Necrophilia

Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia and necrolagnia, is the sexual attraction to corpses. It is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The word is artificially derived from Ancient Greek: νεκρός (nekros; "corpse," or "dead") and φιλία (philia; "friendship"). The term appears to have originated from Krafft-Ebing's 1886 work Psychopathia Sexualis.

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 an unresisting and unrejecting 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%).

History

In ancient Egypt, there is record of the treatment of the bodies of young women that were set out to decompose for a few days before being delivered to embalmers. This practice originated from the need to discourage the men performing the funerary customs from having sexual interest in their charges. 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.

In some societies the practice was enacted owing to a belief that the soul of an unmarried woman would not find peace; among the Kachin of Myanmar and the Nambudri of India, versions of a marriage ceremony were held to lay a dead virgin to rest, which would involve intercourse with the corpse. Similar practices obtained in some pre-modern Central European societies when a woman who was engaged to be married died before the wedding.

Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck (1830-1916) engaged in a form of thanatophilia following the death in 1884 of his first wife, the former courtesan Pauline Thérè se de Païva, better known as La Païva. Her naked body was immersed in alcohol in an isolated room of Henckel's castle at Neudeck in Silesia. Henckel visited her corpse regularly for a strange sort of contemplation. It is said that when, several years after their marriage, Henckel's second wife unexpectedly discovered the body of her predecessor, preserved in all its glory in a glass tank of alcohol, she suffered a mental breakdown.

Research

In 1958, Klaf and Brown commented that, although rarely described, necrophilic fantasies may occur more often than is generally supposed.

Rosman and Resnick (1989) theorized that either of the following situations could be antecedents to necrophilia (pp. 161):

1. The necrophile develops poor self-esteem, perhaps due in part to a significant loss;

   (a) He/she is very fearful of rejection by women/men and he/she desires a sexual partner who is incapable of rejecting him/her; and/or

   (b) He/she is fearful of the dead, and transforms his/her fear — by means of reaction formation — into a desire.

2. He/she develops an exciting fantasy of sex with a corpse, sometimes after exposure to a corpse.

The authors also reported that, of their sample of 'necrophiliacs,':

• 68 percent were motivated by a desire for an unresisting and unrejecting partner;
• 21 percent by a want for reunion with a lost partner;
• 15 percent by sexual attraction to dead people;
• 15 percent by a desire for comfort or to overcome feelings of isolation; and
• 11 percent by a desire to remedy low self-esteem by expressing power over a corpse (pp. 159).

At the end of their own report, Rosman and Resnick wrote that their study should only be used like a spring-board for further, more in depth, research.

Minor modern researches conducted in England have shown that some necrophiles tend to choose a dead mate after failing to create romantic attachments with the living .

Animals

Main article: Davian behavior

Necrophilia is not unknown in animals, with a number of confirmed observations. Kees Moeliker allegedly made one of these observations while he was sitting in his office at the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, when he heard the distinctive thud of a bird hitting the glass facade of the building. Upon inspection, he discovered a drake (male) mallard lying dead about two meters from the building. Next to the downed bird there was a second drake mallard standing close by. As Moeliker observed the couple, the living drake picked at the corpse of the dead one for a few minutes and then mounted the corpse and began copulating with it. The act of necrophilia lasted for about 75 minutes, in which time, according to Moeliker, the living drake took two short breaks before resuming with copulating behavior. Moeliker surmised that at the time of the collision with the window the two mallards were engaged in a common motif in duck behavior which is called rape flight. "When one died the other one just went for it and didn't get any negative feedback -- well, didn't get any feedback," according to Moeliker. This is the first recorded case of necrophilia in the mallard duck- though not the only recorded case of homosexuality within the bird family.

In the case of a praying mantis, necrophilia could be said to be part of their methods of reproduction. The larger female will often decapitate or even eat her mate during copulation. However, given that the sexual activity of a male mantis is controlled by a brain-like ganglion in his abdomen it may not be appropriate to refer to him as a "corpse", even when he is decapitated.

Legality

Status

India

Section 297 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) entitled "Trespassing on burial places, etc", states as follows:

Whoever, with the intention of wounding the feelings of any person, or of insulting the religion of any person, or with the knowledge that the feelings of any person are likely to be wounded, or that the religion of any person is likely to be insulted thereby,

commits any trespass in any place of worship or on any place of sculpture, or any place set apart from the performance of funeral rites or as a depository for the remains of the dead, or offers any indignity to any human corpse, or causes disturbance to any persons assembled for the performance of funeral ceremonies,

shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.

