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An example of inhibited necrophilia is reported. A married man of forty, of above average intelligence, the father of five children, had been treated at various times for schizophrenia. During sodium amytal interviews he related his necrophilic fantasies. From age nine he had been interested in the dead. Later he assisted an undertaker; he liked to draw blood from the bodies and especially to restore disfigured bodies. He was sexually attracted to female corpses and sometimes would hug them. Or he would run home to masturbate while thinking of the body as alive; or in sexual intercourse would in fantasy substitute the corpse for his wife. He had never had intercourse with a corpse, but in his sexual fantasies 'the dead came to life and loved him'. In a mortuary he played house like a child, with the bodies as dolls toward which his 'deep-seated sadistic, scoptophilic, and incestuous forces were directed'. The authors consider his interest in rigor mortis and perfect restoration of bodies, and his curiosity about the various body postures as defenses against the dead coming back to life and taking revenge on him. His deep-seated emotional relation with the dead they relate to his 'powerful ambivalent feelings toward the mother'. His mother had been a shadowy figure usually absent, and a strict, harsh older sister and a grandmother had reared him.
Although necrophilia is rarely described, such fantasies are more common than is generally supposed.