Classifications of Necrophilia

Let's move on to the classifications of necrophilia.

In Rosman and Resnick's case, they classified necrophilia into two broad groups;

(1) Genuine Necrophilia

(2) Pseudo-necrophilia

Genuine Necrophilia has a persistent sexual attraction to corpse which means that their attractions are to a real corpse unlike psuedo-necrophilia in which the attraction to a corpse may not necessarily be a dead person, it can manifest in roleplaying, sadism, etc.

Rosman and Resnick classified Genuine Necrophlia into three smaller groups;

(1) Necrophilic homicide in which the necrophile commits murder to obtain a dead body.

(2) Regular Necrophilia in which the necrophile uses an already dead body.

(3) Necrophilic fantasy in which the necrophile fantasizes a sexual act on a corpse and actually acts on it.

In their research, they discovered that most of the necrophiliac cases involved committing homicide to obtain the corpse.


Now, while Rosman and Resnick's work, Sexual Attraction to Corpses: A Psychiatric Review of Necrophilia, is arguably the most comprehensive study in the area, there are also others that has tried to figure out more about this topic and contributed highly to figure out more about this type of paraphilia. An example of that is a work by work by Anil Aggrawal M.D, a professor in Forensic Medicine, called A New Classification of Necrophilia which can be found in his own website.

According to Professor Anil Aggrawal, cases like the one above indicate that necrophilia exists in many variations. Aggrawal argued that because so many related necrophilic behaviors are used differently by different people, a new classification was needed. Based on case studies in the literature, Aggrawal argued that there were ten different types of necrophiliacs.

(1) Role Players, they are the ones that enjoy having sex with a living person pretending to be dead rather than a real corpse. Sometimes, a vampire fantasy is involved in doing this acts.

(2) Romantic Necrophiles, they are the ones that commit necrophilia who, probably due to the grief that they felt after losing someone, are emotionally unstable . They can't seem to accept their loved one's death and so they try to preserve them and continue to relate sexually to them like back when their love ones are alive. They eventually get over it.

(3) Necrophilic Fantasizers, they are people who fantasizes about sexual intercourse with a corpse. They don't technically have intercourse with a corpse rather, they are simply content with fantasizing about them.

(4) Tactile Necrophiles, they don't really have intercourse with a corpse but when presented with a body they will try and stroke some parts of the body such as the breasts, etc. Some even try to get a job that deals with the dead like funeral parlors.

(5) Fetishistic Necrophilies (i.e., people having a sexual fetish for the dead). Now, they are a little bit weird-- well, weirder. They cut up parts of the body to keep for later fetishistic activities which I do not want to know. Sometimes they'll even take the clothes of the corpses to keep us fetish object.

(6) Necromutilomaniacs (i.e., people having a necromutilomania), they do not have intercourse with the corpse but rather they get pleasure from mutilating a corpse and masturbating simultaneously. Things are getting weirder and weirder. I'm scared to find out what's next.

(7) Opportunistic Necrophiles, these type is what Rosman and Resnick consider as pseudonecrophilia, the type that are content with having intercourse with a living being but, if given an opportunity, they would.

(8) Regular Necrophiles

(9) Homicidal Necrophiles

(10) Exclusive Necrophiles, this is probably the rarest of all but it's not really dangerous.They are the ones that will only have intercourse with the dead and have no interest with the living.

It seems to me that classifying necrophilia isn't as easy as it looks but as it is, like I said before, necrophilia is actually a rare case and that there are only a few publications regarding this topic, so it's not really weird that people, even if they're experts, find it hard to classify it.