A question for everyone....

[Cheshire Cat]

Yeah I know its an old question and one that few can really answer, but its still interesting. Anyone know exactly where their fondness for tickling came from?

I honestly have no idea where mine came from. I grew up with 2 older sisters, they never tickled me, but I always tickled them, usually to get back at them for teasing or picking on me. I guess thats where the discovery of the power trip came from, even with them being a lot bigger then me, I was able to bring them to their knees (I always was a shrimp when I was little)...but where the whole thing came from....man...I dunno....

For a long time, like a lot of you, I thought I was the only one into this and a freak of nature because of it. For the past 8 years I've studied all aspects of sexual and fetish psychology, abnormal sexual practices, historical case studies and even went back to good ol' Freud, master of abnormal psychology, thinking the answer may be simpler then I realized. All this to figure out why I am this way....but I have yet to find the answer....perhaps there is some truth to the "hereditary fetish" theory...then again I've never found any evidence in my family to support this idea...unless of course its a dormant genetic trait from an older generation....hmmm....

This is some of what I learned; The difference between a kink and a fetish is that a kink is a voluntary decision, by an adventurous individual, while a fetish is psychological trait created as early as the "Anal Stage" between the ages of 2-4. At this time, the necessary emotional and psychological aspects of the childs future sex drive is formed, making it a very vital period in their development. Various agents can deviate the normal course of development, like the child who hides under the table around his mothers feet. He begins to associate the feet with a feeling of security and esteem, this in turn becomes a sexual feeling with puberty and creates the foot fetish......in the same way, the child who is tickled constantly must make it a pleasurable experience subconsiously as a way for the brain to cope....now this of course does not apply to all, like me. There was no outside stimulis that caused the fixation.

One thing rather fascinating I've found is that children, especially male who develop female-oriented fetish aspects during the Oral Stage stay close to the mother throughout the following "Phallic Stage" in which the child normally experiences "Penis Envy" and grows closer to the father. (Dont laugh, this is real psychology) Then again, true sexual fetishes seem to be a primarily male area...the ratio of men to women with sexual fetishes is very very different...most female ticklees/lers I've met simply enjoy the experience rather then being aroused by it...

I've learned so much and found the answers to so many questions about fetishism and tickling, yet the more I learn the further away from the truth I get......FOUL TEMPRESS!!! WILL YOU EVER LEAVE ME BE!?!?

(Hard to believe I'm only 22 right? LOL...I drink way to much coffee...)

Well when you think about it....honestly...its not particularly important to know where it came from......only that it is, and DAMN is it fun! LOL

Any thoughts?

 

[BigJim]

Well I had a foot fetish of sorts since I was 4 years old.When I got on the net in September 1999, "foot fetish" was the first thing I searched for. This led me to several tickling sites. Since then a love of tickling grew out of it; not just including feet though. I find hysterics induced anywhere on the body to be arousing.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Hmmm.....

Guess its a harder quesion then I thought...

 

[U.N.Owen]

Be very, very suspicious of Freud. As the psychiatrist in the Simpsons says when young Ned Flanders is wrecking his bookshelf, "Please stop that, some of those books haven't been discredited yet!"

Freudian interpretations of juvenille sexual development are very suspect, and widely considered outmoded.

As to why tickling? It's tough, but I think it grows out of a child's eye view of sexuality. When I was a kid, I loved being tickled -- yet my fantasies when I hit puberty were about tickling girls, not being tickled. Admittedly, I always saw the tickling as pleasurable for the girls, which I suppose came out of my own earlier enjoyment of it.

I think my own pattern ran something like this: I first began to become fascinated by the idea of really serious tickling of people when I was around 9 -- not coincidentally, scientists have recently found that hormones start bubbling when you're 9. Basically, I began to become fascinated with things bodily, and, being still a kid, I sublimated that into something familiar, pleasurable, and nearly erotic: light skin stroking, i.e. tickling. My fascination was fed by the tickle monster scene in the animated Raggedy Ann film (god, is that movie weird!), which I saw when I was 5, and relived often through it's soundtrack recording.

So the basic fascination with tickling was in place. Then, around 12, I started to notice girls much more definitely. I knew there was SOMETHING I really wanted to do to them, something physical. Not knowing what that something was, I decided I wanted to tickle them. As I got older and more genuinely sexual, the tickling impulse stayed. After all, it's just fun, as well as potentially erotic. As for my hint of a foot fetish (which really isn't a fetish, you know, unless you are ONLY interested in feet), I think that came about very simply: the girls I liked were often barefoot. That was all the bare skin I got to see, and it was pretty. So I developed a taste for feet. That dovetailed beautifully with a liking for tickling, and the rest is history.

