Conclusion
The cases in this book have dealt largely with the twilight areas of female aggressiveness and nymphophiliac suggestion; that is, most of our cases here have shown dual peculiarities in our subjects-peculiarities which complimented each other. Where the nymphophile did not quite have the courage or motivation to take the final steps into a sexual encounter, he was encouraged by the girl. To be sure, the girl's wiles could not have found their target unless the nymphophile appeared.
It should be emphasized that we have not dealt her with the severest form of nymphophilia; that dealing with attraction to very young girls-from ages ten and downward-although some allusions are made to such histories producing aggression (in the form of undue willingness) in several of our subjects.
Although it is not possible to examine all the diverse reasons for the occurrence of nymphophilia in our society (it seems to manifest itself a bit differently in different societies), we might mention those causes which are given most frequently. First, we are--likely very often to encounter the explanation that the nymphophile is responding to "feelings of inferiority." The inferiority feeling, it is said, prevents the male from establishing a sexual relationship with an adult female. Then he turns to children, with whom he is able to be more at ease. But this, of course, does little to explain the actual instance of "child-love," since in this case the child is in no sense a substitute for a preferred older partner. Neither do such concepts as timidity, impotence, or "pubic hair phobia" serve to explain true nymphophilia, although the first two may help to explain some child molestations.
Probably the most accepted theory regarding causation is the Freudian one which advances the notion of an unresolved Oedipus complex. Here, any mature female is equated with the mother. And, since coitus with such a woman thus would activate the unresolved conflict, the desires are fixed rather upon figures which cannot possibly pass for the mother image. Yet, once again, it would seem that at most we have an explanation only for rejection of the mature female as an object of desire. The nymphophile's specific desire for the child still goes unexplained despite some attempted amplifications. Also, one wonders, were this theory valid, would the nymphophile, in so many instances, prefer a child whose breasts, though small, have started to develop, who has scant, but not entirely absent, pubic hair, and who, in other ways, gives evidence of approaching womanhood? Why would he not prefer a still younger child who exhibits even less evidence of her femaleness? Or does the nymphophile, possibly, seize upon these signs of the female because he does crave femaleness in the sex object, but can tolerate only limited amounts of it? If that is the case, then might he acquire this deviation rather than, say, homosexuality for the reason that he is able to tolerate somewhat more of the feminine that can those homosexuals who also are in flight from woman and possibly from incest?
To further call up the various types of reasoning we should consider, let us quote from R.E.L. Masters (Sex-Driven People):
That the nymphophile may in childhood have had some erotic experience with a young girl that has caused him to fix his desires upon such an object would seem to be another possibility. However, here one is obliged to admit that the crucial experience, if it occurred, often has remained inaccessible whatever the psychotherapeutic method employed to bring it up into consciousness. Therefore the theory, while appealing to "common sense," cannot presently be verified if advanced as a general one intended to explain all cases. Also, with regard to this and some other theories, we are left to wonder how it is that a good many persons become aware of the deviation only after a period of fairly successful heterosexual functioning on an adult level, as occurred with (a subject in the book). Nymphophilia is not the only aberration that often makes itself manifest only after such a period of apparent normalcy; and the question of why the deviation does not operate at full force from the beginning of the overt sexual life is one that remains to be adequately answered . ...
As might be imagined from this and other references in this book, controversies hang on regarding the attraction of the mature for the sexually immature. It is first of all to be restated that help has been afforded certain men so afflicted (as well as women, although such cases are rarely brought to light), and certain other types of the aberration are relatively immune to known psychiatric techniques-opaque, so to speak, to the lights now illuminating the whole of the psychoanalytic sciences.