1. sexual interest in or sexual contact with dead bodies. It is a rare paraphilia seen almost exclusively in men. In some cases, they kill the victim themselves, but most frequently they gain access to corpses via funeral parlors, mortuaries, morgues, or graves. Numerous explanations have been offered for the behavior since it was first described by German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) in his 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis, many of which were psychoanalytically oriented and have now generally been abandoned. More recent explanations have received some empirical support and suggest that necrophilia involves desire for a partner who is incapable of resistance or rejection, desire to exercise power over others as a means of enhancing self-esteem, and desire to counteract feelings of isolation.

2. as described in 1964 by Erich Fromm, an attraction to death, decay, and sickness. He considered this attraction to be a fundamental yet pathological orientation within certain individuals’ characters that reveals itself through increasing tendencies toward greed, narcissism, destruction, cruelty, and murder and a growing attachment to mechanical (i.e., nonliving) artifacts. According to Fromm, necrophilia stems from a person’s desire to compensate for a lack of authenticity and self-identity. —necrophile n. —necrophilic adj.