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Death tally: How can necrophilia be classified?
In 2009, Dr Anil Aggrawal (Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India) published an interesting paper on necrophilia (i.e., a person obtaining sexual gratification by viewing or having sexual contact and/or intercourse with a corpse) in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine. As I mentioned in a previous blog on a new typology of zoophilia, Aggrawal has been writing about various paraphilic behaviours for over a decade and has carved out a productive niche in creating new paraphilic taxonomies. His 2009 paper outlined a new classification of necrophilia that I thought I would take a more detailed look at as I only mentioned it in passing in my previous blog on ncrophiles. Further expansion of the new necrophiliac typology can also be found in Dr. Aggrawal’s latest book Necrophilia: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects (published in 2011). As with Aggrawal’s classification of zoophilia, his new classification of necrophilia also contains ten different types (Classes I to X) and is closely related to his zoophilia typology.
- Class I necrophiliacs: This type comprises role players who according to Aggrawal are only mildly pathological and could be described as engaging in simulated and/or symbolic necrophilia. These individuals never have sex with dead people, but get very sexual aroused when having sex with someone pretending to be dead (i.e., sexual role play). Some paraphilia experts such as Shaffer and Penn (2006) described such acts as pseudonecrophilia. I also argued in a previous blog on somnophilia (i.e., a person obtaining sexual satisfaction with someone who is asleep) that such a practice could be a form of pseudonecrophilia.
- Class II necrophiliacs: This type comprises romantic necrophiles who according to Aggrawal display only “very mild necrophilic tendencies”. This type of necrophile typically comprises people whose loved ones have just died and who do not seem to fully believe or psychologically appreciate that the person they love is dead. Therefore, the sexual contact may not (in the person’s view) be seen as necrophilic as they still believe the person is alive to them. Aggrawal claims that in some cases, romantic necrophiles may mummify the body (or body parts) of their partner. The necrophilic activity is typically short-lived and is something that stops once the person fully accepts that their loved one is dead.
- Class III necrophiliacs: This type comprises necrophilic fantasizer who according to Aggrawal simply fantasize about having sexual contact with dead people but never actually engage in the activity for real. Aggrawal claims that such people may become sexually aroused when seeing dead people and may engage in activities that increase their likelihood of seeing the dead (e.g., visiting funeral parlours, cemeteries, etc.).
- Class IV necrophiliacs: This type comprises tactile necrophiles who according to Aggrawal erotically touch dead bodies to achieve orgasm. They seek out jobs in which they come into regular contact with the dead (e.g., mortuary assistants) and according to Aggrawal “enjoy touching, stroking parts of the dead body, such as genitalia or breasts or perhaps licking them”.
- Class V necrophiliacs: This type comprises fetishistic necrophiles (also known as “necrofetishists”) who according to Aggrawal do not have sexual intercourse with dead people but who will (if the chance arises) “cut up some portion of the body – perhaps a breast – for later fetishistic activities” or may “keep some portion of the dead body – pubic hair or a finger perhaps – in the pocket for continuous erotic stimulation, or sometimes may wear it as an amulet for similar pleasure”. Aggrawal says that although necrofetishists may preserve body parts of the dead like romantic necrophiles, the motivations are very different (as the latter type of necrophile only keeps body parts of someone they love “in order to fill up a psychosexual vacuum that their death has caused”.
- Class VI necrophiliacs: This type comprises necromutilomaniacs who according to Aggrawal do not engage in sexual intercourse with dead people but gain sexual pleasure from masturbation while simultaneously mutilating dead bodies. Included within this type of necrophile are those who get sexual pleasure from eating part of the corpse (i.e., necrophagy).
