In the DSM-5 all paraphilia disorders can be diagnosed by two main criteria that are referred to criteria A and criteria B respectively. The A and B criteria include a duration in which the behavior must be present for (typically 6 months) and specific details of actions or thoughts that are correlated specifically with the respective disorder being diagnosed.

Psychosexual disorders can vary greatly in severity and treatability. Medical professionals and licensed therapists are necessary in diagnosis and treatment plans. Treatment can vary from therapy to prescription medication. Sex therapy, behavioral therapy, and group therapy may be helpful to those suffering distress from sexual dysfunction. More serious sexual perversions may be treated with androgen blockers or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to help restore hormonal and neurochemical balances.

In 2009 Amy Marsh, a clinical sexologist, surveyed the twenty-one English-speaking members of Erika Eiffel's 40-strong OS Internationale about their experiences. About half reported autism spectrum disorders: six had been diagnosed, four were affected but not diagnosed, and three of the remaining nine reported having "some traits." According to Marsh, "The emotions and experiences reported by OS people correspond to general definitions of sexual orientation," such as that in an APA article "on sexual orientation and homosexuality ... [which] refers to sexual orientation as involving 'feelings and self concept.'"

The ICD-10 defines fetishism as a reliance on non-living objects for sexual arousal and satisfaction. It is only considered a disorder when fetishistic activities are the foremost source of sexual satisfaction, and become so compelling or unacceptable as to cause distress or interfere with normal sexual intercourse. The ICD's research guidelines require that the preference persists for at least six months, and is markedly distressing or acted on.

Under the DSM-5, fetishism is sexual arousal from nonliving objects or specific nongenital body parts, excluding clothes used for cross-dressing (as that falls under transvestic disorder) and sex toys that are designed for genital stimulation. In order to be diagnosed as "fetishistic disorder", the arousal must persist for at least six months and cause significant psychosocial distress or impairment in important areas of their life. In the DSM-IV, sexual interest in body parts was distinguished from fetishism under the name partialism (diagnosed as Paraphilia NOS), but it was merged with fetishistic disorder for the DSM-5.

The ReviseF65 project has campaigned for the ICD diagnosis to be abolished completely to avoid stigmatizing fetishists. Sexologist Odd Reiersøl argues that distress associated with fetishism is often caused by shame, and that being subject to diagnosis only exacerbates that. He suggests that, in cases where the individual fails to control harmful behavior, they instead be diagnosed with a personality or impulse control disorder.

Object sexuality or objectophilia is a form of sexuality focused on particular inanimate objects. Those individuals with this expressed preference may feel strong feelings of attraction, love, and commitment to certain items or structures of their fixation. For some, sexual or even close emotional relationships with humans are incomprehensible. Some object-sexual individuals also often believe in animism, and sense reciprocation based on the belief that objects have souls, intelligence, and feelings, and are able to communicate.

Most psychologists believe that paraphilic sexual interests cannot be altered. Instead, the goal of therapy is normally to reduce the person's discomfort with their paraphilia and limit any criminal behavior. Both psychotherapeutic and pharmacological methods are available to these ends.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, at times, can help people with paraphilias develop strategies to avoid acting on their interests. Patients are taught to identify and cope with factors that make acting on their interests more likely, such as stress. It is currently the only form of psychotherapy for paraphilias supported by evidence.

Antiandrogens are used in more severe cases. Similar to physical castration, they work by reducing androgen levels, and have thus been described as chemical castration. The antiandrogen cyproterone acetate has been shown to substantially reduce sexual fantasies and offending behaviors. Medroxyprogesterone acetate and gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists (such as leuprolide acetate) have also been used to lower sex drive. Due to the side effects, the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry recommends that hormonal treatments only be used when there is a serious risk of sexual violence, or when other methods have failed. Surgical castration has largely been abandoned because these pharmacological alternatives are similarly effective and less invasive.

Homophobic attitudes and behaviors may be linked to sexophobia: doctor Martin Kantor describes many homophobes as being basically sexophobes, who fear and loathe sexual relationships both between partners of the same sex and between heterosexual partners.

