Podophilia (pronounced podd-ah-fil-ee-uh or pod-oh-fil=ee-uh)
A paraphilia describing the sexualized objectification of feet (and sometimes footwear), commonly called foot fetishism although the correct clinical description is now "foot partialism".
The construct was podo- + -philia. Podo- (pertaining to a foot or a foot-like part) was from the Ancient Greek πούς (poús), from the primitive Indo-European pṓds. It was cognate with the Mycenaean Greek po, the Latin pēs, the Sanskrit पद् (pad), the Old Armenian ոտն (otn) & հետ (het), the Gothic fōtus and the Old English fōt (from which Modern English gained foot).
The Greek poús was the ancient Greek and Byzantine unit of length originally based upon the length of a shod foot and the idea in Europe endured for centuries although until the seventeenth century there were little attempts at standardization, even within the one jurisdiction and although things were settled well before the twentieth century, in the legal sense it wasn't until 1959 that the US, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and the UK signed the "International Yard and Pound Agreement" which codified avoirdupois weight and length then used in all those nations, a set (although largely supplanted by the metric system (except in the US)) which officially still defines both Imperial and US customary units. This English phrase "length of the chancellor's foot" was an allusion to this history though not actually concerned with lineal measurement. It was instead coined by the lawyer John Selden (1584–1654) to illustrate how the Court of Chancellery which administered the flexible, adaptable law of equity differed from the rigid, precedent-bound courts of common law. “Equity is a roguish thing; for law, we have a measure to know what to trust to. Equity is according to the conscience of him who is Chancellor: as it is larger or narrower so is equity. It’s all one as if they should make the standard for the measure, we call afoot to be the Chancellor’s foot.” In other words, in the Court of Chancellery, equity was administered by the Lord Chancellor at his discretion. That did mean the estimation of equity could vary from one Chancellor to next and thus the Court of Chancellery soon created its own contradictions and attracted its own critics.
The suffix –philia was from the From Ancient Greek φιλία (philía) (fraternal love), from φῐλέω (philéō) (to love), from the earlier Ionic Greek (where the meanings diverged somewhat over the years. It was used to to form nouns meaning a fondness, liking or love of something and in pathology picked up the specific technical sense of abnormal liking or tendency such a paraphilia. One with specific attraction to feet or footwear is a podophile and their predilections are described as podophilic.
Although the psychiatric community has since the mid-twentieth century devoted some time to discussing, re-defining and pondering what is apparently the 1800-odd year history of foot fetishism, a glance at the literature does suggest it’s been thought usually an interesting quirk in the human condition rather than a condition, much less a mental disorder. Before the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1987 published the revised third edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R), fetishism was usually described as a persistent preferential sexual arousal in association with non-living objects or an over-inclusive focus on (typically non-sexualized) body parts (most famously feet) and body secretions. With the DSM-III-R, the concept of partialism (an exclusive focus on part of the body) was separated from the historic category of fetishism and appended to the “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified” category. Although one of the dustier corners of psychiatry, the field had always fascinated some and in the years since the DSM-III-R was published, a literature did emerge, most critics maintaining partialism and fetishism are related, can be co-associated, and are non-exclusive domains of sexual behavior. There was a technical basis for this position because introduced in DSM-IV (1994) was a (since further elaborated) codification of the secondary clinical significance criterion for designating a psychiatric disorder, one the implications of which was that it appeared to suggest a diagnostic distinction between partialism and fetishism was no longer clinically meaningful or necessary. The recommendation was that the prime diagnostic criterion for fetishism be modified to reflect the reintegration of partialism and that a fetishistic focus on non-sexual body parts be a specifier of Fetishism.
Fetish was from the Latin facere (to make) which begat factitious (made by art), from which the Portuguese feitico was derived (fetiche in the French), from which English gained fetish. A fetish in this context was defined as "a thing irrationally revered; an object in which power or force was concentrated". In English, use of fetish to indicate an object of desire in the sense of “someone who is aroused due to a body part, or an object belonging to a person who is the object of desire” dates from 1897 (although the condition is mentioned in thirteenth century medical documents), an era during which the language of modern psychiatry was being assembled. However, the earliest known literary evidence of podophilia lies in dozens of brooding, obsessive love letters from the second century AD of uncertain authorship and addressed to both male and female youths. That there are those to whom an object or body part has the power to captivate and enthrall has presumably been part of the human condition from the start.
From the beginnings of modern psychiatry, such a focus was not in itself considered a disorder, unless accompanied by distress or impairment although it was noted by many that if even a nominally “harmless” fetish became an obsession, it certainly could impair healthy sexuality. In DSM-5 (2013), the diagnosis was assigned to individuals who experience sexual arousal from objects or a specific part of the body which is not typically regarded as erotic and presumably any body part or object can be a fetish, the most frequently mentioned including underwear, shoes, stockings, gloves, hair and latex. Fetishists may use the desired article for sexual gratification in the absence of a partner although it’s recorded this may involve nothing more than touching smelling the item and the condition appears to manifest almost exclusively in men, the literature suggesting a quarter of fetishistic men are homosexual but caution needs always to be attached to these numbers. Because fetishism is something which many happily enjoy their whole adult lives, it never comes to the attention of doctors and a high proportion of the statistical material about fetishism is from patients self-reporting. The statistics in a sense reflect thus not the whole cohort of the population with the condition but rather those who either want to talk about it or are responding to surveys. That is of course true of other mental illnesses but is exaggerated with fetishism because so much lies with the spectrum of normal human behavior and the definitional limitations in the DSM-5 reflect this, including three criteria for Fetishistic Disorder and three specifiers:
Criterion 1: Over a six month period, the individual has experienced sexual urges focused on a non-genital body part, or inanimate object, or other stimulus, and has acted out urges, fantasies, or behaviors.
Criterion 2: The fantasies, urges, or behaviors cause distress, or impairment in functioning.
Criterion 3: The fetishistic object is not an article of clothing employed in cross dressing, or a sexual stimulation device, such as a vibrator.
Specifiers for the diagnosis include the type of stimulus which is the focus of attention (1) the non-genital or erogenous areas of the body (famously feet) and this condition is known also as Partialism (a preoccupation with a part of the body rather than the whole person), (2) Non-living object(s) (such as shoes), (3) specific activities (such as smoking during sex).
Noting the definitional model in the DSM-IV-TR (2000), despite the history in psychiatry’s world of paraphilias and a notable presence in popular culture, there were those who claimed the very notion of a foot fetish was false because of that critical phrase “non-living” which would seem to disqualify a foot (unless of course it was no longer alive but such an interest would be seriously weird and a different condition; although in this context there are deconstructionists who would make a distinction between a depiction of a live foot and the foot itself, clinicians probably regard them as interchangeable tools of the fetishist although the techniques of consumption would vary). The critic noted many fetishes are extensions of the human body, such as articles of clothing or footwear but that did not extend to feet and that diagnostically, a sexual fascination with feet did correctly belong in the category of “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified,” and thus be regarded as partialism: Foot partialism.
It was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who admitted that, lawfulness aside, as animals, the only truly aberrant sexual behavior in humans could be said to be its absence (something which the modern asexual movement re-defines rather than disproves). It seemed to be in that spirit the DSM-5 was revised to treat podophila and many other “harmless” behaviors as “normal” and thus within the purview of the manual only to the extent of being described, clinical intervention no longer required. Whether all psychiatrists agree with the new permissiveness isn’t known but early reports suggest there’s nothing in the DSM-5-TR (2022) to suggest podophiles will soon again be labeled as deviants.
Suspected podophiles, parked outside shoe shop.
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