- Class VII necrophiliacs: This type comprises opportunistic necrophiles who according to Aggrawal are people that typically engage in ‘normal’ sexual behaviour but would have sexual intercourse with a dead person “if an opportunity arose”
- Class VIII necrophiliacs: This type comprises regular necrophiles who according to Aggrawal are the ‘‘classical” necrophiliacs as most people would understand. Aggrawal claims that this type of necrophile doesn’t enjoy sexual intercourse with people that are alive and has a distinct preference for sexual activity with the dead. Regular necrophiles will go to extreme lengths to engage in their sexual preference including stealing dead bodies from graveyards or mortuaries.
- Class IX necrophiliacs: This type comprises homicidal necrophiles (the behaviour of which is sometimes referred to as homicidophilia or ‘lust murder’) who according to Aggrawal are the most dangerous type of necrophile (and are sometimes referred to as ‘necrosadists). These people will go as far as killing people just so as they can have sex with the dead. Aggrawal also says that the behaviour may be described as ‘‘warm necrophilia” because sex typically takes place immediately after the killing while the bodies are still warm.
- Class X necrophiliacs: This type comprises exclusive necrophiles who according to Aggrawal are arguably the rarest necrophile sub-type. These people are psychologically and physiologically incapable of having sex with the living and therefore are only capable of having sex with the dead. Aggrawal claims that because dead bodies are the prerequisite for sexual behaviour to occur, the person may go to any lengths to acquire a dead body (and therefore, like homicidal necrophiles, can be extremely dangerous).
Aggrawal’s typology ranges from minimal to maximal severity, appears to be instinctive, relatively intuitive, and based on clinical case studies, forensic crime data, and anecdotal evidence. Typing in the term ‘necrophilia’ into one of the main academic literature databases produced a total of only 37 publications ever. Ideally, Aggrawal would like his new classification to facilitate “uniform statistical compilation of data from around the world, epidemiological surveys, calculation of incidence and prevalence of this phenomena, and treatment”.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Aggrawal, A. (2009). A new classification of necrophilia. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 16, 316-320.
Aggrawal A. (2011). Necrophilia: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Aggrawal, A. (2011). A new classification of zoophilia. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 18, 73-78.
Rosman, J.P. & Resnick, P.J. (1989). Sexual attraction to corpses: A psychiatric review of necrophilia. Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 17, 153-163.
Shaffer, L. & Penn, J. (2006). A comprehensive paraphilia classification system. In E.W. Hickey (Ed.), Sex crimes and paraphilia. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Stein, M.L., Schlesinger, L.B. & Pinizzotto, A.J. (2010). Necrophilia and sexual homicide. Journal of Forensic Science, 55, 443-446.
Sleeping duty: A beginner’s guide to somnophilia
Somnophilia is a sexual paraphilia in which sexual arousal is derived from intruding on, caressing, and/or fondling someone (typically a stranger) while they are asleep without force or violence. However, some definitions of somnophilia – while all connected with sleep – sometimes slightly differ. For instance, some definitions of somnophilia say that it refers to actually having sexual intercourse with a sleeping partner (rather than just touching someone sexually while they are asleep). Another definition I came across says that somnophilia also includes having sex with someone while they are unconscious. This latter variation may have come about by the increased use of drugs such as rohypnol (“roofies”) that have been implicated in sexual offences such as ‘date rape’. There is no technical term for the reciprocal condition of being the recipient of sexual advances while asleep. This is thought to occur more often in fantasy than in reality.
Some signs or symptoms that may point to somnophilia include recurring thoughts regarding unconscious or sleeping individuals and feeling sexual urges when in contact with or in the proximity of those people. While there is speculation about treatment (e.g., hypnosis, behavioural therapy and 12-step programs), it is not needed unless the behavior becomes destructive, problematic, and/or involves sexually criminal activity and becomes a legal issue.