In the DSM-5, male hypoactive sexual desire disorder is characterized by "persistently or recurrently deficient (or absent) sexual/erotic thoughts or fantasies and desire for sexual activity", as judged by a clinician with consideration for the patient's age and cultural context. Female sexual interest/arousal disorder is defined as a "lack of, or significantly reduced, sexual interest/arousal", manifesting as at least three of the following symptoms: no or little interest in sexual activity, no or few sexual thoughts, no or few attempts to initiate sexual activity or respond to partner's initiation, no or little sexual pleasure/excitement in 75%-100% of sexual experiences, no or little sexual interest in internal or external erotic stimuli, and no or few genital/nongenital sensations in 75%-100% of sexual experiences.

For both diagnoses, symptoms must persist for at least six months, cause clinically significant distress, and not be better explained by another condition. Simply having lower desire than one's partner is not sufficient for a diagnosis. Self-identification of a lifelong lack of sexual desire as asexuality precludes diagnosis.

According to the World Health Organization, fetishistic fantasies are common and should only be treated as a disorder when they impair normal functioning or cause distress. Goals of treatment can include elimination of criminal activity, reduction in reliance on the fetish for sexual satisfaction, improving relationship skills, or attempting to remove deviant arousal altogether. The evidence for treatment efficacy is limited and largely based on case studies, and no research on treatment for female fetishists exists.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is one popular approach. Cognitive behavioral therapists teach clients to identify and avoid antecedents to fetishistic behavior, and substitute non-fetishistic fantasies for ones involving the fetish. Aversion therapy can reduce fetishistic arousal in the short term, but is unlikely to have any permanent effect.

Antiandrogens and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may be prescribed to lower sex drive. Cyproterone acetate is the most commonly used antiandrogen, except in the United States, where it may not be available. A large body of literature has shown that it reduces general sexual fantasies. Side effects may include osteoporosis, liver dysfunction, and feminization. Case studies have found that the antiandrogen medroxyprogesterone acetate is successful in reducing sexual interest, but can have side effects including osteoporosis, diabetes, deep vein thrombosis, feminization, and weight gain. Some hospitals use leuprolide acetate and goserelin acetate to reduce libido, and while there is presently little evidence for their efficacy, they have fewer side effects than other antiandrogens. A number of studies support the use of SSRIs, which may be preferable over antiandrogens because of their relatively benign side effects. None of these drugs cure sexual fetishism, but they can make it easier to manage.

Relationship counselers may attempt to reduce dependence on the fetish and improve partner communication using techniques like sensate focusing. Partners may agree to incorporate the fetish into their activities in a controlled, time-limited manner, or set aside only certain days to practice the fetishism. If the fetishist cannot sustain an erection without the fetish object, the therapist might recommend orgasmic reconditioning or covert sensitization to increase arousal to normal stimuli (although the evidence base for these techniques is weak).

Biphobia is aversion toward bisexuality and toward bisexual people as a social group or as individuals. It can take the form of denial that bisexuality is a genuine sexual orientation, or of negative stereotypes about people who are bisexual (such as the beliefs that they are promiscuous or dishonest). People of any sexual orientation can experience or perpetuate biphobia, and it is a source of social discrimination against bisexual people.

Sexophobia in clinical talk has an effect on the way patients speak to their doctors, as it manifests itself in the communication strategies that are employed to speak about private health problems. In that sense, the use of neutral and veiled vocabulary by doctors can discourage patients to speak openly about their sexual issues.

Otherwise, historian and sociologist Cindy Patton has identified sexophobia as one of the main trends that characterised the development of the second phase of the VIH epidemics in Great Britain, along with homophobia and germophobia.

Vorarephilia (often shortened to vore) is a paraphilia characterized by the erotic desire to be consumed by, or sometimes to personally consume, another person or creature, or an erotic attraction to the process of eating in general. Since vorarephilic fantasies cannot usually be acted out in reality, they are often expressed in stories or drawings shared on the Internet. The word "vorarephilia" is derived from the Latin "vorare" (to "swallow" or "devour"), and Ancient Greek φιλία ("philía", "love").