 

[soleshine]

I have some ideas about this Cheshire Cat. I definitely agree with you about classical conditioning having something to do with it (e.g. a kid sitting at a mother's feet). I think that it can happen with tickling as well. The stuff you described with you and your sisters makes sense too. A lot of fetishes do center around power and control . I would add that the lee's reaction to being tickled has a lot to do with it as well.

I've been fantasizing about tickling girls since before I started preschool. My fantasies have ALWAYS been focused around the lee being EXTREMELY ticklish, laughing hysterically, and usually, if not always, involved bondage. Maybe I was just longing for more of that kind of completely relaxed, let yourself go, emotion in my life?

I think it's also tied in with the lee being vulnerable in her ticklishness. I'm very much aware of my own ticklishness/vulnerability and I think that this knowledge hightens my reaction to seeing a beautiful woman (who I'd normally be sexually attracted to anyway) being reduced to helpless laughter at the hands of a knowing tickler. I think it's a natural empathetic response. I think this is especially true if the lee has a particularly flat or negative affect and then her vulnerability is exploited and her mood is changed entirely (bringing us back to the power and control).

I'm hesitant to buy into the heredity stuff, though. And I think stage theories are over-rated. Too many exceptions out there for it to be so clear cut. I think we cycle and recycle through the "stages" as we attempt to perfect ourselves and we all choose our own paths. And I have to say that I think Freud's penis envy stuff only reflects the culture he was emersed in (extremely sexist).

What I've finally rested on is that it's just part of who I am, no matter how it originated, and I absolutely love it!!!

Hope this helps and long live the TMF,

~SS

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Hmm....

You've given me a lot of good insights....alrighty then. I also realized something else interesting about my fetish. I also have an extreme foot fetish, now when I tickle anywhere above the feet, its simply fun, but when I tickle the feet I cant help but be turned on......I have to look more into the psychological relationship between the two fetishes....

 

[BigJim]

Re: Hmm....

You've given me a lot of good insights....alrighty then. I also realized something else interesting about my fetish. I also have an extreme foot fetish, now when I tickle anywhere above the feet, its simply fun, but when I tickle the feet I cant help but be turned on......I have to look more into the psychological relationship between the two fetishes....

Good pont CC. I think someone with a foot fetish could easily develop
a tickling fetish, especially when you consider that sucking and nibbling can be a great way to tickle; but I'm not sure if someone with a tickle fetish could develop a foo fetish in the same way. Thoughts anyone?

 

[dvnc]

Wow, it resurges. Always dig this investigative topic.

First off, dig into the DSM-IV. We're a paraphilia, by general definition, where this whole tickling thing is concerned.

There's many here who DO have a foot fetish as well. Multiple interests, especially collaborative ones, are common. The DSM-IV covers that in terse language, and any good Psych education makes such clearer. Lots o' literature on such.

The interest in vellication is indeed a colloquial "kink". Such is not a technical term, and it's ever applied to us. "Fetish" can be a technical term, and where it relates to mental issues is defined in said aforementioned DSM-IV.

It all comes down to what each individual wants and desires. I'm actually apparently on the bounds of normal, where I used to think I was a foot-fetishist ('til I found I didn't like 'em when they weren't part of a ticklish woman) and a paraphiliac where tickling and bondage are concerned. I'm apparently too negotiating, too consentual, and too open-minded about what we see as garden-variety sexuality to fit the bill. It's almost a disappointment, now. I dig the crew here. I dig the tickling, in a big way. I'm just well-adjusted (t'use a 70s psych term).

As for the females bein' sexually geared in this, and other deviancies, it's quite relative. I just spent the weekend wit' a whole slew of our kind, and there were many women who'd commented about the sexual side of this. It's not a norm, and there will be some of us that find open-minded partners who simply find our interest harmless, and our love valuable to them. A whole new angle of relativity, no?

I'm wit' many, in that I always had this tickling interest, and USED to have a fascination wit' feet. That foot thing waned, though. Now I dig the whole of the 'lee with whom I'm playin'. No sense focusin' on a foot, when a delicate touch to a sensitive rib will do better.

Musings while packin' up and leavin' for the weekend,

dvnc