Murder for lust. Systematic review of the use of lustmörd in the international scientific community

Abstract

The concept of lustmörd, coined by Krafft Ebing in 1886, arises within the framework of the publication of the famous work of the German author by which an exhaustive categorization of sexual practices is established in its entirety, especially considering those that are not ordered around the genital sexual norm linked to heterosexuality and reproductive purpose.

Precisely within these coordinates, the author introduces his formulation of sadism as one of those sexual practices that will integrate the field of paraphilias and that will allow him to explain a series of aberrant phenomena, among which are some coming from the criminal field. “Sadism: association of active cruelty and violence with lust” (Krafft Ebing, 2012, p. 57). Starting, then, from the postulation of sadism as the taste for inflicting pain, the notion that today motivates this systematic review arises.