The fantasy usually involves the victim being swallowed whole, though occasionally the victims are chewed up, and digestion may or may not be included. Vore fantasies are separated from sexual cannibalism because the living victim is normally swallowed whole. Sometimes the consumers are human, but anthropormorphized animals, dragons, and enormous snakes also appear frequently in these fantasies. After consumption, the enlarged belly of the consumer is often described with great care. Vorarephiles sometimes prefer to differentiate between "soft vore" and "hard vore"; soft vore means the victim is swallowed whole and alive, and may possibly come back out in the case of a "non-fatal" scenario, while in hard vore the victim goes through a more gruesome, realistic digestion process, often getting chewed up beforehand.

Vore is most often enjoyed through pictures, stories, videos, and video games, and it can appear in mainstream media. In some cases, vorarephilia may be described as a variation of macrophilia and may combine with other paraphilias. Apart from macrophilia, vore fantasies often have themes of BDSM, microphilia, pregnancy fetishism, furry fetishism, "unbirthing" (a desire to be swallowed whole into the vagina and returned to the uterus), and sexual cannibalism.

One case study analysis connected the fantasy with sexual masochism, and suggested that it could be motivated by a desire to merge with a powerful other or permanently escape loneliness. With "no known treatment" for vorarephiles who feel ill at ease with their sexuality, psychologists at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health have recommended trying to "adjust to, rather than change or suppress" the sexual interest. Medication for sex drive reduction could be used if deemed necessary.

Agalmatophilia (from the Greek "agalma" 'statue', and -philia φιλία = love) is a paraphilia involving sexual attraction to a statue, doll, mannequin or other similar figurative object. The attraction may include a desire for actual sexual contact with the object, a fantasy of having sexual (or non-sexual) encounters with an animate or inanimate instance of the preferred object, the act of watching encounters between such objects, or sexual pleasure gained from thoughts of being transformed or transforming another into the preferred object. Agalmatophilia may also encompass "Pygmalionism" (from the myth of Pygmalion), which denotes love for an object of one's own creation.

Until the 1990s, it tended to be described mostly as acrotomophilia, at the expense of other disabilities, or of the wish by some to pretend or acquire disability. Bruno (1997) systematised the attraction as factitious disability disorder. A decade on, others argue that erotic target location error is at play, classifying the attraction as an identity disorder. In the standard psychiatric reference "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", text revision (DSM-IV-tr), the fetish falls under the general category of "Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders" and the more specific category of paraphilia, or sexual fetishes; this classification is preserved in DSM-5.

Erotophobia is a term coined by a number of researchers in the late 1970s and early 1980s to describe one pole on a continuum of attitudes and beliefs about sexuality. The model of the continuum is a basic polarized line, with erotophobia (fear of sex or negative attitudes about sex) at one end and erotophilia (positive feelings or attitudes about sex) at the other end.

The word erotophobia is derived from the name of Eros, the Greek god of erotic love, and Phobos, Greek (φόβος) for "fear".

Attraction to disability or devotism is a sexualised interest in the appearance, sensation and experience of disability. It may extend from normal human sexuality into a type of sexual fetishism. Sexologically, the pathological end of the attraction tends to be classified as a paraphilia. (Note, however, that the very concept "paraphilia" continues to elude satisfactory definition and remains a subject of ongoing debate in both professional and lay communities) Other researchers have approached it as a form of identity disorder. The most common interests are towards amputations, prosthesis, and crutches.

A fetish (derived from the French "fétiche"; which comes from the Portuguese "feitiço"; and this in turn from Latin "facticius", "artificial" and "facere", "to make") is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the emic attribution of inherent value or powers to an object.

HSDD, like many sexual dysfunctions, is something that people are treated for in the context of a relationship. Theoretically, one could be diagnosed with, and treated for, HSDD without being in a relationship. However, relationship status is the most predictive factor accounting for distress in women with low desire and distress is required for a diagnosis of HSDD. Therefore, it is common for both partners to be involved in therapy. Typically, the therapist tries to find a psychological or biological cause of the HSDD. If the HSDD is organically caused, the clinician may try to deal with that. If the clinician believes it is rooted in a psychological problem, they may recommend therapy for that. If not, treatment generally focuses more on relationship and communication issues, improved communication (verbal and nonverbal), working on non-sexual intimacy, or education about sexuality may all be possible parts of treatment. Sometimes problems occur because people have unrealistic perceptions about what normal sexuality is and are concerned that they do not compare well to that, and this is one reason why education can be important. If the clinician thinks that part of the problem is a result of stress, techniques may be recommended to more effectively deal with that. Also, it can be important to understand why the low level of sexual desire is a problem for the relationship because the two partners may associate different meaning with sex but not know it.

