Necrophilia

Necrophilia
The Hatred, painted by Pietro Pajetta, 1896.
Classification and external resources
Specialty	Psychiatry
ICD-10	F65.89
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Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia, is a sexual attraction or sexual act involving corpses. The attraction is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association.

Rosman and Resnick (1989) reviewed information from 34 cases of necrophilia describing the individuals' motivations for their behaviors: these individuals reported the desire to possess a non-resisting and non-rejecting partner (68%), reunions with a romantic partner (21%), sexual attraction to corpses (15%), comfort or overcoming feelings of isolation (15%), or seeking self-esteem by expressing power over a homicide victim (12%).

Around 1850, Belgian physician Joseph Guislain coined the word nécrophiles in a lecture about mental illness, with reference to infamous contemporary necrophile François Bertrand. The term was popularized about a decade later by psychiatrist Bénédict Morel, who also discussed Bertrand.

Anil Aggrawal writes that in some ancient cultures necrophilia was practiced as a way to communicate with the dead while others participated in necrophilic acts in an attempt to resurrect the corpses.

Herodotus writes in The Histories that, to discourage intercourse with a corpse, ancient Egyptians left deceased beautiful women to decay for "three or four days" before giving them to the embalmers, they did this because once an embalmer was caught having sexual intercourse with a corpse. Herodotus writes that Greek tyrant Periander had defiled the corpse of his wife, employing a metaphor: "Periander baked his bread in a cold oven." Acts of necrophilia are depicted on ceramics from the Moche culture, which reigned in northern Peru from the first to eighth century CE. A common theme in these artifacts is the masturbation of a male skeleton by a living woman.Hittite law from the 16th century BC through to the 13th century BC explicitly permitted sex with the dead.

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