Paraphilia: Experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, or individuals

Like many other medical terms it comes from Ancient Greek. It means that someone is sexually aroused by people (or by things) that are unable to return their affection. The word can also be used to refer to sexual practices which are bad for the mind or body and are mental disorders.

When doctors talk about paraphilia, they usually mean one of the following, among other things:

• Dendrophilia (paraphilia) - Sexual attraction to trees
• Emetophilia - Sexual arousal from vomiting or watching others vomit
• Exhibitionism- Wanting to expose oneself to strangers
• Fetishism- Sexual arousal by non-sexual objects, like lamps or boxes.
• Frotteurism- Sexual arousal by rubbing against strangers
• Infantilism - Wanting to be treated like an infant or a toddler
• Incestophilia - Wanting to have sex with relatives
• Klismaphilia - Sexual arousal from enemas
• Masochism- Wanting to be hurt physically
• Necrophilia - Sexual attraction to corpses
• Chronophilia- Wanting to have sex with a specific age group
• Sadism- Wanting to hurt people
• Urolagnia - Enjoying urinating on people, and/or having people urinate on them
• Voyeurism- Sexual arousal by looking at strangers doing sexual things
• Zoophilia - Feeling sexually attracted to animals

The respective behaviour is only classified as paraphilia if it is the only means for the person involved to get sexually aroused, for a considerable time.

When normal people talk about paraphilia, they usually mean non-mainstream sexual behaviour.

Homosexuality (LGBT) used to be considered a paraphilia, but this is no longer the case in a lot of countries. However, in a lot of other countries it is still considered abnormal. The opposite of paraphilia is normophilia. An example of a normophilia is teleiophilia.