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Interesting article on "Tickling Fetishism" and psychology

Laughthirsty Lr

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Hey. Hows everyone doing, this fine morning? Good I hope.

So, I was screwing around on google last night, just typing in random stuff about tickling to see what would come up and much to my surprise and delight I found this interesting piece on how psychologists perceive us ticklephiliacs.
I didn't agree with everything that it said as they seemed to leave out some important things that we do or the way that we feel but, it's a good read nonetheless.
Here is the link...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-excess/201703/tickling-fetishism-explored
 
Thanks for sharing, Laughthirsty Lr. It's good to see an attempt at a psychological analysis of tickling. As far as what I was hoping for though, this is pretty much a non-article... imo. However, what DID surprise me was seeing a term I've never heard of before...

"Douhini: 
This refers to a “tickle of the inside of an exposed armpit."

Has anyone else ever heard of this? I've been online with tickling related stuff since the late 90's, and I've NEVER heard this term before!
 
"Douhini: 
This refers to a “tickle of the inside of an exposed armpit."

I've never heard of it either! That's a totally new term for me!

I wonder if tickling video producers will now use it as part of the description of a clip?

"For all you underarm tickling lovers, there's lots of fantastic douhini in this clip as well" :D
 
Hate to see their main references lump us in with sex crimes.
 
Psychologists are at least as weird a bunch of people as ticklephiles. They turn so many of the wide variety of human behaviours into medical or pathological complaints. Nice to see that this one at least seems to recognise that we ticklephiles are Mostly Harmless. But I am convinced that an attraction to tickling as an erotic activity is very common and natural across all times and places; it is mostly just that some of us are a bit more fixated than others and we like to talk about it.
 
Hate to see their main references lump us in with sex crimes.

Yes. Unfortunately that was mentioned more than once and I found it a little offensive myself but, sometimes we have to put up with things that we dislike when listening to or reading what someone else has to say. On the plus side it's good for expanding one's knowledge. I saw some words in there that I'd never even heard of before.
 
Hate to see their main references lump us in with sex crimes.

It was just a chapter in a book, the subject matter being sex crimes and paraphilia. Two distinct subjects. They really didn't "lump us in" with sex crimes. It was actually the opposite.

From the article:
In this chapter, Shaffer and Penn made specific reference to both acarophilia and knismolagnia although these mentions (while in an academic context) were part of a wider theoretical point noting that some paraphilias (specifically acarophilia and knismolagnia—although used the term ‘titillagnia’ for the latter) were completely*“innocuous”*and that this demonstrated that not all sexual paraphiliacs were sex offenders (and vice-versa).

They actually used our kink, specifically to demonstrate that paraphilia and criminal sexual behavior are not the same.
 
It was just a chapter in a book, the subject matter being sex crimes and paraphilia. Two distinct subjects. They really didn't "lump us in" with sex crimes. It was actually the opposite.

From the article:
In this chapter, Shaffer and Penn made specific reference to both acarophilia and knismolagnia although these mentions (while in an academic context) were part of a wider theoretical point noting that some paraphilias (specifically acarophilia and knismolagnia—although used the term ‘titillagnia’ for the latter) were completely*“innocuous”*and that this demonstrated that not all sexual paraphiliacs were sex offenders (and vice-versa).

They actually used our kink, specifically to demonstrate that paraphilia and criminal sexual behavior are not the same.

Yeah. You're right. I guess I forgot about that part. Thanks for pointing that out.
 
Yes, they were separate chapters or whatever, but the average vanilla will see the words "sex crime" in the title, and, without reading the book/article make an assumption.
 
Yes, they were separate chapters or whatever, but the average vanilla will see the words "sex crime" in the title, and, without reading the book/article make an assumption.

What assumptions do you think this person you've never met is going to make?
 
. . . what DID surprise me was seeing a term I've never heard of before...

"Douhini: 
This refers to a “tickle of the inside of an exposed armpit."

Has anyone else ever heard of this? I've been online with tickling related stuff since the late 90's, and I've NEVER heard this term before!

