title: Diagnostic of sexual perversions.
abstract: Sexual perversion is a very controversial matter and difficult to define because, instead of being analyzed as a clinical phenomenon, is seen as a social one: society establishes what is perverse and what is not. If we analyzed the evolution of sexuality we would find many sexual practices considered nowadays forbidden. For example, we consider perverse sexual acts replacing the coitus but we accept as normal what were previously considered deviant forms of sexual intercourse that simply accompany the coitus. In reality there is not a definite boundary between "normality" and "perversion" as each one of us shows a certain grade of perversion that can be disclosed sometimes in imperceptible or harmless ways. Contemporary sexology believes that the worst perversions do not have to implicate genitalia but can also consist of behaviors hiding their own sexual nature and acting as sexual surrogates, such as kleptomania and pyromania that only apparently seem to have nothing to do with sex.
authors.affiliation: University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy. roberta.rossi@uniroma1.it
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rossi
mesh_terms: D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D006801:Humans; D010262:Paraphilic Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D009626:Terminology as Topic