I'm going to take the Buddhist/mindfulness perspective here, which is becoming increasingly popular in clinical psychology (e.g., Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), and propose that there are no "bad thoughts." Thoughts just happen. When a man notices a twinge of arousal when looking at a naked, prepubescent child, it doesn't mean he's having "pedophilic thoughts," it just means he's a human male. (A study in Eastern Europe found that some 70% of 19-year-old male soldiers experienced that kind of physiological response when seeing photos of young naked children.) When an exhausted new mother has a momentary thought of violence -- which happens to nearly every exhausted new mother! -- it only means she's stressed. It's normal to have all sorts of thoughts that you'd never, ever want to act on, and it causes all sorts of psychological grief to react to these thoughts with the guilt of fearing that you really mean them. It's best not even to try to suppress them, but rather, just notice them, interpret them in a way that doesn't
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Your data on 19 year-olds just makes sense. The human mind doesn’t pop into adulthood ex nihilo, and a 19 year-old isn’t too far removed from the days when his/her formative sexual thoughts were of people aged 9-14. You’d expect some residual responses there.
A second strategy might go something like this: such thoughts are a product of our imagination, which is a defining feature of our humanity. Since the imagination is a good thing to have, the inevitable bizarre thoughts that accompany the imagination can’t be dismissed as wrong or bad. In fact, in this light they may seem good.
However, I think this leads to a refinement of Gina’s question. We might think that it is the content of the imagined thoughts that makes them bead, but it’s clear that it is in fact the emotional response to the content that matters. I can think of a horribly offensive thing right now. (Oh, god, that’s gross.) But if I found it, say, emotionally stimulating in a certain way, I might be said to have a bad character
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A second strategy might go something like this: such thoughts are a product of our imagination, which is a defining feature of our humanity. Since the imagination is a good thing to have, the inevitable bizarre thoughts that accompany the imagination can’t be dismissed as wrong or bad. In fact, in this light they may seem good.
However, I think this leads to a refinement of Gina’s question. We might think that it is the content of the imagined thoughts that makes them bead, but it’s clear that it is in fact the emotional response to the content that matters. I can think of a horribly offensive thing right now. (Oh, god, that’s gross.) But if I found it, say, emotionally stimulating in a certain way, I might be said to have a bad character ( ... )
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