Sexual deviance

Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. Such attraction may be labeled sexual fetishism. No consensus has been found for any precise border between unusual sexual interests and paraphilic ones. There is debate over which, if any, of the paraphilias should be listed in diagnostic manuals, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The number and taxonomy of paraphilia is under debate; one source lists as many as 549 types of paraphilia. The DSM-5 has specific listings for eight paraphilic disorders. Several sub-classifications of the paraphilias have been proposed, and some argue that a fully dimensional, spectrum or complaint-oriented approach would better reflect the evidence. Many terms have been used to describe atypical sexual interests, and there remains debate regarding technical accuracy and perceptions of stigma. Sexologist John Money popularized the term paraphilia as a non-pejorative designation for unusual sexual interests. Money described paraphilia as 'a sexuoerotic embellishment of, or alternative to the official, ideological norm.' Psychiatrist Glen Gabbard writes that despite efforts by Stekel and Money, 'the term paraphilia remains pejorative in most circumstances.' Coinage of the term paraphilia (paraphilie) has been credited to Friedrich Salomon Krauss in 1903, and it entered the English language in 1913, in reference to Krauss by urologist William J. Robinson. It was used with some regularity by Wilhelm Stekel in the 1920s. The term comes from the Greek παρά (para) 'beside' and φιλία (-philia) 'friendship, love'. In the late 19th century, psychologists and psychiatrists started to categorize various paraphilias as they wanted a more descriptive system than the legal and religious constructs of sodomy and perversion. Before the introduction of the term paraphilia in the DSM-III (1980), the term sexual deviation was used to refer to paraphilias in the first two editions of the manual. In 1981, an article published in American Journal of Psychiatry described paraphilia as 'recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors generally involving: Homosexuality, now widely accepted to be a normal variant of human sexuality, was at one time discussed as a sexual deviation. Sigmund Freud and subsequent psychoanalytic thinkers considered homosexuality and paraphilias to result from psychosexual non-normative relations to the Oedipal complex. As such, the term sexual perversion or the epithet pervert have historically referred to gay men, as well as other non-heterosexuals (people who fall out of the perceived norms of sexual orientation). By the mid-20th century, mental health practitioners began formalizing 'deviant sexuality' classifications into categories. Originally coded as 000-x63, homosexuality was the top of the classification list (Code 302.0) until the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1973. Martin Kafka writes, 'Sexual disorders once considered paraphilias (e.g., homosexuality) are now regarded as variants of normal sexuality.'