Necrophilia

The term necrophilia is mostly used as a psychiatric expression for a pathological sexual attraction to corpses. It is a very rare and poorly understood phenomenon. In his seminal 1894 work, Psychopathia Sexualis, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, one of the first psychiatric writers, called it a horrible manifestation of sadism. Abraham A. Brill, who published the first comprehensive examination of the subject in 1941, characterized necrophiles as many other authors had—mentally deficient, psychotic, and incapable of obtaining a consenting partner. Necrophilia has been associated with cannibalism and vampirism as all are considered perversions.

In 1978 Neville Lancaster reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry the case of a twenty-three-year-old student of music at a teacher's training college in England. He was convicted of the murder of a young woman, and sentenced to imprisonment for life. The defendant admitted that he had broken into a mortuary on two occasions prior to the murder and had sexual intercourse with female corpses. The prosecution saw him as a necrophile who desired a dead body and therefore decided to kill the victim. The student was tested with an IQ of 153, and no evidence of psychiatric illness was found. The defendant had a normal romantic relationship with a music teacher. The three necrophilic incidents occurred after the student was drinking extensively and taking other chemical agents, so the previous incidents of sexual intercourse with corpses completely disquieted him the following morning. Necrophilia seemed to upset him as much as the murder itself.

This report demonstrates how difficult it is to draw any generalizations from a single case history. In 1989 Jonathan Rosman and Phillip Resnick reviewed 122 cases manifesting necrophilic acts or fantasies. They distinguish genuine necrophilia from pseudonecrophilia and classify true necrophilia into three types: necrophilic homicide (murder to obtain a corpse for sexual purposes); "regular" necrophilia (the use of already dead bodies for sexual pleasure); and necrophilic fantasy (fantasizing about sexual activity with a corpse, without carrying out any necrophilic acts). The pseudonecrophile has a transient attraction to a corpse, but a corpse is not the object of his sexual fantasies. According to Rosman and Resnick, neither psychosis, mental retardation, nor sadism appears to be inherent in necrophilia. The most common motive for necrophilia is possession of an unresisting and unrejecting partner. Necrophiles often choose occupations that put them in contact with corpses.

Based on single case histories, many researchers offer psychoanalytic explanations for necrophilia. Rosman and Resnick developed an empirical model to get a deeper understanding of how psychodynamic events could lead to necrophilia: "(1) The necrophile develops poor self-esteem, perhaps due in part to a significant loss; (a) He (usually male) is very fearful of rejection by women and he desires a sexual object who is incapable of rejecting him; and/or (b) He is fearful of the dead, and transforms his fear of the dead—by means of reaction formation—into a desire for the dead; (2) He develops an exciting fantasy of sex with a corpse, sometimes after exposure to a corpse" (Rosman and Resnick 1989, p. 161). Because no therapist has treated a sufficient number of necrophiles, research literature on effective treatments does not exist.

See also: Grief; Necromancy; Vampires

Bibliography

Brill, Abraham A. "Necrophilia." Journal of Criminal Psychopathology 2 (1941):433–443.

Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis: With Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study, Burbank, CA: Bloat, 1999.

Lancaster, Neville P. "Necrophilia, Murder and High Intelligence: A Case Report." British Journal of Psychiatry 132 (1978):605–608.

Rosman, Jonathan P., and Phillip J. Resnick. "Sexual Attraction to Corpses: A Psychiatric Review of Necrophilia." Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 17 (1989):153–163.

RANDOLPH OCHSMANN

necrophilia Since strictly speaking the word means ‘love of the dead’, it could be applied to anyone who persists in devotion to a dead spouse or lover over a prolonged period. Perhaps the most outstanding manifestation of such devotion is the Taj Mahal, erected by the Mogul emperor Shah Jehan as a tomb for his dead wife. However, necrophilia is usually taken to describe a rare, or at least, rarely reported, manifestation of the sexual instinct operating at a much lower and less idealistic or spiritual level.

In some cases the use of dead bodies for the purposes of sexual gratification is purely opportunistic, an activity encountered among those who have professional dealings with corpses in the course of their daily work, for example undertakers and morgue attendants. The practice was rumoured to be prevalent among the embalmers of ancient Egypt to such a degree that the bodies of highly-born women were not embalmed immediately after death but allowed to become slightly putrid as a deterrent. There is, however, no evidence that a desire for sexual relations with corpses leads individuals into these professions. Those who come into constant routine contact with corpses soon acquire a familiarity with them which might lead to using them as what could be considered an extremely bizarre masturbatory aid.

There are, however, those who are particularly excited by dead bodies and seek them out for sexual purposes. Accounts can be found — in the pages of the great collators of sexual deviance in its manifold forms, such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing — of individuals who even went so far as to disinter corpses in order to have intercourse with them or to perform sexually motivated mutilations. Krafft-Ebing suggested that the attraction was to a human form absolutely devoid of will, incapable of giving resistance. He also cited the case of an individual who required a prostitute to be made up to mimic a corpse and laid out on a bier, and there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that some brothels included this among their specialities.

This peculiarity segues into the related phenomenon of lust murder. The motivation of individual sexually motivated murderers would appear to vary. Some rape their victims and then kill them, others apparently find gratification in the actual act of murder, and others gain some form of sexual gratification with the body. Thus lust-murder and necrophilia are not identical but overlapping phenomena.

While most of the stigmatized sexual alternatives (sadomasochism, even paedophilia) have their champions, defenders, and advocates, who claim them to be not only less deleterious than popularly imagined but positively benign and healthy, there does not seem to be any organization dedicated to promoting the Joy of Dead Sex, or Necrophile Liberation. However, a number of special interest webpages and discussions devoted to the subject have emerged in recent years.

Lesley A. Hall

nec·ro·phil·i·a / ˌnekrəˈfilēə/ • n. a morbid and esp. erotic attraction toward corpses. ∎  sexual intercourse with a corpse. DERIVATIVES: nec·ro·phile / ˈnekrəˌfīl/ n. nec·ro·phil·i·ac / -ˈfilēˌak/ n. nec·ro·phil·ic / -ˈfilik/ adj. ne·croph·i·lism / neˈkräfəˌlizəm/ n. ne·croph·i·list / neˈkräfəlist/ n.

necrophilia (nek-roh-fil-iă) n. sexual attraction to corpses. See also sexual deviation.
—necrophile (nek-roh-fyl) n.