Paraphilia

As paraphilia (in history these states are also called sexual deviations, perversions, aberrations, variants and the others) are referred to as states of qualitatively changed sexual motivation of people. In the structure of sexual motivation, we distinguish three areas that can be changed as follows:

sexual identification, including relevant sex role;
sexual orientation, that is, an erotic preference for a relationship with a sexual object;
sexual behavior, emotions and reactions.

These areas are manifested both in the behavioral sphere and in the cognitive and psychophysiological. Depending on which of the mentioned areas they mainly concern, we divide sexual deviations into:

sexual identification deviation (transsexualism),
sexual orientation deviation (pedophilia, fetishism),
sexual behavior deviation, also called activity deviation (exhibitionism, sadism, masochism),
combined deviations (pedophilic sadism, sadomasochism, etc.).