From the word nerd corner: I didn't find douhini in the Oxford English Dictionary, but screw that, it is attested in a much more authoritative source, the Urban Dictionary, with an identical definition. I'm thinking the term is the product of hyperthesis or "nonadjacent metathesis," for all you fans of technical linguistic terminology, on the name Houdini though the connection to that famed escape artist is unclear. The name Douhini appears to be a popular handle among online gamers, however.


I've never heard of it either! That's a totally new term for me!

I wonder if tickling video producers will now use it as part of the description of a clip?

"For all you underarm tickling lovers, there's lots of fantastic douhini in this clip as well" :D

Good question. All I know is I'm all in, if that makes me a "douhiniphile" which I guess could be misheard as the Hini file (that's an example of a mondegreen, by the way, you're welcome, I knew you'd be just dying to know). I discovered my passion for this specialized aspect of our fetish while indulging myself on my late wife's sensuous, off-the-charts ticklish armpits, particularly when I had her wrists cuffed helplessly high above her head. I sure do miss her. :(
 
What assumptions do you think this person you've never met is going to make?

rdhd makes a good point. Vanillas can be pretty judgemental at times. That's not to say that all or even most are like that but, I know from experience what it's like to make mild tickling jokes in front of "normal people" and no one be amused. Some will even get creeped out by it and start avoiding you. Have you ever seen that wary look in someone's eyes when they aren't sure that they should be in the same room with you? To me a lot of vanillas are like that when it comes to fetishes and other kinks. It's all funny to them when they are joking about it in conversation but, when the fetishist speaks up, they're like on no! One of them is here! Right here in the same room with us! Anyway that's how it seems to me from my POV but, like I said before, I don't believe that all of them are like that.
 
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rdhd makes a good point. Vanillas can be pretty judgemental at times. That's not to say that all or even most are like that but, I know from experience what it's like to make mild tickling jokes in front of "normal people" and no one be amused. Some will even get creeped out by it and start avoiding you. Have you ever seen that wary look in someone's eyes when they aren't sure that they should be in the same room with you? To me a lot of vanillas are like that when it comes to fetishes and other kinks. It's all funny to them when they are joking about it in conversation but, when the fetishist speaks up, they're like on no! One of them is here! Right here in the same room with us! Anyway that's how it seems to me from my POV but, like I said before, I don't believe that all of them are like that.

What sort of "mild tickling joke" gets people creeped out?
 
I thought this article was quite interesting on many levels. Someone did some major digging to find all this
 
It was definitely above average. I don't like any flashlights aimed at the criminal-deviancy corner of our fetish, but to be fair, researchers in fields like this sometimes must delve into criminal cases because they provide public records of certain deviant behaviors that otherwise would be hard to find in research literature, especially considering how many of us are closeted. If I had to guess on the spot, I'd bet 80 percent of us are closeted on some level, either nothing beyond intimate partners, or maybe partners and close friends, etc. We also need to remind ourselves from time to time that, even though it's natural to us, what we are doing is clinically deviant. It's not "normal," and it's not common. Yes, yes, I know there are likely way more of us out there than are on this forum, but we're still a relatively small minority. It's not good or bad. It just is.
 
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What sort of "mild tickling joke" gets people creeped out?

Pretty much anything if if the norms already know that that's what you're in to. Like asking someone if you tickled someone driving a car and they had a wreck and died would that mean that you tickled them to death and their like "YES!" in a harsh tone because they actually believe that you're going to reach around the seat and do that. Ridiculous stuff. Just being silly and people getting all bent out of shape over it.
 
So, if they know that's what you're into, then they know that for you, it's a sexualized remark, So it's different than a remark from someone else.
You can't have it both ways.
 
It's not sexual for everyone who thinks that way. Maybe I should have pointed that out before. Sometimes it's just funny and I tend to say odd things sometimes because I'm not quite all there. It was many years ago and I was picking at that person just to see what they would say because I sometimes take joking too far. I'll do anything for a laugh but, I never go around making "sexualized remarks" to anyone that I'm aware of and I know how to keep my hands to myself. You have to be extra careful around normal people anyway and make them believe that you are just as normal as they are, otherwise they want you to check into a psyche ward and those places are no fun.
 
