Based on an article by Reiersøl and Skeid, published in the book “Sadomasochism-Powerful Pleasures” (Haworth, 2006), I will talk about the psychiatric diagnoses of sexual deviation as they appear in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), the internationally accepted classification and diagnostic system of the World Health Organization (WHO). Specifically, I will present a critique of the three diagnostic categories: Fetishism (F65.0), Fetishistic Transvestism (F65.1), and Sadomasochism (F65.5). This is a critique of the usefulness of diagnosing these phenomena today. I will argue that Fetishism, Fetishistic Transvestism, and Sadomasochism, also labeled Paraphilia or perversion, should not be considered illnesses. I also want to present the efforts of an initiative known as ReviseF65, which was established in Norway in 1997, to abolish these diagnoses.
Conflict of Interest: None disclosed
Financial Support/Funding: None disclosed
Sydney, Australia, April 2007
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