Empirically, very little is known about somnophilia and as far as I am aware there are no data concerning its prevalence, etiology, or treatment (not even a single case study). Various sexologists and authors have made reference to it (such as John Money, Nancy Butcher and Rudy Flora). The historian Richard Burg (Arizona State University) published a 1982 article in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, and suggested the possibility of a continuum of erotic focus from somnophilia fantasy through to acts involving necrophilia. In fact, sometimes somnophilia has been described as ‘pseudo-necrophilia’ in that both paraphilias involve having sex with a human that is not aware and/or conscious, and have not given consent.
In a 1972 issue of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the psychologists Dr. Victor Calef and Dr. Edward Weinshel decribed somnophila as ‘Sleeping Beauty Syndrome’ and asserted that somnophilia was the neurotic equivalent of necrophilia. As they asserted:
“The theme of the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ who is brought back to life, as it were, by the love of a Prince Charming is one which has fascinated both story-tellers and listeners for hundreds of years. It is our impression that not infrequently we hear, from our analytic patients —primarily via various denials — this same theme and its disguised wishes. We are referring to those patients who complain that their spouses go to sleep before them and before sexual activity can be initiated. It is our experience that, at least in many of these individuals, this complaint is an attempt to hide the fascination and attraction for the sleeping sexual object and the wish to make love to that object”.
However, they ultimately concluded that although somnophilia appears to have some characteristics in common with necrophilia, the two syndromes do not necessarily reflect the same underlying pathology. Using Freudian theory, Calef and Weinshel speculated that underlying somnophilia was the desire to return to the maternal womb, and that somnophiliacs had unresolved Oedipal complex issues, fixations on pre-genital stages of psychosexual development, and castration anxiety. However, as with almost all psychoanalytic theory, it is hard to design any research to either confirm or deny such speculations.
In researching the topic of somnaphilia, I did come across a 2006 paper by Mark Knowles (New School for Social Research, New York) that examined the sexual content of the letters written by Irish novelist James Joyce (1882-1941). The primary purpose of Knowles’ paper was to examine the ways in which the paraphilic sexual fantasies of Joyce were expressed in his relationship with his wife (Nora Barnacle) via letters written at the end of 1909. Most of the paraphilic writings concerned coprophilia (sexual interest in faeces), but in one letter (dated December 8), Knowles noted there was also an instance of somnophilic fantasy. Here, Joyce writes of how he will perform cunnilingus on his wife in an effort to “surprise [her] asleep.” This will cause her to “groan and grunt and sigh and fart with lust in [her] sleep”.
Knowles claimed that investigators have suggested that the etiology of somnophilia is similar to that of fetishism and coprophilia (although these “investigators” were not referenced – although he did cite the paper by Calef and Weinshel). Knowles noted:
“The degree to which Joyce’s own aberrant libidinal impulses were influenced by factors such as these is uncertain; however, the fact that castration anxiety has been posited as a causal mechanism with regard to somnophilia as well as fetishism and coprophilia, the latter two of which played salient roles in his sexual fantasies, lends credence to the notion that the threat of castration did indeed constitute Joyce’s ‘nuclear complex’”.
Christina Eugene (Bowling Green State University, USA) also made some interesting observations in her 2006 thesis ‘Potent Sleep: The Cultural Politics of Sleep’. She asserted:
“Sleep is the essential objectifier of all life. The passivity of sleep transforms subjects into inanimate objects, and in doing so removes the subject’s privilege of being able to act on the world of objects… This rendering of people into inanimate objects allows them to be fundamentally treated as objects – consumed, fetishized, and controlled. In accordance with the totality of capitalism and phallocentrism, an erotic fetish for sleeping beauties has surfaced”.
