“Pervert, Sadist, Voyeur and Necrophile”: Pathological Sexual Desire in the Case of the “Dragon of Sheikh Sou”, 1959–1963
Abstract
This article analyses the case of the “Dragon of Sheikh Sou”, the alleged
perpetrator of four crimes committed in 1959 and 1963 in Thessaloniki, which terrified
and fascinated the public, as a case study for the construction of “perverted” sexuality in
Greece during this period. Combining journalistic and medical (forensic and psychiatric)
accounts, it argues that sexual violence was turned into a central dimension of these
crimes, as, within the sociocultural transformations of the time (mainly urbanisation
and new gender roles), anxieties about sexuality intensified. The article concludes that
in late-1950s and early-1960s Greece, “perverted” sexual desires remained more closely
connected to vice than illness, and were understood as a male psychiatric pathology only
to the degree that they could contribute to the normalisation of a supposedly “moderate”
male sexual violence, but not to the extent that they required psychiatric treatment.
Article Details
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Kritsotaki, D., & Zestanakis, P. (2022). “Pervert, Sadist, Voyeur and Necrophile”: Pathological Sexual Desire in the Case of the “Dragon of Sheikh Sou”, 1959–1963. The Historical Review/La Revue Historique, 18(1), 43–66. Retrieved from https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/historicalReview/article/view/31314
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