Findings were obtained from the psychoanalytic study of individuals who, in the course of their psychoanalysis, have engaged in pedophiliac acts for a variety of motivations. The author divides such individuals into those who for situational and other reasons have engaged in pedophiliac behavior or fantasy, as well as those who are true obligatory pedophile perverts. The pedophiliac activity refers only to sexual congress between an adult and a prepubertal child. Most individuals who engage in adult-child sexual contacts, whether incestuous or not, are not true obligatory pedophile perverts. A pedophile pervert must, out of inner necessity, engage in sexual acts with children or suffer intolerable anxiety. Adult-child sexual contacts occur in states of depression, deprivation, and loneliness, especially in those who have not developed a satisfactory adult heterosexual pattern. Sexual desire for children is usually a transitory impulse followed by much guilt and despair, but in those who are psychopathic occurs with very little conscience or self-reproach. Pedophile activities constitute a perversion when they are the exclusive and preferred method of achieving arousal and orgastic release as the usual channels for sexual behavior are chronically blocked by massive fears and unconscious conflicts and anxieties. 7 references