Eugene also makes heavy reference to Carolyn Fay’s 2002 (University of Virginia, USA) thesis ’Stories of the Sleeping Body: Literary, Scientific and Philosophical Narratives of Sleep in Nineteenth Century France’. Although not actually using the word ‘somnophilia’, Fay says that:
“Contemporary sleep fetish culture is driven by the idea that the sleeping person is an absent person…To the fetishist, sleep is that perfect moment when consciousness is evacuated, leaving a living, breathing fragment, worthy of love”. [Men who seek to actualize their desire to have intercourse with a sleeping woman may use drugs to maintain the unconscious state] “for if the person wakes up, the fantasy and the fetish object become lost”
In response to this, Eugene thus claims that somnophilia emphasizes:
“The conflating of absence and passivity because rather than her being passive, the fetish is maintained by her absence. What are the dynamics that created these perplexities? What can account for both the sleeping beauty fetish and the somnaphobia of a culture where people are disposed to self-inflicting the torture of sleep deprivation? Despite the sheer obscurity of this fetish culture, both are, nevertheless, an exemplification of particular cultural messages that are written onto the sleeping body”.
http://forums.webmd.com/3/sex-and-relationships-exchange/forum/1904/22
Given that I prefer empirical data, I’m not sure whether these debates in the Arts and Humanities literature add to what we know scientifically know about somnophilia, but at the very least they make an interesting read about the human condition. In the absence of anything in the empirical literature, I did spend ages trying to find some kind of case study and this was the best I could come up with:
“I have a fetish that I have found out is called somnophilia. I have told this to my girlfriend and she has no problem with it, or with allowing me to fulfill my fantasy with her, since she is very submissive. The only problem is, she’s an extremely light sleeper. As in, she wakes up at the drop of a hat. For this reason, there’s really no way for me to do it naturally. I have tried artificial methods such as [over-the-counter] sleeping pills. However, these just make her drowsy, but don’t affect her depth of sleep (i.e., she still wakes up right away). I am looking for either a method or a drug that will put her into a very deep sleep, or even leave her unconscious, such as you would be under the influence of a general anesthetic during surgery. I guess I would need a very powerful sedative/hypnotic. I have heard of drugs such as Rohypnol, but I know that these are illegal in the US, and I’m not trying to get into any trouble here. I considered asking a pharmacist, but I’m worried they’d think I’m looking for a ‘date rape drug’ for illegal purposes and call the cops on me. I’m looking for something that’ll knock her out and will withstand a vigorous activity like sex”.
Although there is little detail here, and there is no way of checking the veracity, this plea does at least suggest that somnophilia is more than a theoretical paraphilia.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Burg, B.R. (1982). The sick and the dead: The development of psychological theory on necrophilia from Krafft-Ebing to the present. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 18, 242-254.
Butcher, N. (2003). The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries, Curious Remedies, and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore. New York: Avery.
Calef, V., & Weinshel, E. M. (1972). On certain neurotic equivalents of necrophilia. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 53, 67-75.
Eugene, N.C. (2006). Potent Sleep: The Cultural Politics of Sleep. Master’s Thesis, Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies/English.
Fay, C.M. (2002). Stories of the Sleeping Body: Literary, Scientific and Philosophical Narratives of Sleep in Nineteenth Century France. Diss. U Virginia, 2002. Ann Arbor: UMI.
Flora, R. (2001). How to Work with Sex Offenders: A Handbook for Criminal Justice, Human Service, and Mental Health Professionals. New York: Haworth Clinical Practice Press.
Joyce, J. (1975). Selected letters of James Joyce. R. Ellmann (Ed.), New York: Viking Press.
Knowles, J.M. (2006). Nora’s Filthy Words: Scatology in the Letters of James Joyce. The New School Psychology Bulletin, 4, 91-101.
Love, B. (1992). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books
Money, J. (1986). Lovemaps: Clinical concepts of sexual/erotic health and pathology, paraphilia, and gender transposition in childhood, adolescence, and maturity. New York: Irvington.
