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It's wrong to suggest that psychological researchers are capable of changing the law, or even that they are interested in doing so. Psychology is not findamentally about changing the status quo. It is a conservative discipline: it upholds existing power-structures rather than challenging or critiquing them. (There are a few exceptions - there are some critical psychologists, but they have no influence at all over the clinical discipline.) The job of psychology is to justify the law as it is, not to propose reasons to change it. It is completely the wrong place to begin from if you want legislative or cultural reform. Psychology follows culture and the law - it does not lead it. Change how people think about paedophilia, and clinical psychology will follow. But of course, that first part is the challenging bit. It is the reason why I think that "MAP advocates" grossly underestimate both the nature and the scale of the challenge that we face. Who's actually being unrealistic here? |