Kink or Disorder? Talk Notes
Notes • 1,320 Words • Psychology, 2026 • 02/03/2026
Profs and Pints: Kink or Disorder? by Brian A. Sharpless
Talk Notes
The central question of the talk is what is the difference between normal and pathological sex?
- Richard von Kraftt thought that any sex not for creating children or procreation was deviant. This was kind of the first time it was being talked about, and of course, that rules out most of the sex that modern people were having and even then people were having.
Sex is interesting because it is the end point of several different goals like:
- Self-esteem/validation
- Expression of love, dominance, hate, etc.
- Procreation
- Money
What is a psychological disorder?
- Symptom thresholds
- Duration thresholds
- Distress or impairment of daily life
- Not due to substance abuse or different disorders
What are paraphilia (sexual disorders)?
- Atypical patterns of sexual attraction or arousal
- (Potential) harm to (self or) others
- Distress or impairment of daily life
What is fetish?
- Fetish is not inherently disorder (esp if not causing impairment or distress)
- It comes from the Portuguese feitico which were these inanimate objects that were worshipped (relics)
- A fetish is a specific and intense focus on a non-genital body part or an inanimate object
- Penguins have been observed having sex with rocks and other non-human animals exhibit fetish behavior as well
- Fetish objects are tactile: they’re smooth/soft or are symbols of occupation, power, etc. or make contact with other body parts that are fetishized or enjoyed a non-pathological amount
- The onset is usually after puberty, but there are cases where it happens much earlier as early as like five years old
- Fetish seems to be some kind of multi sensory experience, especially for masturbation
- In the research fetish is almost exclusively male, but I’m not sure how much I believe this
Voyeurism
- Watching an unsuspecting person
- More more male than female
- Don’t have to engage and usually doesn’t escalate to something physical
- The thrill of being caught is part of it
- Often about masturbation
- May be their only sexual outlet
Exhibitionism
- Exposing yourself to unsuspecting people
- This makes more sense to me as a contingency rather than voyeurism because I feel like in voyeurism you could have consent but the secrecy and the thrill of being caught I guess goes away, but there’s still some titillation
- They also indulge in the thrill of not wanting to be caught
- People don’t usually care about specific reactions, but they do want a reaction
- Most victims are women and children
- This is usually a misdemeanor in most US states
- They have tried to do shame therapy, which was an adversive of counter condition where they exposed exhibitionists to a reactionless victim which supposedly was very effective
- There was also a recent treatment where they tried to build empathy toward potential victims, and it seems like a lot of of them were not able to consider a lot of the consequences beforehand
Frotterism
- Groping/rubbing an unsuspecting(?) person
- Sometimes called grinding or chikan
- Big prom and subways only about 5% of instances are reported so any of our numbers are probably way lower
- There is a fairly high risk of escalation to assault as much as 18 to 20%
- Perpetrators have a lot of pathological rationalization
Auto-erotic asphyxiation
- These effects were observed pretty early on during public hangings
- It was even initially used as a treatment for erectile dysfunction
- There’s certainly an overlap with choking during sex, so there is some kind of pleasure pathway surely (maybe related to drowning?)
- There’s at least 1000 deaths a year due to this
- It can also look like suicide and vice versa
- Most deaths are men and most are under 30 so maybe other people are just better at it and we have reverse survivor bias
- Some people will try to do it with a lemon in their mouth so if they become unconscious, they’ll clench their jaw in order to wake them up
- I wonder if this is an expression of choking, but they just don’t ask other people to do it but also this is a very big thrill seeking behavior as well, which could make up the majority of the motivation
- Some therapists engage in harm reduction and just tell them to do it with a trusted partner, but it is a pretty scary thing to do because there can just be accidents
Other disorders
- Vore
- Cannibalism
- Clinical vampirism/Renfield Syndrome
- Somnophilia
How do these disorders form?
- Some believe it’s operant and classical conditioning, usually through chance pairing of stimuli that then becomes ruminated and intensified through fantasy
- Perhaps a person has a random erection during puberty, and someone passes them on the bus. This could then develop into fraud ism because if they masturbate to it orgasm is a very powerful reinforcer.
- The distortion of courtship could be because these people have high sex drives, but low social competence
- In a psychodynamic lens, it could be an early fusion of sex and aggression, and also lack of empathy or the precursors to empathy like mentalization
- Traumatic brain injuries or temporal lobe abnormalities can also explain some behavior
One theorist believed that paraphilia or other errant sexual behavior were distortions of the normal stages of courtship
- Finding (voyeurism, stalking)
- Making overtures (exhibitionism)
- Making physical contact (frotterism)
- Engaging in sexual intercourse (rape)
Most disorders are associated with
- Hypersexuality
- Childhood sexual or emotional abuse
- Substance abuse disorders
- Mood disorders
- Antisocial behavior
- Surprisingly personality doesn’t reliably correlate
- OCD might be involved, but usually those thoughts are ego-dystonic and so there wouldn’t be really any arousal from it so it could be debilitating and for someone to think that they have these things but usually they actually don’t
- I believe that women have more fantasies, but for men more fantasy leads to behavior because of risk taking and socialization, etc.
Sexual disorders can be treated but with mixed results
- Sometimes there are anti-androgens to lower libido, same with antidepressants also psychodynamic or cognitive behavioral therapy
- It’s hard to control a arousal and you can’t deprogram something. You have to have aversive stimuli or create different stimuli to get aroused
My Own Musings
What connects these disorders?
- Transgressions of consent which are transgressions of morality
- If someone has pretty low empathy and high and antisocial behavior, are they really think about morality does that incongruity give them any pleasure? Shirley they know it’s illegal.
- Unsuspecting seems to be a big part of it
- There’s exaggeration of normal like body odor, scat, etc. which is something sensory
- There’s risk (misattribution of arousal)
- I wonder if there’s some kind of evolutionary psychology lens for a lot of of these things
- I bet also there’s some idea of regaining control over your life or there’s so much repressed energy that it comes out in very strange and perverted ways
- Vore, cannibalism, vampirism: What is the metaphorical significance of consumption?
What role does the internet and technology play?
- It can even start off ironically, but the body doesn’t know the difference
- I wonder if recommendation algorithms will have anything to do with this in the future
- There is also a lot of propagation of fetish content online even to unsuspecting people
- The Goon Squad: A lot of it may be performative, but a lot of vulnerable people together will potentially deficient social skills may have trouble distinguishing fantasy, performance, and reality.
- Pornography is so much easier to find and it is everywhere.
- Porn in certain cases might help or hurt. It depends, but orgasm is a very powerful reinforcer so you have to be very careful what you get off to.
- What about the usage of LLM chatbots as companions?
- Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications
The Ethics of Fantasy
- Privacy and unknown ability of the experience of partners, friends, etc.
- Is fantasy something that you should talk about with your partner? Are there some private fantasies and also partner fantasies?
- Pervert’s Dilemma with deepfakes