Necrophilia

Necrophilia is a sexual interest involving corpses, ranging from fantasies to sexual acts with deceased people. The term also appears in forensic and psychiatric discussions of behavior, diagnosis, and criminal law.

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Paraphilia: A persistent, intense sexual interest outside typical sexual interests. Psychiatric discussions have classified necrophilia among atypical sexual interests, though terminology and diagnostic status vary.
Zoophilia: A sexual interest involving animals. Both terms describe atypical sexual interests, but necrophilia concerns corpses rather than animals.
DSM-5-TR: The American Psychiatric Association's revised text edition of its diagnostic manual, published in 2022. Its diagnostic framework distinguishes named paraphilic disorders from atypical interests that do not meet disorder criteria.
Richard von Krafft-Ebing: An Austrian-German psychiatrist whose 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis classified diverse sexual behaviors. His influential taxonomy helped establish necrophilia as a topic in modern sexology.
Sexual fantasy: An imagined sexual scenario that may or may not reflect a person's actions or intentions. Necrophilic fantasies do not by themselves establish that a person has acted on them.
Pedophilia: A persistent sexual interest in prepubescent children. The terms are sometimes grouped in discussions of paraphilia but describe distinct interests and harms.
ICD-11: The World Health Organization's eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases. Its classification system offers a different framework for assessing paraphilic disorders.
Psychopathia Sexualis: Richard von Krafft-Ebing's 1886 study of sexual behavior and its clinical classification. The work included an early systematic account of necrophilia in psychiatric literature.
Sexual behavior: Actions, practices, and patterns related to sexual activity. Distinguishing an interest from conduct matters in clinical, ethical, and legal accounts of necrophilia.
Thanatophilia: An attraction to death or dying, which may include sexual elements. Thanatophilia is broader and can concern death without involving sexual activity with corpses.