The psychology behind tickle fetish

[Moth1]

Months ago I was wondering about a thing: according to what I can remember, I've been always a tickle addicted. The fact is that my first memories start from the time when I was about 4 years, so I asked to myself...

is it possible that something I forgot about influenced my personality, making me what I am today and, of course, making me also a tickle addicted. So then I tried to analyse myself, just to know more about who I am, and to find a connection between my personality and my tickle fetish. They MUST be connected, I believe.

I find that foot fetish is a kind of submission accepted or even wanted by the man; on the other hand, the act of tickling could be seen as a way of taking the power back. In this -very personal- interpretation, you find a balance in the trust between the tickler and the ticklee: they are both "master" and "slave" at the same time.

What's your point of view about that?
Did you ever try to give a psychological interpretation to tickle fetish?

 

[Kujman1]

The psychological interpretation of, approach to, and reason for tickling per-say has been delved into with great detail by myself and others ever since the WWW was formed... and with myself in written articles ( even Psychology Today featured one of my demos) since 1980. I won't go into a lot of it, I don't think many would even care.

It usually begins early. While many stories sound similar on the outset, in detail they vary greatly person-to-person.

Any sexual drive/desire- gay, straight, vanilla, fetish- is wired in you at birth. Something triggers it.. at any age.. usually an early one as I said. It can be another person, a film, TV, puberty, something you see.. in some cases they have no memory at all of what triggered it.

Some try to hide it, some roll with it, some take it to much higher levels (I would classify myself as the latter)... some (most here) keep it on a very surfacy level.

When I began to pull this particular tickling fetish aside from the usual BDSM grouping it was originally a part of (and usually ignored) decades ago, there was scarcely a hand full of people into it- and even then very lightly. After we made Tied and Tickled it began to populate... but not always with good people, as Bob Bishop predicted to me ... and it's gone downhill since. Now you can walk across the pool and not even get your feet wet.

However people get from it what they want. It can be power exchange... fantasy...frilly... light...goofy.. a means to sex... consensual, non-consensual.. or hardcore.

It can be a drug. The more you taste it, the more you need. After a while your needs and tastes deepen. Some leave the scene in boredom, some stay in the hopes it'll grow and get better.

Two things are for certain: you can't unwire yourself from it... and you can't force your partner to learn it or love it if they're not predispositioned to it in the first place.

 

[desk]

It's addictive, that's for sure!!!

 

[love feet]

Months ago I was wondering about a thing: according to what I can remember, I've been always a tickle addicted. The fact is that my first memories start from the time when I was about 4 years, so I asked to myself...

is it possible that something I forgot about influenced my personality, making me what I am today and, of course, making me also a tickle addicted. So then I tried to analyse myself, just to know more about who I am, and to find a connection between my personality and my tickle fetish. They MUST be connected, I believe.

I find that foot fetish is a kind of submission accepted or even wanted by the man; on the other hand, the act of tickling could be seen as a way of taking the power back. In this -very personal- interpretation, you find a balance in the trust between the tickler and the ticklee: they are both "master" and "slave" at the same time.

What's your point of view about that?
Did you ever try to give a psychological interpretation to tickle fetish?

That's a very good Question!!!!!!.

 

[XaviarRkR]

I wrestled with this question - long with the cause, sensation description and many other things for years. Basic curiosity. In the end I decided it's like this: I like Chartreuse, strawberries, wine and curry. But you might not.

 

[Dr. Bill Kobb]

When I began to pull this particular tickling fetish aside from the usual BDSM grouping it was originally a part of (and usually ignored) decades ago, there was scarcely a hand full of people into it- and even then very lightly. After we made Tied and Tickled it began to populate... but not always with good people, as Bob Bishop predicted to me ... and it's gone downhill since. Now you can walk across the pool and not even get your feet wet.

😱 Wow! You not only knew Bishop, but were an integral part of those early Tied & Tickled mags? I am STILL on the hunt for copies of those original issues, before it went to crap(presumably after you'd already left the building).


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As for me and my tickle kink: It seems to have been hardwired from the git-go. Prior to genital sexuality, I was drawing crayon pictures of Batman and Robin tied to tickling conveyor belts and tickling poles. We're talking way WAY back, here. I was only 5 or 6 doing these crude pix, mind you. I used to stay awake at those same ages, imagining "What if I was tied to this bed and couldn't escape being tickled?". I can only suspect that I was one of those laughing, wiggling babies that people loved to tickle -- even though I was in fact barely able to catch my breath! SOMETHING seems to have had me wired for tickling from really early on.

 

[Psycho1]

I disagree. I am a psychologist and I don't think I was born with it. In fact I believe that it comes on early in childhood when we really don't know what sex is but still have sexual urges from hormones and the like. Well these urges, since we don't know what they are, get associated with other non-sexual acts. With classical conditioning once a link is made it is near impossible to disassociate it. However, it has been done.

 

[Brooklyn]

isn't it weird that just about no one can trace it down to a specific incident?

 

[Kujman1]

isn't it weird that just about no one can trace it down to a specific incident?

Many can. Please refer to the second post in this series.

It's wired in you, as is your sexuality, and something triggers it- an incident, a person, a visual connection. It varies person to person, some have no memory of it, many do.

 

[Inverse]

Tickling used to be a particularly dark thing for me, from the context that it wasn't always fun and playful. There was a duality about it that confused me ever since I was little. One one hand there was the connection with whomever touched you that was intimate, and in some ways, secure. The other being something that made you vulnerable, afraid, and completely out of control and into the hands of another.

Touch in general is something many have trouble dealing with on a surface level. Where I come from, kissing a friend on the cheek is pretty normal, especially platonically. Its just an expression of friendship, while here it's a pretty involved process. Hugging can be a breach of personal space to some. We're used to having control.

For me, seeing and experiencing this vulnerability, mixed with affection was kind of frightening. Even when I saw others tickled my heart would race, because for all the laughter and giggling they would do, I always wondered the truth behind it. Behind every gasp and cry to stop. What happened behind those eyes varied so much, it was like seeing into someones soul and still not knowing what it meant.

People now are a lot more forthcoming about how they feel these days, and the mystery of tickling has faded somewhat for me, but the basic context that tickling is still an intimate connection with another that can be both truth and false about your feelings, is the same. Does ticklish laughter define, or betray you... or none of the above? Do you distance yourself and is it purely mechanica? Can it mean something more to you, and despite all the cries for it to stop, you wish it hadn't...but are to afraid to say?

 

[Dr. Bill Kobb]

This is just a hunch, as we are talking four decades now since I was a toddler, but I was(and still am) terribly allergic to feather pillows(go figure!), and so was all whiny and colicky due to difficulty breathing*. My family would try to make me stop by tickling me, which of course didn't help any with catching my breath. So, tickling was a dreaded thing for me.

Later, with the awakening of sexuality, it blossomed into the weird-ass kink I have to this day.







*We didn't figure out the feather thing until i was around 6-8 yrs old.