Abstract
The authors present a case of sadonecrophilia in a 54-year-old autopsy technician. The case is presented because this perversion has rarely been reported in the psychiatric literature and because it is felt that studies of perversion, examined from an ego-psychological point of view, as well as the classic instinctual viewpoint, throw useful light upon the psychology of the early ego and early object-relations.
Though rare in our professional literature, necrophilia has long been recognized in historical, literary and legendary productions. Necrophilic preoccupations among the ancient Egyptians and Greeks are reported, as well as various legends concerning medieval kings. Later, there were the cases of two notorious necrophiles, known as the ‘Vampires of Paris, and du Muy’, described by Krafft-Ebing. The fundamental importance of Freud's description in 1905 of Infantile Sexuality is noted, as well as Abraham's contributions about oral and anal sadism. The important contribution of Marie Bonaparte concerning the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire is reviewed, as to the necrophilic content of these literary productions. The contributions of Ernest Jones on the subject are also noted, with his reference to the relation of necrophilia with vampirism, coprophagia and cannibalism. Later works by Brill, Rapaport, Segal, Glauber, Pomer, Klaff and Brown, Tarachow and Bierman are also reviewed. Most authors have stressed the importance of object-loss in the pathogenesis of necrophilia and the prevalence of oral-sadistic and anal-sadistic fixations. This was in addition to the classic role of (Edipal castration anxiety in the determination of perversion, which though always present seemed secondary in importance to the intense pre-Œdipal anxieties described above.
The case presented is that of a 54-year-old married autopsy technician. He was accused of assaulting a female corpse at his work. He was acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence but having been referred for psychiatric examination before the Court proceedings, he has remained in psychotherapy ever since (two and a half years).
The corpse was that of a 50-year-old female, which had been viciously mutilated in the genital area and breasts. The patient had for a few months prior to the offence felt the threat of dismissal by his superiors (object-loss), and gradually decompensated into a paranoid schizophrenic state, with much explosive anger which found expression in the sado-necrophilic assault.
The patient had had a painful childhood, with a violent, alcoholic father who died, mangled in a workman's accident, when the patient was seven years old. Fear of the dead started at this time of his first object-loss. He was placed in an orphanage and suffered great separation anxieties and rage against his mother, whom he saw as abandoning him in a second experience of object-loss. He became engaged to a woman who died during the engagement, inflicting further abandonment. The fiancée before death prevailed upon the patient to marry her sister instead, which he did. With his wife, he led a quiet, respectable life but was rather cold and sexually inadequate. In psychotherapy, he constantly showed great vulnerability to interruptions and temporary separations from his therapist.
Psychodynamically, there was much evidence of (Edipal castration anxiety. However, it is our thesis that the basic conflictual area in this patient is a depressive one. We agree with previous authors that object-loss is the crucial experience and we feel that the threat of rejection by his superiors was felt as the precipitating trauma with regard to the sado-necrophilic offence.
A very fragile ego was evidenced, as illustrated by the multiple identifications of the patient, indicating he had little sense of autonomous identity.
In attacking the female corpse, he assaulted the basic, evil rejecting mother, whom later security-giving figures represented. It was also our feeling that, according to the material, the assault represented an attempt to unite with the mother, to re-enter the womb so as to render all future loss and separation impossible. We agree with Marie Bonaparte chat under the sadistic aspect of necrophilia an erotic impulse exists and that in the erotic form of necrophilia the sadistic aspects are never absent. Thus we feel the term sado-necrophilia is a more comprehensive and appropriate one. The repugnant quality of this perversion recalls Freud's statement that the love instinct must indeed have to be all powerful to be able to overcome the resistances of shame and disgust and horror.