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Mainstream theorizing of paedophilia from the mid-1920s through to mid-1960, and even into the 1980s, was importantly psychodynamically oriented. The early history of the concept of paedophilia in early psychodynamic thought is problematic, however. Extant historical references are not without problems of their own, and have suffered from a lack of insight in the wider history of sexuality at this point of 'erotic age preferences'. Review of primary sources highlights several contemporaneous interfaces of early psychodynamic theory: with the established forensic psychology of perpetrators of child sexual abuse; Krafft-Ebing's specific aetiological concept of age fetishism; early study and typologies of homosexual age preferences; emergent and divergent ideas about psychosexual infantilism; and strikingly late empirical attention to the psychiatry of the perpetrator of intergenerational incest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a medical examination, in late March 1908, Rebecca Levi, a young in-patient in the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, made a serious allegation against Jones. Having discussed the matter, behind closed doors, the hospital Committee called upon Jones to resign. Many years later Jones wrote up his account of the 1908 Affair, which his biographers and historians of psychoanalysis have accepted more or less without question. Such uncritical readings raise questions as to how the psychoanalytic community chooses to engage with the allegations of indecent (child) assault levelled against Jones. Reading the contemporaneous documents, including Ian Malcolm's letters to Jones, Dr Savill's account of Rebecca Levi together with various other texts, reveals serious discrepancies in Jones's narrative, thereby suggesting a far more disturbing scenario than Jones ever allowed. The paper concludes by examining the distinctions to be drawn around Jones's sexual relationships with his adult patients as opposed to his treatment of prepubescent girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]