The bite of passion: Vampirism as a sexual paraphilia
Although vampirism as a sexual paraphilia has been noted in the academic literature for many years (in fact there are references to it in Richard van Krafft-Ebing’s 1886 text Psychopathia Sexualis), there has been very little empirical research and most of what is known comes from clinical case studies. To complicate things further, vampirism (i) is rarely a single clinical condition, (ii) may or may not be associated with other psychiatric and/or psychological disorders (e.g., severe psychopathy, schizophrenia, hysteria, mental retardation), and (iii) may or may not necessarily include sexual arousal. Other related conditions have been documented such as odaxelagnia (deriving sexual pleasure from biting), haematolagnia (deriving sexual satisfaction from the drinking of blood), and haematophilia (deriving sexual satisfaction from blood in general), and auto-haemofetishism (i.e., deriving sexual pleasure from sight of blood drawn into a syringe during intravenous drug practice).
In 1964, Vandenbergh and Kelly defined vampirism as “the act of drawing blood from an object, (usually a love object) and receiving resultant sexual excitement and pleasure”. In 1983, Bourguignon described vampirism as a clinical phenomenon in which myth, fantasy, and reality converge and that other paraphilic behaviour may be involved including necrophagia, necrophilia, and sadism. Also in 1983, noted that “vampirism is a rare compulsive disorder with an irresistible urge for blood ingestion, a ritual necessary to bring mental relief; like other compulsions, its meaning is not understood by the participant”.
In 1985, Herschel Prins published what is arguably the most cited paper in the field (in the British Journal of Psychiatry), and proposed that there were four types of vampirism (although confusingly, one of these sub-types is not actually vampiric as no blood ingestion takes place and some of the satisfaction gained may not necessarily be sexual). These four types were:
- Necrosadistic vampirism (i.e., deriving satisfaction from the ingestion of blood from a dead person);
- Necrophilia (i.e., deriving satisfaction from sexual activity with a dead person without the ingestion of blood)
- Vampirism (i.e., deriving satisfaction from the ingestion of blood from a living person)
- Autovampirism (deriving satisfaction from the ingestion of one’s own blood).
In Prins’ typology above, vampirism evidently overlaps with that of necrophilia. However, earlier papers (such as Vandenbergh and Kelly’s in 1964) clearly differentiated between necrophilia and vampirism, arguing that vampirism shouldn’t be mixed with necrophilia given that vampirism is often focused on the living. Vandenbergh and Kelly also differentiate vampirism from sexual sadism (due to the fact that vampirism doesn’t always include pain and suffering). In fact, in a literature review of sexual sadism, Yates and colleagues (2008) included the “rare phenomenon” of vampirism in their review. Drawing on the work of Jaffe and DiCataldo (1994), they described those people who get sexual arousal from bloodletting (either through cutting or biting), and for which a small minority enjoy sucking and/or drinking the blood too. Vanden Bergh and Kelly (1964) noted that the sucking or drinking of the blood from the wound is often an important part of the act but not necessarily essential.
Using the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), Dr Joel Milner, Dr Cynthia Dopke, and Dr Julie Crouch (2008) argue that if the individual’s vampirism causes pain and suffering in their victims it should be classed as a sexually sadistic paraphilia. However, if the victim does not suffer in any way, the vampirism should be classed as a paraphilia not otherwise specified (P-NOS). Milner and colleagues argue this approach is consistent with other P-NOS classifications involving other body fluids/substances (other than blood) such as urophilia (urine) and coprophilia (faeces).
Any discussion of vampirism wouldn’t be complete without at least a mention of Renfield’s Syndrome (RS) although it has yet to be included in the DSM. Renfield was a fictional mental patient in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1887) who ate living things (flies, spiders, birds) believing that this would bring him greater ‘life force’ powers. The RS disorder, named in 1992 by clinical psychologist Dr Richard Noll (DeSales University, Pennsylvania, USA), is a rare psychiatric compulsion (not necessarily sexual and often linked with schizophrenia) – in which sufferers feel compelled to drink blood. As with some of the papers written on vampirism as a sexual paraphilia, this has also been called ‘clinical vampirism’. Like the character Renfield, RS sufferers believe that they can obtain increased power or strength (i.e., the ‘life force’) through the imbibing of blood.