Although Necrophilia is not explicitly stated in IPC, a necrophiliac may be convicted under the above section in the Indian Penal Code. There have been several allegations by relatives of dead women, that the dead bodies of their kin were defiled in the night by mortuary attendants, but none have been proven. The possibility of such an act taking place on a regular basis is not impossible to imagine.

In some cases, where a woman was alleged to have been raped and murdered and the autopsy surgeon failed to find any signs of rape, the relatives have approached the authorities for a second postmortem. The second postmortem is invariably conducted at a different hospital, often necessitating the deposit of the body overnight at the mortuary of the second hospital. In cases where the second autopsy surgeon finds signs of rape, the defendants have been known to allege that the dead body was defiled by drunk mortuary attendants at night. However, no such allegation has been proven in a court of law.

United Kingdom

Sexual penetration with a corpse was made illegal under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. This is defined as depictions of "sexual interference with a human corpse" (as opposed to only penetration), and would cover "depictions which appear to be real acts" as well as actual scenes (see also extreme pornography).

As of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, it is also illegal to possess physical depictions of necrophilia, electronic or otherwise. Necrophilia-pornography falls under the governmental description of extreme pornography, of which, possession is classed as illegal under the aforementioned act.

United States

As of May 2006, there is no federal legislation specifically barring sex with a corpse. Multiple states have their own laws:

• Alabama - Class C felony under 13A-11-13
• Alaska - Class A misdemeanor under 11-61-130
• Arkansas - Class D felony under 5-60-101
• California - Illegal, up to three years in prison (a bill before the legislature would raise the penalty to 8 years)
• Colorado - Class 2 misdemeanor under 18-13-101
• Connecticut - Class A misdemeanor under 53a-73a
• Delaware - Class A misdemeanor under 11-5-1332
• Florida - Second degree felony under chapter 872.06
• Georgia - Felony, up to 10 years in prison under 16-6-7
• Hawaii - Misdemeanor under 7
• Iowa - Class D felony under 709.18
• Minnesota and Nevada also have laws prohibiting necrophilia
• Ohio - Second/fifth degree misdemeanor under 2927.01
• Oregon - Felony for "Abuse of Corpse" ORS 166.085
• Pennsylvania - Legal
• Texas - Class A misdemeanor [1]
• Washington - Class C felony for "Sexually violating human remains" RCW 9A.44.105
• Wisconsin - Class G felony under 940.225 (7)

Ethics of necrophilia

It has been argued that necrophilia may not be as unethical as is widely believed. The argument given in favor is that, according to religious beliefs, the human body is like an aircraft, inhabited by the pilot (the soul). The pilot is the only component which matters. Once the pilot has deserted the aircraft, nobody can commit an unethical act against the aircraft.. A further argument is that when a number of non-consensual invasions of the dead body through body orifices, including the vagina - as in embalming - are considered perfectly ethical, why exclude necrophilia only and on which grounds. This view however has been challenged by others. Many people think that the deceased would not have given permission for the abuser to have sex if they had still been alive. So in many peoples view it is a form of rape and should be treated as such.

In the extremely male-dominated society of 19th-century Prussia, Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck evidently felt as proprietary "right" to secretly keep his wife's corpse preserved in alcohol. Given her vanity for clothing and jewelry while alive, he might well have defended his treatment of her corpse as reverent, even worshipful, and not disrespectful.

Notable cases

• Ted Bundy
• Jeffrey Dahmer
• Ed Gein
• Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck
• Edmund Kemper
• La Païva - victim of thanatophilia
• Gary Ridgway
• Carl Tanzler
• Countess Marie Walewska - presumed victim of necrophilia
• Reg Christie

See also

• Necrophilia in popular culture
• Somnophilia
• 10 Rillington Place

Further reading

• Lisa Downing, Desiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth-Century French Literature. Oxford: Legenda, 2003
• Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis. New York: Stein & Day, 1965. Originally published in 1886.
• Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.
• E. Wulffen, Enzyklopädie die modernen kriminalistik. Berlin: Langenscheidt, 1910.

External links

• RNF: Table of Contents