Continuing with our review of the most curious or extravagant paraphilias, today we are talking about agalmatophilia, a paraphilia characterized by an irrepressible sexual attraction towards all kinds of statues, busts, mannequins, dolls or similar inanimate objects . It is a psychosexual disorder (paraphilia) that consists of feeling an unhealthy sexual attraction for these types of objects.
It was first described by the German psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who wrote about a gardener who fell in love with a statue of the Venus de Milo and tried to consummate this relationship, in 1877.
Agalmatophilia is also known by the terms of statutophilia or love for mannequins.
Among the sexual desires of agalmatophiliacs can be found the simple fact of having a fantasy in which they have sexual relations with a statue or other object of desire; maintain direct sexual contact with the inanimate object or observe sculptures in suggestive or nude positions. It is not strange to find within this paraphilia Pygmalionism which, in reference to the Pygmalion myth in which the sculptor fell in love with a statue that he had made himself, reveals an exacerbated feeling towards an object created by oneself .
Despite what it may seem, this paraphilia is quite popular worldwide, especially in northern European countries. Gallmatophiles may crave sexual contact with the object of their desire. They may also fantasize about having sexual or non-sexual encounters with one object, or seeing various objects, such as two statues, interacting in a sexual or non-sexual way. Generally, people with agalmatophilia are attracted to nude statues, dolls or mannequins, but this is not always the case, as they can also get excited by the idea of transforming themselves or perhaps someone else into their preferred object of desire. These fantasies play with the idea that once transformed, the person will remain immobile, giving more control to this other.
The etymology of this word comes from the Greek “agalma” which means “statue” and -philia , which means “love”. Agalmatophilia is also commonly known as agalmatosexualism .
Sexual attraction to statues seems to prevail in the ancient or classical world: the case of the Cnidian Aphrodite is of particular interest. According to multiple sources, this statue, made by the classical sculptor Praxiteles of Athens, was able to awaken erotic desire in the observer. However, this case must be contextualized in ancient Greece, where different powers were attributed to divinities and great importance was given to the Mimesis, the imitation of nature as an essential end of art or the artistic. The literary case of Pygmalion, recorded by the Roman poet Publio Ovidio Nasón in the Metamorphoses , also plays a key role in this context. Here, the power of poetry allows a happy ending to be achieved by transforming the statue into a real woman and not the essence of agalmatophilia as we know it today, into a contemporary form of agalmatophilia, which uses sex dolls or mannequins. .