RS sufferers are predominantly male (although there are known female vampirists), and like many paraphilias, the disorder often originates from a childhood event in which the affected individual associates the sight or taste of blood with psychological and/or physical excitement. It is during adolescence that the attraction to blood can become sexual in nature. Clinical evidence suggests female RS sufferers are unlikely to assault others for blood, but male RS sufferers are potentially more dangerous. It has been noted that RS usually comprises three stages:
- Stage 1 – Autovampirism (autohemophagia): In the first stage, RS sufferers drink their own blood and often bite or cut themselves to do so (although some pay just pick at their own scabs).
- Stage 2 – Zoophagia: In the second stage, RS sufferers eat live animals and/or drink their blood. The sources animal blood may come from butchers and abbatoirs if they have no direct access.
- Stage 3 – True vampirism: In the final stage, RS sufferers drink blood from other human beings. The sources of blood may be stolen from blood banks or hospitals or may be direct from other people. In the most extreme cases, RS sufferers may commit violent crimes including murder to feed their craving.
In a 1981 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Dr M. Benezech and colleagues reported a case study of cannibalism and vampirism in a French paranoid and psychotic schizophrenic. After trying to kill a number of people (mainly neighbours) between 1969 (when he was aged 29 years) and 1978, he attempted a vampiric rape on a child in 1979. Although he was stopped he went on later that day to murder an elderly man and successfully ate large pieces of the victim’s thigh, and attempted to suck his blood. Here, the vampirism was seen as secondary to the schizophrenia. A similar type case report of a 21-year old eastern European schizophrenic vampirist was published in 1999 by Dr Brendan Kelly (St James Hospital Dublin, Ireland) and colleagues in the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine. However, the patient didn’t attempt to suck blood from himself or others but instead frequented a hospital accident and emergency department in search of their supply of blood for transfusion.
In a 1989 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Dr A. Halevy and his colleagues reported the case of a 21-year old man (who had been in prison since he was 16 years old) who had anaemia and gastrointestinal bleeding as a result of self-inflicted injuries and blood ingestion on multiple occasions (for instance, one incident involved him cutting his arm with a razor blade, draining the blood into a glass, and then drinking it). He was classed by the authors as an ‘autovampirist’ in Prins’ typology although the authors were unable to determine if there was any sexual motivation involved.
In one of the few papers to examine more than one case study, Dr R.E. Hemphill and Dr. T. Zabow (1983, at the University of Cape Town) examined four vampirists in depth, including John Haigh (the English ‘acid-bath murderer’ who killed six people during the 1940s and drunk the blood of his victims), along with reference to other criminal vampirists. Hemphill and Zabow noted that since childhood all four cases had cut themselves, and that to relieve a craving they had drank their own, and others’ (human and/or animal) blood. All four cases were said to be intelligent with no mental instability or psychopathology in any of their family histories.
Most recently Dr K Gubb and his colleagues at the Tara Hospital Johannesburg (South Africa) published a case study of a 25-year old African man suffering from ‘psychic vampirism’ in the South African Psychiatry Review. In this paper, they argued that this particular type of clinical vampirism had never been reported in the literature before. The man was brought in for psychiatric treatment by his mother after he had become withdrawn, stopped socializing, was undressing in public, and started talking to himself. He claimed to hear the voice of ‘Sasha’, a “flame vampire from the scriptures of Geeta”. The man himself beleived he was “Vasever – lord of the vampires”. He claimed to have survived by hunting as a vampire by hurting more than 1000 humans “zooming in and out of them” (rather than biting them). Schizophrenia was diagnosed. The authors claimed that the vampirism was only of academic interest “because of its relative scarcity” but did not influence the diagnosis or treatment in any particular way.
