The night stuff: A very brief look at nyctophilia and scotophilia

According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal in his 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices nyctophilia is a sexual paraphilia where the individual derives sexual pleasure and arousal by a “love of night”. In the same book, Aggrawal defines similar (if not the same conditions) including scotophilia (“turned on by darkness”), lygophilia (“love of darkness”) and achluophilia (“arousal from darkness”). Another related condition is arguably amaurophilia (“arousal by a partner who is blind or unable to see due to artificial means such as being blindfolded or having sex in total darkness”, a paraphilia that I examined in depth in a previous blog). Other sources (such as Dr. Brenda Love’s Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices doesn’t mention any of these, apart from amaurophilia) whereas other medical dictionaries conflate darkness and night together and define nyctophilia as a “preference for the night or darkness. Also called scotophilia”.

As far as I can ascertain, there is no empirical research on this topic at all. There are many references to the similar sounding scopophilia (viewed by many as another term for ‘voyeurism’) but as Dr. Aggrawal notes:

“Several terms have been used as synonyms of voyeurism, although some writers have constantly pointed out subtle differences. The terms scopophilia and scoptophilia are taken as synonyms to voyeurism by most writers. However, others have pointed out a minor difference. If the victim is unsuspecting and non-consenting, the act is voyeurism, but if the other party is consenting, the act is scopophilia or scoptophilia. Furthermore, if the person watched is in the act of disrobing, or nude, the act is voyeurism, but if the person watched is engaged in sex, the act is either mixoscopia (if the watched person is the voyeur’s lover) or allopellia (if the watched persons are complete strangers)”.

The reason I mention this is because in a paper by Dr. Patrick Mahony on voyeurism in a 1989 issue Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association noted that the “alternate spelling scoptophilia, preferred by some of the older German psychoanalysts, must not be confused with scotophilia or love of darkness”. This appears to have happened in other academic papers I found directly referring to ‘scotophilia’. For instance, one paper dating back almost 70 years was that of Dr. F.S. Caprio who wrote a paper entitled ‘Scotophilia–exhibitionism: A case report’ in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology but it was actually a paper about voyeurism. More specifically, the paper reported the cases of a mother and son who constantly watched residents for sexual arousal in the mother’s rooming house via drilled holes in the wall. A 1966 theoretical review paper by Dr. Jerome Sattler on embarrassment and blushing published in the Journal of Social Psychology claimed that “stage-fright and erythrophobia [fear of blushing] are not simply expressions of the warding off of heightened exhibitionism and scotophilia but also develop as a result of previous instinctual conflict”. Here again, scotophilia appears to be a synonym for voyeurism rather than a sexual love of darkness.

I was pleasantly surprised to find dozens of references to nyctophilia in the scientific literature but the overwhelming majority of papers were biological in origin and all referred to non-human species. For instance, a recent 2016 paper Dr. Luis Espinasa and colleagues in the journal Subterranean Biology reported that cave amphipods are eyeless troglobitic crustaceans found in caves located in the Northeastern (Allegheny) region of the United States and who “exhibit nyctophilia” (literally meaning they love darkness, and has absolutely nothing sexual whatsoever).

I only managed to find one non-biological academic reference on nyctophilia and this was a 1994 paper by Dr. Lewis Lawson in the journal Papers on Language and Literature. In actuality, the use of the word ‘nyctophilia’ was mentioned in passing and noted that the term was defined by psychoanalyst Bertram Lewin as “an erotic pleasure in darkness, which enters as a wish-fulfillment element on fantasies of being in the ‘womb,’ or more properly, as the German word Mutterlieb suggests, of being in the mother’s body”. I was unable to track down the original source so I don’t know the context in which Lewin used the word but the definition is certainly used in a sexual sense rather than the general ‘love of darkness’ used in the biologically-based papers.

