Is there a place for sensory aspects and alternative representations in non-normative sexual interest research? Reflections from a study into dacryphilia

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Greenhill, R. and Griffiths, M.D. ORCID: 0000-0001-8880-6524, 2022. Is there a place for sensory aspects and alternative representations in non-normative sexual interest research? Reflections from a study into dacryphilia. Journal of Concurrent Disorders, 4 (2), pp. 1-15. ISSN 2562-7546

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Abstract

Research into normative sexual interests (e.g., paraphilias, fetishes, and unusual sexual practices) mainly collect qualitative data because of the low occurrence of such behaviors. Moreover, the majority of studies using qualitative data have focused solely on sexual practices as they occur in 'real-life' and have neglected sensory aspects of sexual experiences, as well as alternative representations of sexual practices (e.g., screen media, literary texts, etc.). This is particularly relevant to non-normative sexual interests, as many of these may involve arousal from an ostensibly sensory activity. This paper first considers the subjects of four previously published studies examining feederism, eproctophilia, necrophilia, and zoophilia. It examines their methodological approaches in more detail, as a means of displaying how attention to sensory aspects and alternative representations may add further insight. We then examine some of our own data on dacryphilia (sexual arousal from crying) using data two previously published papers. These data are discussed in relation to the literature on sensory-based approaches to data analysis (e.g., visual methods) and other analytic techniques that may be suited to alternative representations of sexual practices as well as outlining four distinct types of crying data (visual crying, aural crying, written crying, screen crying). The data suggest that participants with dacryphilic interests orient towards sensory aspects and alternative representations. These sensory aspects of experience are worthy of further exploration and the paper highlights that there are contemporary data collection and analytic frameworks in which to do this (e.g., visual methods, interpretative phenomenological analysis).

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Journal of Concurrent Disorders

Creators:

Greenhill, R. and Griffiths, M.D.

Publisher:

Concurrent Disorders Society

Date:

26 February 2022

Volume:

Number:

ISSN:

2562-7546

Identifiers:

Number	Type
1522091	Other

Rights:

©2022 Greenhill, R. and Griffiths, M.D. Licensee CDS Press, Toronto, Canada. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Divisions:

Schools > School of Social Sciences

Record created by:

Laura Ward

Date Added:

01 Mar 2022 14:56

Last Modified:

17 Jun 2022 15:26

URI:

https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/45776