They concluded that vampirism may be representative of some pathology other than schizophrenia (or simply represent an alternative belief system). Unlike other vampirism cases in the clinical literature, there was an absence of a fully developed psychopathic personality, along with a complete absence of sexual and gender identity disorders. This, they speculated, “may have protected the man from developing the homicidal, cannibalistic, libidinal and sexual features of vampirism seen in the other cases”.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Benezech, M., Bourgeois, M., Boukhabza, D. & Yesavage, J. (1981). Cannibalism and vampirism in paranoid schizophrenia. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 42(7), 290.
Gubb, K., Segal, J., Khota1, A, Dicks, A. (2006). Clinical Vampirism: a review and illustrative case report. South African Psychiatry Review, 9, 163-168.
Halevy, A., Levi, Y., Ahnaker, A. & Orda, R. (1989). Auto-vampirism: An unusual cause of anaemia. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 82, 630-631.
Hemphill R.E. & Zabow T. (1983) Clinical vampirism. A presentation of 3 cases and a re-evaluation of Haigh, the ‘acid-bath murderer’. South African Medical Journal, 63(8), 278-81.
Kelly, B.D., Abood, Z. & Shanley, D. (1999). Vampirism and schizophrenia. Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, 16, 114-117.
Jaffe, P., & DiCataldo, F. (1994). Clinical vampirism: Blending myth and reality. Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 22, 533-544.
Miller, T.W., Veltkamp, L.J., Kraus, R.F., Lane T. & Heister, T. (1999). An adolescent vampire cult in rural America: clinical issues and case study. Child Psychiatry and Human Development 29, 209-19.
Milner, J.S. Dopke, C.A. & Crouch, J.L. (2008). Paraphilia not otherwise specified: Psychopathology and Theory In Laws, D.R. & O’Donohue, W.T. (Eds.), Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment and Treatment (pp. 384-418). New York: Guildford Press.
Noll, R. (1992). Vampires, Werewolves and Demons: Twentieth Century Reports in the Psychiatric Literature. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
Prins, H. (1985). Vampirism: A clinical condition. British Journal of Psychiatry, 146, 666-668.
Vanden Bergh, R. L., & Kelly, J. F. (1964). Vampirism: A review with new observations. Archives of General Psychiatry, 11, 543-547.
Wilson N. (2000) A psychoanalytic contribution to psychic vampirism: a case vignette. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 60, 177-86.
Yates, P.M., Hucker, S.J. & Kingston, W.A. (2008). Sexual sadism: Psychopathology and theory. In Laws, D.R. & O’Donohue, W.T. (Eds.), Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment and Treatment. pp.213-230. New York: Guildford Press.
Dead strange: A brief psychological overview of necrophilia
In a previous blog, I briefly examined paraphilias. One of the rarest of known paraphilias is necrophilia in which a person obtains sexual gratification by viewing or having intercourse with a corpse. Given the rarity of necrophilia, there is a lack of systematicaly reported empirical data with almost all knowledge emanating from published case studies.
Based on the case study data, necrophilia almost exclusively involves males who are driven to remove freshly buried bodies or seek employment in funeral parlours or morgues (in fact, in the biggest study of necrophilic behaviour found that 57% of necrophiliacs were employed in a profession that gave then access to dead bodies). However, rare cases of female necrophilia have been documented including the high profile case of Karen Greenlee.
Arguably, the most comprehensive study in the area was published in 1989 by Dr Jonathan Rosman and Dr Phillip Resnick (psychiatrists who were working at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, USA). Their review examined 122 cases (comprising 88 from the world literature and 34 unpublished cases of their own). The motivation for engaging in necrophilic behaviour was examined and the results showed that two-thirds of the necrophiliacs reported the desire to possess an unresisting and unrejecting partner (68%). Other lesser motivations reported included wanting to be reunited with their dead romantic partner (21%), being sexually attracted to corpses (15%), comfort or overcoming feelings of isolation (15%), and/or seeking self-esteem by expressing power over a homicide victim (12%). They also classified the behaviour into three sub-types: (i) necrophilic homicide, (ii) “regular” necrophilia, and (iii) necrophilic fantasy. Some British research has also suggested that some necrophiles may opt for a non-living mate through a consistent failure to create normal romantic attachments with people that are alive.
