mind be in the boy. Relive the entire experience as the boy, feeling his feelings and being aware of his thoughts.” This approach produced vivid first-person accounts of each child’s reactions, which Mac himself in “blended consciousness” felt keenly. This technique appeared to be more effective than any other technique used, so far as can be estimated, even more effective than work on the superconscious level (which for Mac seemed to be lower than for most other clients) or assistance from Spiritual Advisors who had been invited to help.

Superconscious Level and Spiritual Advisors

 The Higher Level of awareness for Mac seemed to be not much higher than his conscious level for any particular incident and called for further enlargement and instruction from the therapist. Only then did Mac attain a somewhat broader view of events.

The first two Advisors, similarly, were not much higher than intelligent human beings and were perceptibly colored by Mac’s own personality traits. The female Advisor, for instance, appeared to him as a friendly witch such as he had admired in a television series, mysterious and with supernormal powers, at first dressed in very dark, almost black, blue until it was suggested that a lighter color might be less depressing to Mac. The male Advisor offered good advice (as also did the female Advisor) but his power seemed to be more in his very strong masculine “physical” appearance than in his spirituality. His background must have been similar to that of Mac in sexual ways, judging from the suggestions and warnings he offered to Mac.

Asking later for more spiritual wise Advisors, after thanking the first two and asking that they remain available to Mac, we contacted two who seemed much more nearly normal in human ways: a large motherly woman who felt that Mac needed to be loved and cherished like an infant until he grew older and more mature; and a grandfatherly man who touched Mac (arm around his shoulders, pat on the back, hugs, etc.) and promised to “walk beside you” wherever Mac went and he with him in time of any need. Even these had little that might be called truly spiritual except for the gentleness and genuine human love. Mac is a church member, but his religion appeared to be of an intellectual nature almost lacking in emotion or devotion, at least as I saw it.

For the sake of brevity, the accounts of regressions to the child-victims and those of the Spiritual Advisors are all omitted here except for these brief sketches, in favor of presenting the past-life experiences more fully.

Course of Progress During Therapy

 Mac’s progress proceeded in steps or stages, sometimes backsliding into an earlier stage. From a primary self-description of his psycho-sexual age as being about eight years and feeling that it was “normal” for every young boy of that age to desire to play with other boys’ genitalia, he gradually came to admit that he did, in fact, have a “problem” and that the problem needed to be addressed as such. A much later step was the surprised intellectual realization that the genital organs have to do with generating new creatures—i.e., with reproduction—in the natural order of biological life; whereas other uses, especially of immature genitalia, are biologically unnecessary, some also unnatural.

A further state was reached when he felt able to give up fantasizing about young boys in order to prime himself before having intercourse with his wife. But he said, “There’s not much satisfaction for me without fantasizing…If I give it up, what shall I have for warmth?” The poverty of his emotional life was expressed clearly in this revealing question. His wife once told him bitterly, “There is no way I can compete with a twelve year old boy.”

Gradually he became able to cease tempting himself, no longer going out of his way to pass by schools or daydreaming about young boys he saw on the streets. Then by an effort of will he was able to resist sudden chance situations that once would have tempted him. This control over his mind began to become an automatic rejection of lustful thoughts, and only later would he recognize the “possibilities” that had presented, for touching or fantasizing. The stage of mere control seemed to be evolving into a higher state of true transformation.

Two weeks or more might then pass, sometimes, without thoughts of “the old addiction.” Mac would be busy with other activities and have only a flicker of a desirous thought at sight of a young boy, almost below the conscious level if at all.

Finally he was able to have sexual union with his wife without resorting to preliminary fantasizing. “I’m glad not to have to use fantasies. There’s no pleasure when I have to fantasize.” Compared to comments he had made, this showed definite progress, though therapy was still incomplete.

After two and a half years, seventy-seven sessions in all, I tested Mac in several little imaginary scenarios while he was in hypnosis. I suggested that it was the day after his Probation had ended and he was walking to his job. “How do you feel?” I asked. “Oh, I suppose about as usual,” he said thoughtfully; “it’s just another day.” This was a positive attitude, I felt, rather than for him to have expressed relief or joy that the Probation period was over and, by implication, that he could relax vigilance somewhat. In the other “tests” I also felt that he had “passed” and that the major part of therapy had been accomplished. It gave me pleasure to inform him of this, and to terminate therapy.