In a more general search on the internet, located dedicated photographic sites for nyctophilia, a number of fictional books with the title of Nyctophilia (such as the novel by Welsh author K.A. Hambly), and even the name of a 2014 film (although details about it are sketchy to say the least). I also came across one first-person account of nyctophilia online from someone who has written a number of different articles about the condition such as ‘What is nyctophilia?’, ‘What is it like to have nytophilia?’ and ‘Everything you wanted to know about nyctophilia symptoms’. However, detailed reading of these articles suggests that any sexual element is secondary to a general love of darkness. Here are a few extracts from the articles:

Extract 1: “I have a confession to make. I am a nyctophiliac…Well, a lot of people have told me that I am an insomniac. An insomniac is someone who has difficulty sleeping at night. But I have realized over time that I am not just an insomniac. Insomnia is a physical condition, not a psychological one. Nyctophilia, on the other hand, is purely a psychological condition. Many say that nyctophiliacs are sexually aroused by the dark. Is that true? Well, yes and no. I like darkness, but I am not always sexually aroused by it. I just love it for what it is. It gives me a sense of relief and it makes me happy”.

Extract 2: “To help you understand nyctophilia symptoms, [here] I reveal some uncomfortable details of my life. Every night, I try to sleep at 10 pm. I take sleeping pills such as Klonopin and get myself a good book to read. When I do fall asleep, at around 10:30 pm or 10:45 pm, I find myself waking up at 12:00 am sharp, as fresh as the day, as though I’ve been asleep for 9 hours. I am wide awake at this time and no matter what I do, I cannot go to sleep. Unlike an insomniac, who would turn the lights on and perhaps watch TV, that’s the last thing on my mind. I just want to sit in the bedroom chair in the dark, all alone, with just darkness as my company. I love the darkness. It makes me happy. I feel a sense of relief as I sit in the dark and listen to the sound of the clock ticking by. I know it’s not good for me to stay awake like this, like a ghost, in complete darkness. I tell that to myself several times and often I try my very best to sleep. That is when I get those dreams. Those horrible dreams. The nightmares. I find myself in impossible situations, either getting tortured like Mel Gibson in Braveheart or dying of a dreadful disease, like a child affected by the Ebola virus in Africa”.

Extract 3: “There isn’t much of an awareness of nyctophilia, or nyctophilia symptoms, out there on the Web…The UrbanDictionnary.com defines nyctophilia as ‘The love of darkness or night, or feeling like you belong in the dark” and adds that the condition ‘usually applies to those who often feel sadness!’ Nyctophilia is a condition that makes you want to sit in the dark all by yourself late at night, wide awake…You may wander off late at night in the dark. This will get you in trouble with the authorities, who do not really understand the nyctophilia meaning and cannot even comprehend how you feel. So you may get mistaken for a sex addict or a pervert, or possibly a criminal. Your neighbors would avoid you and report you to the law enforcement agencies. They would want you to leave the neighborhood and move somewhere else. They would feel distinctly uncomfortable about your condition and word would get around about the fact that you stay up all night in the dark, basically doing nothing”.

Extract 4: “There are many who say that nyctophialiacs find darkness sexually arousing. They compare the condition to a form of sex addiction. Indeed, have been given medication for sex addiction, such as GnRH, a long lasting gonadotropin releasing hormone that suppresses sexual desires. If you feel that you have any of the nyctophilia symptoms…it is important to get yourself treated by a qualified psychiatrist, preferably someone who has experience of working with modern or unusual psychiatric conditions. Take the medications that are suggested to you and ask support from your friends and family”

In all the reading I have done on this topic, there appears to be very little genuine evidence that scotophilia and nyctophilia exist, and if the condition does exist, few people appear to suffer major problems as a consequence, unless their love of the dark leaves the person feeling so sleep-deprived that it interferes with their day-to-day functioning. Maybe this condition is a sub-type of insomnia but that the underlying reasons for not going to sleep are very different from the usual reasons for not being able to sleep.

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Caprio, F. S. (1949). Scoptophilia, exhibitionism; a case report. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology, 10(1), 50-72.