Rosman and Resnick also theorized about the situational antecedents leading to necrophilic behaviour. Their theory was that necrophiliacs develop poor self-esteem that may be due to a significant loss. Furthermore, they suggested that necrophiliacs may be fearful of rejection by others and that they desire a sexual partner who is incapable of rejecting them. Here, necrophiliacs may be socially and/or sexually inept and may hate and/or fear the opposite sex. This causes them to seek out non-threatening, subjugated sexual partners (i.e. non-living people). Alternatively, they also suggested that necrophiliacs may be fearful of dead people, and that they transform their fear into a sexual desire. Perhaps unsurprisingly, necrophiliacs almost always manifest severe emotional disorders.
Dr Martin Kafka (McLean Hospital in Belmont, USA), one of the world’s leading paraphilia experts, argues that necrophilia could technically be considered as a fetish variant because the sexualized object of desire is ‘‘nonliving’’ although there are insufficient data to empirically support the argument. Necrophilia can be accompanied by ‘‘sadistic acts’’ and sexually motivated murder, certainly not behaviors associated with fetishism (as currently defined).
The sadistic side of necrophilia has certainly been reported in some of the more extreme case studies. For instance, Edwin Ehrlich and colleagues (at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) presented the case of a young man twice convicted on charges of defiling female corpses and who had undergone a long course of psychiatric treatment. All his necrophilic acts were committed over a 15-year period. In three cases, the necrophiliac skinned the trunk of the dead victims, placed the skin on his naked body and then stimulated himself sexually. In several cases, he kept mementos from the victims at his home (e.g., used burial clothes that he had removed from the coffins).
According to Professor Anil Aggrawal (Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi), cases like the one above indicate that necrophilia exists in many variations. Aggrawal argued that because so many related necrophilic behaviours are used differently by different people, a new classification was needed. Based on case studies in the literature, Aggrawal argued there were ten different types of necrophiliac. These comprised (i) role players, (ii) romantic necrophiles, (iii) necrophilic fantasizers (people having a necrophilic fantasy), (iv) tactile necrophiles, (v) fetishistic necrophiles (i.e., people having a sexual fetish for the dead), (vi) necromutilomaniacs (i.e., people having a necromutilomania), (vii) opportunistic necrophiles, (viii) regular necrophiles, (ix) homicidal necrophiles, and (x) exclusive necrophiles.
Homicidal necrophilia certainly seems to be a distinct sub-category of necrophilia. A recently published study by Michelle Stein (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA) and colleagues reviewed 211 sexual homicides. Nearly 8% involved necrophilia (i.e., 16 cases). Their findings suggested that the most common explanation for necrophilia (i.e., the offender’s desire to have an unresisting partner) may not always be applicable in cases where necrophilia is connected to sexual murder.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Aggrawal, A. (2009). A new classification of necrophilia. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 16, 316-320.
Burg, B.R. (1982). The sick and the dead: The development of psychological theory on necrophilia from Krafft-Ebing to the present. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 18, 242-254.
Ehrlich, E., Rothschild, M.A., Pluisch, F. & Schneider, V. (2000). An extreme case of necrophilia. Legal Medicine, 2, 224-226.
Kafka, M.P. (2010). The DSM Diagnostic Criteria for Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39, 373-376.
Rosman, J.P. & Resnick, P.J. (1989). Sexual attraction to corpses: A psychiatric review of necrophilia. Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 17, 153-163.
Stein, M.L., Schlesinger, L.B. & Pinizzotto, A.J. (2010). Necrophilia and sexual homicide. Journal of Forensic Science, 55, 443-446.
