connection between fear and fetish?

[Livinglesbian]

The main aspect of what I like in sneeze fetish fiction is gross contagious cold like illness being spread between people but in real life it’s my greatest fear. My greatest anxiety surrounds becoming sick and causing someone else to become sick also. I almost never get sick but when I do I go into full denial and hide it from showing while also making sure nobody around me gets sick. The thought of catching an illness and people knowing fills me with such dread and despair it’s unbearable. So it’s so strange that in fiction I get turned on by my greatest fear. I feel that it must be somehow related in my psyche and I’m wondering if anyone else has a connection between their fetish and fears. 

[NoV]

That's interesting, because a huge part of my fetish is the embarrassment that someone with loud and uncontrollable sneezes suffers when they have to sneeze in public, but (you guessed it) I have a massive phobia of being embarrassed or having attention drawn to myself in public. So yes, I supposed I am getting turned on by someone suffering one of my greatest fears. Maybe someone knows more about the psychology behind this?

[AnnaSophie]

Same, I'm into sneezing, but a huge germophobe lol 

I also hate it to be ill.. I either deny it or lock me in my room for days until its over. The thought about anyone knowing (especially family) makes me feel unconfortable, but I don't know why. I guess its about losing control and being vulnerabel.

[Spinoza]

I don't really know if there's a scientific explanation to this kind of connection, but this reminds me the connection Eros-Thanatos (Love/Arousal and Death) that Sigmund Freud theorised as the two main forces that carry on the human life: basically he thought that libido and sense of guilt were strictly bound, because the impulse to death and the aggression related to Thanatos need to be hidden in society; so maybe, specifically regarding the fetish, these can be showed precisely as a fear that allows us to escape some kinds of thought (and clearly the possibility of being infected, concerning the survival instinct provided by Eros).

Maybe (probably) there's somebody who is better prepared on Freud than me and can correct me, I tried to expand his reasoning as personally I see sexuality as something that contains contradictions in itself.

Fun fact: did you know that one of the expression to convey the consequences of orgasm in french is "le petit mort" (the little death)? I find it very fascinating and consistent with Freud's thought.

[SneezyBoi]

I kinda get this.. is it like, for example, someone being interested in insects but also having a phobia of them?

 

[aceblues]

I have read this from fetishists over and over again!!! It fascinates me, and I also relate to an extent. I am somewhat afraid of germs in real life. However, this also sort of translates into my fetish in that I am very into non-contagious allergic sneezing and somewhat less into contagious common cold sneezing.

So after reading your post, I decided to do a little look on the good ole internet to see what came up. A major dude who's name kept popping up was Jacques Lacan. He was a psycho-analyst who came after Freud. Psycho-analytic theories are super heady and a little too much for me to be able to reliably understand, but let's give it a go.

Most of the stuff I'm finding is behind paywalls, but the preview-able abstract for one master thesis on the topic is somewhat comprehensible.

The title of the essay is "A discussion of the relationship of the phobic object and perversion" - the paper's summary: "The object of this thesis is to re-affirm Lacan's thesis that the phobia and the fetish share an intimate and inextricable relationship; the idea that the phobia's genesis can be posited to the pleasurable object, in the fetishistic object, if you like and vise-versa. The case histories that will be explored further on demonstrate the relationship of the object of repulsion or fear, the phobia and the object of attraction, and if you like, the object of love, the fetish. Indeed, one such case history reveals how the subject in question oscillates between these two objects in a most precarious manner."

Can't find much but snobby academic essays which may as well not be in English and cost money to read, so nothing much out there for us commoners lol.. but I guess what this mostly tells us is that some researchers have taken seriously the idea of a connection between fear and fetish!

[aceblues]

Also..

I'm not sure if you're interested in meeting anyone on here, but I'm a lesbian of almost the same age as you... just wanted to throw that out there because you seem cool and I'd love to make some friends who share the fetish lol