Espinasa, L., Collins, E., Finocchiaro, A., Kopp, J., Robinson, J., & Rutkowski, J. (2016). Incipient regressive evolution of the circadian rhythms of a cave amphipod. Subterranean Biology, 20, 1-13.

Love, B. (1992). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books.

Lawson, L. A. (1994). The dream screen in The moviegoer. Papers on Language and Literature, 30(1), 25.

Mahony, P. J. (1989). Aspects of nonperverse scopophilia within an analysis. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 37(2), 365-399.

Sattler, J. M. (1966). Embarrassment and blushing: A theoretical review. Journal of Social Psychology, 69(1), 117-133.

From the university of perversity (Part 2): An A to Z of non-researched sexual paraphilias and strange sexual behaviours

In a previous blog I did an A-Z of sexual paraphilias about which we know almost nothing. Today’s blog takes a brief A to Z look at another 26 unusual and/or strange sexual behaviours where (as far as I am aware) there is absolutely no empirical or clinical research on the topic. The majority of the paraphilias below can be found in either Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices and/or Dr. Brenda Love’s Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices (although a few were also taken from such sources as the Write World’s dedicated webpage on ‘philias’ and the online Urban Dictionary).

• Autodermatophagia: This behaviour involves eating one’s own flesh as a form of erotic auto-masochism. The only place I’ve seen this mentioned is in Dr. Aggrawal’s book and appears to be a sub-variant of autosarcophogy (i.e., self-cannibalism) that I covered in a previous blog.
• Brontophilia: This behaviour involves people who derive sexual arousal from thunderstorms. It was also the inspiration for the song Brontophilia (Satanic Anal Thunder) by the group Spasm (Google it if you don’t believe me!)
• Cryptoscopophilia: This is the desire to see behaviour of others in privacy of their home (although some sources claim it is not necessarily sexual). The One Look website lists three different websites that have definitions including the online Urban Dictionary that defines it as “the urge to look through the windows of homes upon walking past them. Usually done for sexual satisfaction/curiosity reasons”. This appears to be a sub-type of voyeurism.
• Dermaphilia: This is a behaviour in which the sexual stimulus for arousal comes from skin. The Sex Lexis definition website is a little more specific and claims that it is common among leather fetishists who becomes sexually aroused “when coming in direct contact with the skin or leather from animals or humans, from wearing leather clothing”.
• Ederacinism: This is possibly one of the most unbelievable behaviours on this list and refers to the tearing out of sexual organs by the roots as in a frenzied way to punish oneself for sexual cravings. This would appear to be a sub-variant of genital self-mutilation and/or Klingsor Syndrome (that I covered in previous blogs).
• Furtling: According to Dr. Aggrawal’s book, this behaviour involves the use of a person’s fingers underneath cut-outs in genital areas of photos as a way of gaining sexual arousal. It is also listed in a Spanish article on sexual paraphilias by Dr. Ruben Serrano in the Revista Venezolana de Urologia.
• Gynotikolobomassophilia: This apparently refers to sexual pleasure from nibbling on a woman’s earlobe (aural sex?). At least four websites list this as a bona fide sexual activity according to the One Look webpage.
• Hodophilia: This behaviour refers to individuals that derive sexual arousal from travelling (at least according to Dr. Aggrawal’s book). It is unclear whether this refers to modes of travelling (such as those who derive sexual pleasure from riding in cars or trains) or whether it refers to deriving sexual pleasure from being a tourist.
• Icolagnia: Again found in Dr. Aggrawal’s book and is defined as those individuals who derive sexual arousal from contemplation of, or contact with, sculptures or pictures. This would seem to overlap with more specific sexual paraphilias such as agalmatophilia (sexual arousal from statues and/or manquins) that I covered in a previous blog.
• Judeophilia: According to the Write World website, this behaviour involves “abnormal” sexual affection towards Jewish people. I have never come across this in any reputable sexual text.
