James Cantor

In 2016, Cantor and his research were the subject of a documentary, I, Pedophile, which featured Cantor alongside interviews with pedophilic men. The program followed Cantor to the Prevention Project Dunkelfeld in Berlin, the other only centre in the world conducting research on the brain basis of pedophilia. In 2017, it was nominated for but did not win the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television award for best social/political documentary.

Cantor delivered the keynote address at the founding of the Netherlands Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers in 2015.

Cantor has stated that, in his experience, pedophiles who commit sexual offenses against children "do so when they feel the most desperate—when they have nothing to lose, nothing in their lives worth protecting." He recommends that therapists use cognitive behavioral therapy and other techniques to reduce feelings of isolation and hopelessness so that pedophiles can lead "productive, offense-free lives."

Cantor stated that the online group Virtuous Pedophiles—a group for pedophiles who acknowledge having a sexual interest in children, and whose members share the belief that sexual activity between adults and children is wrong and always will be—could help prevent child sexual abuse. He said such sites work by providing support to people who cannot seek help through traditional means for fear of being demonized—and reported to the police. He states that pedophiles "experience desire, affection, and heartbreak as strongly as anybody else. It is a deep, dark, long-lasting ache, and they can’t tell a soul."

Referring to research comparing BDSM practitioners with non-BDSM counterparts, Cantor said what was interesting was "how few differences and how small the differences were between these groups." He added, "Overall, it doesn't look like there is anything special that makes a person curious about BSDM. Instead, it seems that people who are extroverted and open to experience in general will experiment with all kinds of things—sex being just one of them."

Cantor is one of the co-authors of a 2008 paper by Ray Blanchard, which shaped the DSM-5 proposal of replacing the pedophilia diagnosis with pedohebophilic disorder, adding hebephilia as part of the definition of this disorder but at the same time differentiating it into three subtypes: pedophilic type (attracted to children younger than 11), hebephilic (attracted to children between 11–14), and pedohebephilic type (attracted to both age groups mentioned). The main argument in the paper for this addition is that the DSM-IV-TR definition of pedophilia is not sufficient to cover attraction to "physically immature persons". The proposal was criticized by Richard Green and Karen Franklin, mainly on the grounds that it pathologizes reproductively valid behavior in order to uphold current social and legal standards. It was not added to the DSM-5.

Cantor gave a speech about his personal experience of being a gay graduate student at the 1991 annual convention of the American Psychological Association.

James M. Cantor (born January 2, 1966) is a Canadian clinical psychologist and sexologist, specializing in hypersexuality and atypical sexual interests. He is a former editor of the journal Sexual Abuse and an expert on paraphilias. His neuroscience research on brain differences in pedophiles has been cited as evidence that pedophilia is something unchangeable and that people are likely born with it.