Sexual fetishism

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see Fetishism (disambiguation).

Sexual fetishism
Foot fetishism, one of the most common sexual fetishes
SpecialtyPsychiatry

Sexual fetishism or erotic fetishism is a sexual fixation on a nonliving object or nongenital body part.[1] The object of interest is called the fetish; the person who has a fetish for that object is a fetishist.[2] A sexual fetish may be regarded as a non-pathological aid to sexual excitement, or as a mental disorder if it causes significant psychosocial distress for the person or has detrimental effects on important areas of their life.[1][3] Sexual arousal from a particular body part can be further classified as partialism.[4]

While medical definitions restrict the term sexual fetishism to objects or body parts,[1] fetish can, in common discourse, also refer to sexual interest in specific activities.[5]

Definitions

In common parlance, the word fetish is used to refer to any sexually arousing stimuli, not all of which meet the medical criteria for fetishism.

urophilia, necrophilia and coprophilia have been described as fetishes.[6]

Originally, most medical sources defined fetishism as a sexual interest in non-living objects, body parts or secretions. The publication of the

DSM-IV retained this distinction.[6] Martin Kafka argued that partialism should be merged into fetishism because of overlap between the two conditions,[6] and the DSM-5 subsequently did so in 2013.[1] The ICD-10 definition (World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases) is still limited to non-living objects.[3]

Types

See also: List of paraphilias

In a review of 48 cases of clinical fetishism in 1983, fetishes included clothing (58.3%), rubber and rubber items (22.9%), footwear (14.6%), body parts (14.6%), leather (10.4%), and soft materials or fabrics (6.3%).[7]

A 2007 study counted members of Internet discussion groups with the word fetish in their name. Of the groups about body parts or features, 47% belonged to groups about feet (

hair fetish), and 5% about muscles (muscle worship). Less popular groups focused on navels (navel fetishism), legs, body hair, mouth, and nails, among other things. Of the groups about clothing, 33% belonged to groups about clothes worn on the legs or buttocks (such as stockings or skirts), 32% about footwear (shoe fetishism), 12% about underwear (underwear fetishism), and 9% about whole-body wear such as jackets. Less popular object groups focused on headwear, stethoscopes, wristwear, pacifiers, and diapers (diaper fetishism).[5]

Erotic asphyxiation is the use of choking to increase the pleasure in sex. The fetish also includes an individualized part that involves choking oneself during the act of masturbation, which is known as auto-erotic asphyxiation. This usually involves a person being connected and strangled by a homemade device that is tight enough to give them pleasure but not tight enough to suffocate them to death. This is dangerous due to the issue of hyperactive pleasure seeking which can result in strangulation when there is no one to help if the device gets too tight and strangles the user.[8]

Devotism involves being attracted to disability or body modifications on another person that are the result of amputation for example. Devotism is only a sexual fetish when the person who has the fetish considers the amputated body part on another person the object of sexual interest.[9]

Cause

The sensory regions for the feet and genitals lie next to each other, as shown in this cortical homunculus.

Fetishism usually becomes evident during puberty, but may develop prior to that.[1] No single cause for fetishism has been conclusively established.[10]

Some explanations invoke classical conditioning. In several experiments, men have been conditioned to show arousal to stimuli like boots, geometric shapes or penny jars by pairing these cues with conventional erotica.[11] According to John Bancroft, conditioning alone cannot explain fetishism, because it does not result in fetishism for most people. He suggests that conditioning combines with some other factor, such as an abnormality in the sexual learning process.[10]

Theories of

sexual imprinting propose that humans learn to recognize sexually desirable features and activities during childhood. Fetishism could result when a child is imprinted with an overly narrow or incorrect concept of a sex object.[12] Imprinting seems to occur during the child's earliest experiences with arousal and desire, and is based on "an egocentric evaluation of salient reward- or pleasure-related characteristics that differ from one individual to another."[13]

Neurological differences may play a role in some cases.

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran observed that the region processing sensory input from the feet lies immediately next to the region processing genital stimulation, and suggested an accidental link between these regions could explain the prevalence of foot fetishism.[14] In one unusual case, an anterior temporal lobectomy relieved an epileptic man's fetish for safety pins.[15][16]

Various explanations have been put forth for the rarity of female fetishists. Most fetishes are visual in nature, and males are thought to be more sexually sensitive to visual stimuli.[17] Roy Baumeister suggests that male sexuality is unchangeable, except for a brief period in childhood during which fetishism could become established, while female sexuality is fluid throughout life.[18]

Diagnosis

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.[3] The ICD's research guidelines require that the preference persists for at least six months, and is markedly distressing or acted on.[19]

Under the

Paraphilia NOS), but it was merged with fetishistic disorder for the DSM-5.[1]

