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.
Lindsay Lohan’s right foot,
plantar flexing.
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
enthral 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 fetishized 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.
Design by
Davina-India.
Although the extreme examples won’t be
possible to render as practical products without (unanticipated) advances in
materials, 3D printing offers possibilities for the shoe-oriented faction of
the foot partialists.
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.