• Kokigami: According to the online Urban Dictionary, this involves the wrapping of the penis in a paper costume. The roots of Kokigami apparently lie in the eighth-century Japanese aristocrats who practiced the art of Tsutsumi (i.e., a man wrapped his penis with silk and ribbons in elaborate designs as a gift to lovers. He would then enjoy the physical sensations as his lover carefully unwrapped her prize.
• Lygerastia: This is mentioned in Dr. Brenda Love’s sex encyclopedia and refers to tendency to being sexually aroused by being in darkness. This would appear to share psychological and behavioural overlaps with amaurophilia (sexual arousal from blindness) that I covered in a previous blog.
• Melolagnia: This behaviour refers to those individuals who derive sexual arousal from music (and listed as a sexual paraphilia by both Dr. Love and Dr. Aggrawal).
• Nanophilia: This refers to sexual arousal from having a short or small sexual partner. This is one of the few behaviours on this list that has been mentioned in an empirical research paper (as it was mentioned in the research on fetishes by Dr. C. Scorolli and colleagues in the International Journal of Impotence Research
• Oenosugia: According to Dr. Aggrawal, this behaviour refers to the pouring wine over female breasts and licking it off. If you type ‘oenosugia’ into Google you get only two hits (one of which is Dr. Aggrawal’s book).
• Phygephilia: I’m not sure how many people this could possibly refer to but Dr. Aggrawal defines this behaviour as sexual arousal from being a fugitive. The Inovun website defines it as “arousal from flight” (i.e., running away).
• Queening: According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal, queening is a BDSM practice in where one sexual partner sits on or over another person’s face “typically to allow oral-genital or oral anal contact, or to practice ass worship or body worship”. In the book’s glossary of sexual terms, Dr. Aggrawal simply defines queening as “sitting on the side of a person’s face as a form of bondage”.
• Rupophilia: According to the online Kinkopedia this behaviour refers to a sexual attraction towards dirt
(and presumably derives from the word ‘rupophobia’ that is a phobia towards dirt). This sexual paraphilia would seem to share similarities with mysophilia (i.e., sexual arousal from filth and unclean items) that I covered in a previous blog.
• Savantophilia: According to Dr. Aggrawal, this behaviour refers to those who are sexually aroused by mentally challenged individuals. The only case that I am aware of that could potentially fit such a description is Jimmy Saville (see my previous blog for details).
• Tripsophilia: According to the Sex Lexis website, this behaviour refers to being sexually arousal by being “messaged or otherwise manipulated”. Dr. Aggrawal describes the same behaviour as tripsolagnophilia.
• Undinism: Dr. Aggrawal simply describes this behaviour as individuals who derive sexual arousal from water. This appears to be another name for aquaphilia (that I covered in a previous blog).
• Vernalagnia: This is a seasonal behaviour and according to Dr. Aggrawal refers to an increase in sexual desire in the spring. Another online website simply defines it less sexually as “a romantic mood brought on by spring”.
• Wakamezake: This appears to be similar to oenosugia (above), and is a sexual term originating in Japan involving the drinking alcohol (such as sake) from a woman’s body. The Wikipedia entry on ‘food play’ provides a description: “The woman closes her legs tight enough that the triangle between the thighs and mons pubis form a cup, and then pours sake down her chest into this triangle. Her partner then drinks the sake from there. The name comes from the idea that the woman’s pubic hair in the sake resembles soft seaweed (wakame) floating in the sea”.
• Xenoglossophilia: I have yet to find this sexual act in any academic text but a few online websites define this as a sexual affection for foreign languages. I briefly mentioned this behaviour in a previous blog on xenophilia (sexual arousal from strangers) but asserted that such behaviour could hardly be classed as a sexual paraphilia.
• Yoni worship: This refers to the worship of the female genitals (yoni is the Sanskrit word for the vagina). There are some interesting articles on Yoni worship at both the Basically Blah and Tantric Serenity websites.
• Zeusophilia: I have yet to come across this behaviour in any reputable academic text, but a number of online websites (such as the Write World website) all claim that this behaviour refers to a sexual love of God or gods.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Gates, K. (2000). Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex. New York: RE/Search Publications.

Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.

Scorolli, C., Ghirlanda, S., Enquist, M., Zattoni, S. & Jannini, E.A. (2007). Relative prevalence of different fetishes. International Journal of Impotence Research, 19, 432-437.

Serrano, R.H. (2004). Parafilias. Revista Venezolana de Urologia, 50, 64-69

Write World (2013). Philias. Located at: http://writeworld.tumblr.com/philiaquirks

Blind faith: A brief overview of amaurophilia

“I have a blindness fetish. It’s something I’ve been obsessed with it all my life. Also, I would consider my sexual orientation to be asexual. I’m really not at all turned on by guys and I have no interest in sex – in fact, it honestly disgusts me. However, when indulging in my fetish, I do masturbate” (Susan at All Experts)

According to Dr.Anil Aggrawal in his 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices amaurophilia is a sexual paraphilia where the individual derives sexual pleasure and arousal “by a partner who is blind or unable to see due to artificial means such as being blindfolded or having sex in total darkness”. A similar definition of amaurophilia was provided by Dr. Brenda Love in her Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices who simply defined it as “a preference for a blind or blindfolded sex partner”.  She also added one exclusion criterion that if both partners are blind, then it wouldn’t be classed as amaurophilia. Dr. Love also made reference to a similar paraphilia called lygerastia, which refers to those individuals who derive sexual pleasure and arousal only in darkness. The critical similarity in both of these is that the individuals in question are sexually aroused by sexual partners who are unable to see them.

Amaurophilia is yet another paraphilia where there has been no academic and/or clinical research most probably because the focus of sexual arousal is fairly innocuous and it is highly unlikely people would come forward wanting any kind of treatment (i.e., amaurophiles are likely to live with their sexual preference without any problem). Most of what is known appears to be somewhat anecdotal. Brenda Love also wrote that:

“Amaurophilia usually manifests itself by an inhibition of sight with either one or both partners using a blindfold or having sex in total darkness. This might be caused by reasons such as religious guilt about nudity and sex, low self-esteem, or feelings of inadequacy. Other amaurophiles may have become conditioned to respond sexually only when a partner is asleep or has their eyes closed. They may have had childhood experiences of sex with siblings who were either sleeping or feigning sleep. Necrophiles also may be aroused by their partners keeping their eyes closed, but would further require a lack of movement”.

Much of this – while plausible – appears to be highly speculative. The comments about “childhood experience of sex with siblings” is unlikely to be a common factor among amaurophiles and in papers that I have read on sex between siblings, I have never seen a single reference to amaurophilia as a consequence. The comments in relation to sexual arousal while someone is asleep (i.e., somnophilia) and necrophilia again have no basis in empirical evidence (although I did talk about the psychological and behavioural overlaps between somnophilia and necrophilia in previous blogs). Dr. Love also notes that there may be other medical conditions that underlie amauarophilia. For instance:

“There is also a natural physical condition that causes people discomfort when attempting sex under bright lights. This discomfort can be great enough to interfere with some people’s sexual performance. An advantage of darkness is that tactile stimulation can reach the greatest sensitivity when all other senses are inhibited, particularly light”

Other online sources note that amaurophilia is extremely rare and that for some people, the simulation and/or role-playing of having sex with someone who is blind is also a sexual turn-on. This can be achieved with a wide range of accessories including sleep shades, blindfolds, eye patches, and/or or vision-restricting contact lenses. Furthermore, partners may swap roles.  One short online article claimed that:

“Some amaurophiliacs may even extend this play outside of sex through the use of blindfolds or contact lenses in conjunction with a white cane for mobility. Some amaurophiliacs may choose to learn Braille in order to enhance their experience during play sessions”.

