Necrophilia - Research

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% were motivated by a desire for an unresisting and unrejecting partner;
• 21% by a want for reunion with a lost partner;
• 15% by sexual attraction to dead people;
• 15% by a desire for comfort or to overcome feelings of isolation; and
• 11% 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.