In the case of men, the therapy may depend on the subtype of HSDD. Increasing the level of sexual desire of a man with lifelong/generalized HSDD is unlikely. Instead the focus may be on helping the couple to adapt. In the case of acquired/generalized, it is likely that there is some biological reason for it and the clinician may attempt to deal with that. In the case of acquired/situational, some form of psychotherapy may be used, possibly with the man alone and possibly together with his partner.

Bondage pornography is the depiction of sexual bondage or other BDSM activities using photographs, stories, movies or drawings. Though often described as pornography, the genre involves the presentation of bondage fetishism or BDSM scenarios and does not necessarily involve the commonly understood pornographic styles. In fact, the genre is primarily interested with the presentation of a bondage scene and less with depictions of sexuality, such as nudity or sex scenes, which may be viewed as a distraction from the aesthetics and eroticism of the bondage scenario itself.

Historically, most subjects of bondage imagery have been women, and the genre has been criticized for promoting misogynistic attitudes and violence against women.

BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged in by people who do not consider themselves as practicing BDSM, inclusion in the BDSM community or subculture is usually dependent upon self-identification and shared experience.

The term "BDSM" is first recorded in a Usenet posting from 1991, and is interpreted as a combination of the abbreviations B/D (Bondage and Discipline), D/s (Dominance and submission), and S/M (Sadism and Masochism). BDSM is now used as a catch-all phrase covering a wide range of activities, forms of interpersonal relationships, and distinct subcultures. BDSM communities generally welcome anyone with a non-normative streak who identifies with the community; this may include cross-dressers, body modification enthusiasts, animal roleplayers, rubber fetishists, and others.

Activities and relationships within a BDSM context are often characterized by the participants taking on complementary, but unequal roles; thus, the idea of informed consent of both the partners is essential. The terms "submissive" and "dominant" are often used to distinguish these roles: the dominant partner ("dom") takes psychological control over the submissive ("sub"). The terms "top" and "bottom" are also used: the top is the instigator of an action while the bottom is the receiver of the action. The two sets of terms are subtly different: for example, someone may choose to act as bottom to another person, for example, by being whipped, purely recreationally, without any implication of being psychologically dominated by them, or a submissive may be ordered to massage their dominant partner. Despite the bottom performing the action and the top receiving they have not necessarily switched roles.

The abbreviations "sub" and "dom" are frequently used instead of "submissive" and "dominant". Sometimes the female-specific terms "mistress", "domme" or "dominatrix" are used to describe a dominant woman, instead of the gender-neutral term "dom". Individuals who can change between top/dominant and bottom/submissive roles—whether from relationship to relationship or within a given relationship—are known as "switches". The precise definition of roles and self-identification is a common subject of debate within the community.

Acrotomophiles may be attracted to amputees because they like the way they look or they may view the amputee’s stump as a phallic object which can be used for sexual pleasure.A small number of Acrotomophiles may enjoy the idea of dominating the amputee during couples play and they may also become aroused with the thought of having to take care of an amputee.

Some types of BDSM play include, but are not limited to:

- Animal roleplay

- Bondage

- Breast torture

- Cock and ball torture (CBT)

- Erotic electrostimulation

- Edgeplay

- Flogging

- Golden showers (urinating)

- Human furniture

- Japanese bondage

- Medical play

- Paraphilic infantilism

- Predicament bondage

- Pussy torture

- Sexual roleplay

- Spanking

- Suspension

- Torture

- Tickle torture

- Wax play

Acrotomophilia (from the Greek ἀκρότομος "having the top cut off" (from ἄκρον "akron" "extremity" and -τομος "-tomos" from τέμνω "temno" "I cut") and φιλία "philia" "love") is a paraphilia in which an individual expresses strong sexual interest in amputees. It is a counterpart to "apotemnophilia", the sexual interest in "being" an amputee.

Erotophobia has many manifestations. An individual or culture can have one or multiple erotophobic attitudes. Some types of erotophobia include fear of nudity, fear of sexual images, homophobia, fear of sex education, fear of sexual discourse.