Macrophilia: symptoms, causes and treatment
The human being has imagined throughout history a great diversity of fantastic creatures, generally with the purpose of trying to explain through different narrations unclear or inexplicable aspects of reality. These creatures are part of the mythology of different cultures, and often possess powers that greatly exceed us. Centaurs, furies, sirens, fairies ... and giants.
These last creatures are often synonymous with power and strength, often surrounded by a halo of voracity, bestiality and horror. But for some people, giants and the behaviors attributed to them are also a source of fascination and even sexual gratification. We are talking about people who suffer the paraphilia known as macrofilia or gigafilia , of which we are going to talk next.
- Related article: "Filias y parafilias: definition, types and characteristics"
Macrophilia: the attraction for the giants
It receives the name of macrofilia the sexual attraction by the giants (independently of its sex) or by the idea of being devoured or crushed by them . We are before a type of sexual attraction linked to fantastic beings non-existent in real life, something that makes this sexual preference is limited to fantasy and onanism.
It is necessary to bear in mind that having occasional fantasies of this kind may be, although relatively rare (although pornography websites show that contents of this type enjoy a certain popularity) not pathological, being able to serve as a fetish without further ado.
However, it becomes a problem of paraphilic type when sexual fixation by the giants becomes the only stimulus capable of generating sexual arousal, either it generates discomfort or becomes an element that limits the person's life (for example, not being able to enjoy relationships or occupying a high percentage of their thinking and behavior on a day-to-day basis) over a period of at least six months.
There are different preferences in relation to this type of paraphilia, one of the most common being the fantasy that a woman or man of normal size begins to grow by breaking his clothes, the room and / or the building in which he is. Another of the most common fantasies has to do, as we have said before, with crushing or with the idea of being devoured: the idea that the giant in question proceeds to destroy the environment and crush or eat people it becomes sexually suggestive for these subjects.
And is that the type of interaction between giant and human in these fantasies can be very varied, from the maintenance of sex with penetration (be that of being a member of a male giant or penetrate the vagina / anus of a giantess ), the oral contact or being licked, chewed or swallowed by one of these beings (without the need for sexual contact itself), masturbate in contact with any part of his body of one of these beings, be flooded by the effluvia of these beings, being crushed or manipulated like a toy ...
The fantasy also can be related to the subject in question being shrunk to a tiny size while its object of desire retains its usual measures, being in reality what is important is the perception of differences in size or power.
Generally those who have this type of paraphilia are usually heterosexual men (whose object of desire are giant women), but there are also heterosexual women and homosexual men macrophiles whose attraction is given to giants, as well as homosexual women whose object of desire are also giantesses. In fact, macrophilia transcends sexual orientation itself , being able heterosexual or homosexual subjects to feel attraction by entities of the opposite sex to the one of its preference by the fact of being giants.
Practically limited to fantasy
Macrophilia is a very particular paraphilia, since the object of desire of people who feel this sexual attraction is nonexistent in reality. In this way, a person with macrophilia does not have the possibility of putting their sexual fantasies into practice, limited to fantasize with an interaction with these beings and / or masturbatory practices.
As a general rule, this fact is known by the macrophillic people, not being the product of any kind of loss of sense of reality. This does not imply, however, that in some cases there may be a loss of contact with the reality derived from the consumption of substances or a neurological or psychiatric disorder, but it would be a coincidence and not something defining the macrophilia itself.
Cinema, Internet and new technologies have also allowed people with this sexual preference to find highly exciting material for them.There are even videos and photographs in which you play with perspective, optical effects or programs to modify the image to make actors or actresses look even larger than a building, or in which toys are used as little soldiers lead to represent scenes of crushing or destruction.
However, the truth is that some people tend to look for sexual partners as close as possible to their objects of desire, Specifically, people with a stature and wingspan above the average or quite higher than the subject itself. In this way, a person with this sexual inclination could look for a woman over two meters tall (who are called amazons), or men with gigantism in order to get as close as possible to their erotic fantasy.
- You may be interested: "Masochistic personality disorder: symptoms, causes and treatment"
Causes
As with other paraphilias, the mechanism through which this type of erotic inclination arises is not known exactly. However, there are different theories about it and it is even considered that it could have a lot to do with other sexual preferences such as those that link the pleasure-pain poles.
In this sense, the basic idea of macrophilia It has a lot to do with sadomasochism and the games of domination-submission: a giant is a force of nature before which it is insignificant, a raw power capable of destroying us and before which it is only possible to submit or be destroyed.
Thus, a possible explanation of this type of paraphilia is linked to the need or desire to be subjected and / or lose all control of the situation. This explanation seems to correlate with the fact that many of the people who fantasize about this type of object of desire are powerful people, responsible for large corporations, dominant and competitive which may wish to reverse their usual role. In addition to this there may also be in some cases links with dangerous or even criminal paraphilias such as vorarephilia (sexual arousal derived from fantasy or the practice of acts of cannibalism).
Other types of theories could be linked to the existence of childhood traumas derived from sexual abuse during childhood, or from the presence of sadistic, restrictive and aggressive parents. In this case the subject could end up normalizing and associating to sex these behaviors by people who exceed him in strength and size, and in some cases can develop sexual fantasies with beings capable of destroying them once in adulthood.
Finally, other authors consider that in the case of sexual preference by giant women (whether fantasies of men or women) there could be a sexual desire behind by empowered women, capable of dominating, crushing and overcoming traditional gender roles that saw sex feminine as inferior and weak.
Paraphilia treatment
Macrophilia, when we are not talking about a sporadic fantasy but a paraphilia that generates discomfort or dysfunction in the life of those who have this type of erotic fantasy (or of the people with whom they maintain relationships), may require psychological and psychiatric intervention .
At the time of intervention, it is important to assess first the type of fantasies that the subject has and the meaning given to them, what is exciting about them and where the subject comes from. It can also be assessed the existence of possible traumatic or aversive experiences in the life of the subject that have made him feel unable or impotent, or that have been a great inhibition of his own psyche and the need for excessive control of the situation.
Based on this, elements such as cognitive restructuring could be specified in order to modify possible dysfunctional beliefs such as the need to control everything or the idea of being useless or the need to be trampled / destroyed / manipulated in order to maintain human contact.
Emotion management training could also be positive for those people who suffer some kind of self-management problem, as well as work self-esteem. If there is a traumatic event, it should be treated in a specific way according to each case. In addition, the possible difficulties or limitations that this type of sexual attraction may have in daily life should be addressed.
Beyond that, aspects such as the search for the development of positive links with non-paraphiliac stimuli can be worked with techniques such as masturbatory reconditioning, as well as the deserotization of the paraphilic stimulus.
Of course, it should be noted that only in the cases in which these fantasies suppose a great functional limitation or discomfort in the subject itself we would be talking about a paraphilia that could require treatment, being the mere occasional fantasy and not exclusive a sexual preference that does not have to be considered pathological.
Bibliographic references:
- Bowen, J. (1999). Urge: A giant fetish. Salon [Online]. Available at: //www.salon.com/1999/05/22/macrophilia/.
- Gates, K. (2000).Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex. New York: RE / Search Publications.
- Griffiths, M.D. (2015). Big Love: a beginner's guide to macrophilia. Psychology Today [Online]. Available at: //www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201504/big-love