The ReviseF65 project has campaigned for the ICD diagnosis to be abolished completely to avoid

impulse control disorder.[20]

Treatment

According to the

case studies, and no research on treatment for female fetishists exists.[21]

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 and covert conditioning can reduce fetishistic arousal in the short term, but requires repetition to sustain the effect. Multiple case studies have also reported treating fetishistic behavior with psychodynamic approaches.[21]

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 leuprorelin and goserelin 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 selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which may be preferable over antiandrogens because of their relatively benign side effects. Pharmacological agents are an adjunctive treatment which are usually combined with other approaches for maximum effect.[21]

covert sensitization to increase arousal to normal stimuli (although the evidence base for these techniques is weak).[21]

Occurrence

The

feet, nonsexual objects, and specific clothing), and 4.7% focused on a specific body part other than feet. None of the women's favorite fantasies had fetishistic themes.[23] Another study found that 28% of men and 11% of women reported fetishistic arousal (including feet, fabrics, and objects "like shoes, gloves, or plush toys").[24] 18% of men in a 1980 study reported fetishistic fantasies.[17]

Fetishism to the extent that it becomes a disorder appears to be rare, with less than 1% of general psychiatric patients presenting fetishism as their primary problem. It is also uncommon in forensic populations.[17]

History

The word fetish derives from the French fétiche, which comes from the Portuguese feitiço ("spell"), which in turn derives from the Latin facticius ("artificial") and facere ("to make").[25] A fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value or powers to an object. Fétichisme was first used in an erotic context by Alfred Binet in 1887.[26][27] A slightly earlier concept was Julien Chevalier's azoophilie.[28]

Early perspectives on cause

Alfred Binet suspected fetishism was the pathological result of associations. He argued that, in certain vulnerable individuals, an emotionally rousing experience with the fetish object in childhood could lead to fetishism.[29] Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis also believed that fetishism arose from associative experiences, but disagreed on what type of predisposition was necessary.[30]

The sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld followed another line of thought when he proposed his theory of partial attractiveness in 1920. According to his argument, sexual attractiveness never originates in a person as a whole but always is the product of the interaction of individual features. He stated that nearly everyone had special interests and thus suffered from a healthy kind of fetishism, while only detaching and overvaluing of a single feature resulted in pathological fetishism. Today, Hirschfeld's theory is often mentioned in the context of gender role specific behavior: females present sexual stimuli by highlighting body parts, clothes or accessories; males react to them.

Sigmund Freud believed that sexual fetishism in men derived from the unconscious fear of the mother's genitals, from men's universal fear of castration, and from a man's fantasy that his mother had had a penis but that it had been cut off. He did not discuss sexual fetishism in women.

In 1951,

transitional object became sexualized.[31]

Other animals

See also: Animal sexual behaviour § Others

Human fetishism has been compared to

Pavlovian conditioning of sexual response in other animals.[13][32][33] Sexual attraction to certain cues can be artificially induced in rats. Both male and female rats will develop a sexual preference for neutrally or even noxiously scented partners if those scents are paired with their early sexual experiences.[13] Injecting morphine or oxytocin into a male rat during its first exposure to scented females has the same effect.[13] Rats will also develop sexual preferences for the location of their early sexual experiences, and can be conditioned to show increased arousal in the presence of objects such as a plastic toy fish.[13][32] One experiment found that rats which are made to wear a Velcro tethering jacket during their formative sexual experiences exhibit severe deficits in sexual performance when not wearing the jacket.[13] Similar sexual conditioning has been demonstrated in gouramis, marmosets and Japanese quails.[13]

Possible

common chimpanzee born in captivity, he would invariably stare at it, touch it, become erect, rub his penis against the boot, masturbate, and then consume his ejaculate. The second, a guinea baboon, would become erect while rubbing and smelling the boot, but not masturbate or touch it with his penis.[34]

See also

Clothing fetishism and fetish-related

References

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  2. ^ "Common Misunderstandings of Fetishism". K. M. Vekquin. Archived from the original on 5 January 2013. Retrieved 24 May 2010.
  3. ^ a b c d "Fetishism, F65.0" (PDF). The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders: Clinical descriptions and diagnostic guidelines. World Health Organization. p. 170. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 March 2014. Retrieved 2 March 2014.
  4. ^ Milner, J. S., & Dopke, C. A. (1997). Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified: Psychopathology and theory. In D. R. Laws and W. O'Donohue (Eds.), Sexual deviance: Theory, assessment, and treatment. New York: Guilford.
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  26. ^ Binet, A. (1887). "Du fétichisme dans l'amour". Revue Philosophiqu. 24: 143–167.
  27. ^ Bullough, V. L. (1995). Science in the bedroom: A history of sex research. Basic Books. p. 42. Archived from the original on 4 July 2015. Retrieved 5 March 2015.
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Further reading

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External links

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