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Concept
Voyeurism
Summary
Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature.
The term comes from the French voir which means "to see". A male voyeur is commonly labelled as "Peeping Tom" or a "Jags", a term which originates from the Lady Godiva legend. However, that term is usually applied to a male who observes somebody secretly and, generally, not in a public space.
The American Psychiatric Association has classified certain voyeuristic fantasies, urges and behaviour patterns as a paraphilia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) if the person has acted on these urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty. It is described as a disorder of sexual preference in the ICD-10. The DSM-IV defines voyeurism as the act of observing "individuals, usually strangers, engaging in sexual activity, exhibitionism, or disrobing". The diagnosis as a disorder would not be given to people who experience typical sexual arousal or amusement, simply by seeing nudity or sexual activity.
There is relatively little academic research regarding voyeurism. When a review was published in 1976 there were only 15 available resources. Voyeurs were well-paying hole-lookers in especially Parisian brothels, a commercial innovation described as far back as 1857 but not gaining much notoriety until the 1880s, and not attracting formal medical-forensic recognition until the early 1890s. Society has accepted the use of the term voyeur as a description of anyone who views the intimate lives of others, even outside of a sexual context. This term is specifically used regarding reality television and other media which allow people to view the personal lives of others. This is a reversal from the historical perspective, moving from a term which describes a specific population in detail, to one which describes the general population vaguely.
One of the few historical theories on the causes of voyeurism comes from psychoanalytic theory.
Official source
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