This was my error. I should have continued to see him at least semi-monthly for the next several years. Almost three and a half years later, during which time I did not see him professionally, another complaint of molestation was lodged against him. I realized that I had been overly optimistic in my prognosis. A brief note from Mac outlined what had happened: “I did not ‘assault’ him, though obviously he felt that I had, and had bad dreams afterward.” It was clear that Mac did not sense the extent of the child’s disturbance and the badness of the dreams.

After months of seeing various counselors, psychiatrists, and lawyers, Mac came again to me, telling about all the support that friends and family were giving him—never mentioning the child unless I asked. Most of the material obtained in hypnosis had faded from his conscious memory—retained subconsciously only.

We had another session and in hypnosis discovered the presence of “Barnie” in him, a boy he had molested at a summer camp years ago. Seldom do ideomotor finger movements tell falsehoods, but the No finger had repeatedly indicated no obsessing entities in Mac. Barnie was discovered indirectly after a regression to the boyhood camp experience. Mac had been recalling with pleasure that experience and had sent a letter to Barnie, receiving back a note from Barnie’s brother that Barnie (gay and possibly infected with AIDS) had recently died at age twenty-eight. Now Barnie, apparently drawn by Mac’s renewed interest in him, had come and entered Mac as an obsessing entity, influencing him perhaps more than he is aware of. Barnie was unrepentant, uncaring about the great trouble he had caused Mac, thinking only of the pleasure he could get from little boys through Mac’s body and emotions.

After Barnie’s leaving, through Releasement techniques, Mac noticed changes for the better in several ways within hours. He reported at the next session that he was able to enjoy marital relations with his wife without either fantasizing or feeling the pressure of Barnie’s presence as a hindering reluctance.

I felt that therapy could now be resumed with much better chance for success, and produce much faster results with Barnie gone. I also felt that it was advisable that a psychiatrist work with Mac. The courts, however, sent him to a clinic in another city, where Mac took a room and saw a psychologist in weekly Group Therapy sessions, at a cost he could ill afford. There never developed any degree of rapport between the psychologist and Mac. On the contrary, Mac struggled with anger and increasing resistance both to the therapy—which was almost the diametric opposite to my methods—and to the therapist. Eventually, with the aid of his lawyer and probation officer, he managed to get transferred to a different clinic in another city. His occasional notes to me say that he is cooperating with the group therapy there. He seems to respect the psychologist and the therapeutic approach. I reminded him that one of his Spiritual Advisors had warned that if the eradication of the abnormal patterns in his psyche is not accomplished in this life, the same problem will reappear in the next lifetime, perhaps with still greater hardship and loneliness.

Meanwhile, Mac seems to be deeply sincere in his resolution to achieve what a Spiritual Advisor told him was the goal for this incarnation: “to become adult.”

Questions in Conclusion

 “What then, did the hand of the Potter slip?” asks Omar Khayyam. “Sometimes accidents do happen even in Nature,” comments Edgar Cayce’s Source of Information. We see embryos that do not develop properly, plants that grow twisted, deformed. We call certain types of human beings genetically abnormal or psychologically abnormal, “sociopathic,” “psychopathic.” As Mac said, “Some of us are NOT ‘all right,’ even though we always thought we were.”

Is this a case of a sociopath, incurable even by past-life therapy and releasement? Is Mac a soul from another planet, entering human life only a few lifetimes ago? Was he cursed in an ancient lifetime? Or is Mac’s psyche simply deficient in certain respects, as if his aura were missing the rose color of love and affection, for instance, and had too much of the red of desire and lust? If so, what is the basic cause? Mac appears to be a human being of normal intelligence, more than average artistic talents, but retarded in certain affective, ethical, and spiritual parts of his being. The tendencies to succumb to mere outward “properness” (as he called it) for the sake of social appearances, and to the secret pleasures of sex fantasies and “yellow journalistic” thoughts about friends and acquaintances may still be a deep part of his psyche. He is still in therapy; his term of probation still has more than two years to run.

Therapists should not give up on such cases with the easy solution of calling them “incurable.” Did I, as therapist, fail to ask the most important questions of all, “What is the basic cause of this deficiency in the ability to feel, to express, and to receive genuine love?” and, “Why did your soul choose, or why was it compelled, to experience this psychological deficiency? Go to the original experience (not necessarily in a human incarnation) that predisposed your psyche to this deficiency.” Metaphysical hypnotherapy might yet discover the answer to these questions.

Communications from therapists who have dealt with similar cases are welcomed.