Necrophilia

Necrophilia is sexual attraction to corpses, covering both sexual acts with a dead body and sexual excitement at the thought or presence of one. It is also called necrophilism, necrolagnia, necrocoitus, necrochlesis and thanatophilia. The World Health Organization lists it as a paraphilia in the International Classification of Diseases, and the American Psychiatric Association classifies it as one in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Recorded motivations vary widely, from a wish to dominate a partner who cannot respond, to a fetish for death and corpses, to grief after the loss of a sexual partner. The term necrophiles was coined around 1850 by the Belgian physician Joseph Guislain and popularised about a decade later by the psychiatrist Benedict Morel. Similar behavior has also been observed in animals.