To pervert means to turn
away from the right course or aim, so it seemed a perfect word to
doctors trying to describe contrary sexual instinct, sexual desire which
has turned away from its "normal" aim. The word has
never been the same since.
Richard von Krafft-Ebing
and other catalogers of the bizarre vastly expanded the list of
perversions at the turn of the 20th Century to include sadism,
masochism, fetishism, pedophilia, zoophilia, lesbianism,
inversion, and other colorfully named
deviations. The profusion of perversions rendered non-procreative
sex in pathological terms, and shed little light on the nature of human
sexuality.
Because
"pervert" and "perversion" have acquired an
irremediably dirty taint, the American Psychiatric Association no longer
uses the word. The psychiatric manual now uses the euphemistic
"paraphilia" instead, and in deference to gay
liberationists, psychiatrists deleted homosexuality from that list
in 1973.
