- published: 20 Dec 2013
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Paraphilia (in Greek para παρά = beside and -philia φιλία = friendship, meaning love) is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation and that may cause distress or serious problems for the paraphiliac or persons associated with him or her. A paraphilia involves sexual arousal and gratification, involving a sexual behavior that is atypical or extreme. The term was coined by Wilhelm Stekel in the 1920s. Sexologist John Money later popularized the term as a nonpejorative designation for unusual sexual interests. He described paraphilia as "a sexuoerotic embellishment of, or alternative to the official, ideological norm."
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: