The psychology behind sexual impulses
Study shows sexual fetishes can be learned 'like languages'
![Consensual fetishes can be a good thing to add to your sex life](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/01/21/23/Couple.jpg)
Support truly
independent journalism
Our mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.
Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.
Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.
![Louise Thomas](https://static.independent.co.uk/static-assets/support-us/louise-thomas.png)
Louise Thomas
Editor
The spectrum of sexual impulses and fantasies is vast.
In a peer-reviewed paper, sex psychologists Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad, Elsa Almas, and Kaethe Weingarten advocate a new approach to understanding sexual fetishes that may be deemed unusual or uncommon.
The paper, based on work by esteemed sex psychologist John Money, compares sexual turn-ons to learning a language.
It argues that as you might learn a language, you can also learn a sexual turn-on or fetish.
Nichi Hodgson, sex expert, former dominatrix and spokesperson for pleasure accessories brand Ooh by Je Joue, told The Independent: “Traditionally, a fetish is an object, or body part, that someone needs present in order to experience sexual arousal.
"Many fetishes are routed in childhood experience. As a former dominatrix, I used to get people coming to me for spanking and caning because they'd received corporal punishment at school, often in a completely un-erotic context.
"They'd ended up eroticising the experience as a means of processing the discomfort around it but also because the buttocks and anus contain hundreds of nerve endings that can create arousal in a situation that would otherwise be as divorced from sex as any other aspect of school life.
“Many people can't explain their fetishes though; instead they just know they exist. Feet are a good example. There's actually a scientific theory that says there's some cross-wiring in the brain of foot fetishists - the areas of the brain that are associated with the genitalia and the brain are next to one another."
Ms Hodgson explained that as long as fetishism is part of a healthy and consensual sex-life, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with exploring it.
“There's nothing innately destructive about fetishism," he said.
"If it predominates all sexual activity, it can become a problem as most partners have a broader repertoire than just spanking, say. But if it's incorporated into consensual and shared-idea sex, it's just another quirk of human sexuality.
“The trick is to work it into the sex you already have and it will cease to matter if it's a fetish or not.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments