Scopophilia

Scopophilia is erotic pleasure related to seeing. Often cited as a basic feature of our experience of visual media, its unique quality is fascination, an experience that combines attraction and fear. Gender differences have been suggested in connection with the intensity of scopophilia in males and females. These are the basis for many decisions made by producers of advertisements, films, television, and Internet presentations.

Scopophilia originally referred to sexual pleasure in both looking at and being looked at by someone. The word is a translation of the German Schaulust (literally, lust for looking), a term introduced into psychology, in 1910, by Sigmund Freud. When only being looked at can bring about sexual arousal, scopophilia is termed exhibitionism, and when only looking at someone (while not being observed doing so) leads to sexual excitement, it is termed voyeurism. The form of scopophilia most relevant to media studies is voyeurism.

Currently, among psychiatrists exhibitionism and voyeurism are understood as sexual disorders termed paraphilias, unusual forms of sexuality originally called perversions, since the exhibitionist and voyeur do not desire heterosexual genital contact with the person who is the source of sexual arousal and only one of the forms of scopophilia can bring this about. Both paraphilias have been reported almost exclusively in males. Most adult sexuality includes an element of scopophilia (termed a partial instinct) that initiates the sex act. Sexual interest in other people nearly always begins with pleasure in looking at them, often with concurrent pleasure in being looked at.

According to Jean Piaget, at the beginning of life, our first cognitive experiences are indistinguishable from the physical actions of looking at, reaching for, and grasping objects. Looking at the mothering figure's face is an essential component of bonding emotionally with her (or him). As the term suggests, eye contact with another person is a kind of touching, but at a distance. All seeing has a quasi-tactile quality. Being looked at may produce the same sort of response as being touched. Looking at people and things is also the basis of orienting ourselves in space. The activity soon becomes pleasurable for its own sake (functional pleasure). For most people, looking at the faces, bodies, and actions of other human beings is more compelling than looking at other things.

Scopophilia has been associated with pornography, but nearly everyone is sexually excited to some degree by images of nongenital parts of the bodies of other human beings. Sometimes the stimulation of looking at does not lead to genital arousal. This speaks to its more general erotic meaning and its relation to our aesthetic sensibility.

Direct observation of infants has determined that males prefer looking at moving objects whereas infant females prefer looking at faces. There may also be preferences for certain colors and shapes that are typical for most males and most females. After the sexual awakening of puberty, boys are [Page 322]said to look at bodies more than faces, whereas girls tend to focus more on facial features. It is not clear that this is based on innate differences between the sexes. Similarly, males are generally said to take greater pleasure than females in looking at people, but it is difficult to be certain whether this generalization is justified. Postpubescent females are said to be more exhibitionistic than males. This would lead us to expect young males to be more modest than girls, and that may be the case. It is difficult to know the extent to which attitudes toward one's body and the desire to display it are the result of encouraging or inhibiting (even prohibiting) certain tendencies that are common to both sexes. With respect to these preferences, the formation of habits of social response (and therefore preferences) begins early in life and so much of it is preverbal that, short of ethically irresponsible experiments in upbringing, we are likely never to know which tendencies are sex-specific and which are socially constructed.

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