This type of behaviour (if true – and I have yet to find any empirical evidence that it is) is very similar to the psychology and behaviour of ‘pretenders’ of the ‘DPW’ typology (i.e., “devotees, pretenders and wannabes”) that I wrote about previously in relation to apotemnophilia (i.e., those who derive sexual pleasure and arousal from the thought of being an amputee). Much of the psychology here is about the one-to-one attention that being disabled can bring and has been linked to factitious disability disorders such as Munchausen’s Syndrome. Should amaurophiles be like apotemnophiles, and based on the research of Dr. Robert Bruno, Director of the Post-Polio Institute (New Jersey, US) I would expect the following DPW characteristics:

• Devotees would be non-blind people who are sexually attracted to people who are blind, typically those with obvious signs of blindness (i.e., use of white cane, guide dog, and/or dark glasses).
• Pretenders would non-blind people who act as if they are blind by using assistive devices (e.g., white cane). This may be done in private or in public so that they can ‘feel’ blind or are perceived by others as being blind.
• Wannabes would be people who actually want to become blind, going to extraordinary lengths to achieve it (e.g., self-enucleation). (There are clinical and medical cases of enucleation but none of those I have read are amaurophilia-related).

As with most other ‘niche’ fetishes and paraphilia, online communities of like-minded individuals have developed such as the Blind-Fetish Live Journal and the Blind One’s websites. Their page is “devoted to those with an interested in blindness and blindfolds from an erotic point of view”. The site’s founder informs readers that if they think amaurophilia “ is weird or sick, you don’t have to look at this page. I feel a bit weird about it myself, but for some reason I am really turned on by blind or blindfolded women”. Here are some insights I have come across online from self-confessed amaurophiles:

• Extract 1: “For me, although I do enjoy blindfolding and being blindfolded, I am specifically interested in blind people. I don’t know why I feel that way. I’ve read that people who are attracted to the disabled are trying to save people they perceive as helpless. I don’t feel that way, and I don’t treat blind people like they’re helpless. I know they’re not, and I probably screw up sometimes, because everything you do is bound to offend someone, but I try to treat everyone the same… At some point, though, when I was young, a blind person or fictional character probably just had a big effect on me. Blindness just became another trait that I enjoy, like dark hair, and blind people are just as likely to love sex and be kinky as someone with dark hair”
• Extract 2: “My particular interest deals with limitations of vision. All my life, I have found the experience of wearing a blindfold or some similar item to be very enjoyable. A couple of years ago, when I found that I needed glasses to see properly, I began to develop more of an interest in blindness”
  
• Extract 3: “I also have a blindness fetish. I would like to find someone who would agree to wear contacts that made them blind so that I could watch them try to make their way around without sight. I would also enjoy hurting them without them being able to see when it was coming. I might make him complete tasks for me blind so I could watch him struggle. With contacts instead of a blindfold I could still fully see their facial expressions, which are very important to me. Then I would be aroused enough to have sex with them. I would want them to still wear the contacts during sex so I was in complete control”

Unfortunately, very few of the accounts I have come across give any real indication as to how their blindness fetish developed. Should empirical research be carried out, the etiology and motivations for blindness fetishes would certainly be an obvious place to start.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

All Experts (2012). Fetishism/Amaurophilia. February 22. Located at: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Fetishism-2835/2012/2/amaurophilia.htm

Bruno, R.L. (1997). Devotees, pretenders and wannabes: Two cases of Factitious Disability Disorder. Journal of Sexuality and Disability, 15, 243-260.

Bukhanovsky, A.O., Hempel, A., Ahmed, W., Meloy, J.R, Brantley, A,C., Cuneo, D, Gleyzer, R., & Felthous, A.R. (1999). Assaultive eye injury and enucleation. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, 27, 590-602.

First, M.B. (2005). Desire for amputation of a limb: Paraphilia, psychosis, or a new type of identity disorder. Psychological Medicine, 35, 919–928.

Love, B. (1992). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books.

Wikibin (2012). Amaurophilia. Located at: http://wikibin.org/articles/amaurophilia.html