Do you like touching, or looking at your partner’s feet? Do you like feet in general? If you do, it’s probably a good time for you to learn a few things about foot fetishism…
Here Are A Couple Of Things You Need To Know About Foot Fetishism!
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Why do some people particularly enjoy this part of the body? What makes feet so special for them?
Honestly, most of us don’t even look at our own feet or think about them at all. We just put them in a pair of shoes and forget about them for the rest of the day.
For a foot fetishist, however, it’s different. They have a sexual interests in feet.
These people feel the need to touch, look at, or kiss feet for sexual arousal. It’s said that sometimes worshipping feet helps them enjoy the feeling of superiority of their partner.
Here’s what Freud had to say about foot fetishism:
He claimed that people sexualize feet because they resemble penises. Freud thought that yet another thing in the world looked like penises. Surprise surprise.
In his 1927 essay, “Fetishism,” Freud asserted that fetishes are caused by a traumatic childhood event–specifically, a boy’s personal confrontation with the castration complex.
When the child discovers mom doesn’t have a penis, he fears the loss his penis, possibly as a punishment by dad. This creates intense anxiety in the child, who then chooses a safe substitute for the missing penis (maternal phallus), often feet, to sooth his fears.
So nothing shocking from Freud’s side. We’ll be talking about modern science in a minute, don’t worry.
A more scientific theory comes from the neuroscientist Vilanayar Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego.
Ramachandran said he solved the mystery of foot fetishes while studying the brain malfunctions...
... that lead to phantom limb syndrome, a condition where amputees feel as if their missing limbs are still attached to their bodies, and that they can move those limbs. He found that the syndrome resulted when a person's 'body image map' the brain's map of the body, in which different body parts are associated with and controlled by different brain regions failed to erase the part of the map that corresponded to the amputated limb.
In the case of some phantom foot patients, Ramachandran found that the amputees' brains didn't just fail to erase the missing foot from their body image map,
Rather, they accidentally rewired the map in a way that caused the person's phantom foot to become sexy. Phantom foot patients reported feeling sexual pleasure, and even orgasms in their missing feet.
Long before Ramachandran began his work on phantom limb syndrome, it had been noted that the brain areas associated with genitalia and feet are adjacent to each other in the brain's body image map.
But no one else had put 2 and 2 together and realized that foot fetishes could possibly result from cross-wiring in the brain between the foot and genital parts.
As Ramachandran wrote in Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind: "Maybe even many of us so-called normal people have a bit of cross-wiring, which would explain why we like to have our toes sucked."
Convinced? Well, this is the latest scientific study in the field that we know of, and it makes more sense than Freud’s theory, I think.
After all, foot accessories are the most fetishized of all non-genital body parts and objects.
Nearly half of all such fetishes focus on feet, and almost two-thirds of fetishes for objects associated with the body are for shoes and socks. So not everyone should be looking for a penis where the feet stand, hopefully.