This fetish is many different things to many different people and it's truly hard to get any two people here to agree on any one format or subject. But don't you just love how people who have zero passion and who are clueless as to what this fetish is about try to explain to the world in cold medicinal and psychological terms what and who we are never having met any one of us? Acting as if each one of us is exactly the same with the same desires? What is the freakin' purpose?

I'm shocked how Psychology Today has changed from being at the forefront of opening people up to new ideas in psychology, especially about sex and fantasies, to that mechanical and dispassionate article that makes us about appealing as a kettle of dead fish.

I've collected a massive amount of legit materials about tickling (not write-ins) from a vanilla standpoint, including Dr. Joyce Brothers and other psychologists. For a better taste of what Psychology Today used to be like in regard to a time when the world was more accepting as our fetish didn't yet exist but was on the horizon due to a brave few souls, travel back in time now to the early days way before we existed here, before I was born, maybe before many of you were born too, and there's several issues that covered how in-depth tickling & bondage used to be played out.

Such as this one from October 1977, one of my favorites, where they covered a daring early Kujman club demo at The Project in NYC that involved his very erotic style of audience hands-on themed play with bondage and tickling used as torture-

backissues.jpg

There's actually several throughout the 1970's and early '80's about tickling, s/m and bondage. Two of them also interview [him] about his club demos on both coasts with wonderful photos very racy for the era.

Another good one from 1984 about spanking and tickling covers the West Coast fetish explosion, which for some reason Doctors tried to lump spanking and tickling together for a while.
 
Any chance you could post some scans of those old magazine articles?
 
It was just a chapter in a book, the subject matter being sex crimes and paraphilia. Two distinct subjects. They really didn't "lump us in" with sex crimes. It was actually the opposite.

From the article:
In this chapter, Shaffer and Penn made specific reference to both acarophilia and knismolagnia although these mentions (while in an academic context) were part of a wider theoretical point noting that some paraphilias (specifically acarophilia and knismolagnia—although used the term ‘titillagnia’ for the latter) were completely*“innocuous”*and that this demonstrated that not all sexual paraphiliacs were sex offenders (and vice-versa).

They actually used our kink, specifically to demonstrate that paraphilia and criminal sexual behavior are not the same.

I'm quoting this, not because I have anything to add, but because it's smart enough bear repeating, in case anyone missed it.
 
We also need to remind ourselves from time to time that, even though it's natural to us, what we are doing is clinically deviant. It's not "normal," and it's not common. Yes, yes, I know there are likely way more of us out there than are on this forum, but we're still a relatively small minority. It's not good or bad. It just is.

Do you really see us as "clinically deviant", OmahaTickler? Okay, I can accept that we are not "normal" or "common" in the statistical sense of those words, and maybe even "deviant" in that our tastes deviate from the statistical norm. But to use the word "clinically" might imply that there is something medically/psychologically WRONG with us because we really like tickling. I don't doubt that some of us have psychological problems, but not simply because we are ticklephiles. I just don't buy that. But maybe it's not what you meant, and you don't buy it either.
 
Do you really see us as "clinically deviant", OmahaTickler? Okay, I can accept that we are not "normal" or "common" in the statistical sense of those words, and maybe even "deviant" in that our tastes deviate from the statistical norm. But to use the word "clinically" might imply that there is something medically/psychologically WRONG with us because we really like tickling. I don't doubt that some of us have psychological problems, but not simply because we are ticklephiles. I just don't buy that. But maybe it's not what you meant, and you don't buy it either.

Sorry, that inference was not intentional. By "clinically," I mean that pretty much every psychologist would classify our urges as deviating from the norm, i.e., vanilla sex. Now of course, this would make nearly everyone out there deviant on some level. However, if you put the fetish on the same level as regular sexual contact, as I and others do, most "clinical" types would say that's deviant to the point of needing treatment if that person can't function sexually without the fetish. I don't think that's necessarily right, but that's how it's viewed.
 
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