TF Psychoanalytic Discussion

[brandygang]

Originally Posted by Dark Horseman

@brandygang I recall reading a theory about how the soul or self is merely a construction of an intelligence; that the brain has evolved to think this in order to better handle a social environment. Might actually be from the same guy you're talking about, and personally I believe it - although I'm not bothered by it. It's just an interesting interpretation.

That's a good point about the physical changes, too. It's pretty much universal for guys to like naked, beautiful, curvy women, but I guess there is a scale of how much emphasis people like seeing other categories expressed. Twinning though or becoming a perfect copy of someone else - I just can't get over how I could've been seeing two, different beautiful women or a new creature, and I feel kinda cheated seeing the same thing drawn twice or something that resembles regular fanart in the end. I guess I place that huge emphasis on physical, or it could be that I've just been turned off by that huge influx of Ash-turns-into-a-girl-again commissions.

@hexen Yeah, I brought up the furry issue since a lot of TF Artists post on furaffinity, but it doesn't seem like the majority identify with it. I'm beginning to think it might just be because it's a safe website for fetish material. And I feel the best mental aspects of a TF are when the woman finds out its permanent. When they reverse, I always get that feel that a cop has come over and started waving people away: "All right fellas, you had your fun. Show's over folks."

I can see the changes being pretty stratified from the raw attraction itself in some cases. At least for me, a lot of what I'm attracted to physically I don't think I really identify with or would bring any mental/essential pleasure by taking on, muscles, chub, skintight clothes, ect. It's something I might get interested in for a minute than tire of. That's why I rank the Identify of it as purely physical.

On the other hand, I can think of things I wouldn't normally be 'hyper-attracted' to but the fetish, if you want to call it that is from the mental, social and individual output. Take Goths, I find the most exagerrated looks attractive, some don't. But even beyond that the extraordinary mudane (Contradiction much?) concept of a Goth, "Thinking like one", "Socializing like one", or "Identifying as one", even as a completely mythical and fictional idea must hold some strange nebulous, shallow fringe of truth to it.

I think that's along the lines of what Lacan (And possibly what you read about construction) was talking about. Identity is constructed, and so is (differentiated and specific, non-instinctual) desire. Usually through language, a fiction or story we tell about ourselves for the better handling of socializing and adapting. Whether it's to be 'Human', a specific race or group, a subculture, religion, 'Goth' or even 'You.' Especially 'You.'

So one could say that even though instinctually I don't find a bare-bones "Goth" to be physically appealing, just them identifying as such alone gives an allure through these identities I spoke of. Even knowing it's a lie it must be adhered to (More on that in a moment), but refusing the symbolic (That Goths or a certain identity are a large, subjective collection of values rather than a real tangible thing) and overlooking, valuing and emphasizing the 'Real' (Another contradictory usage because it's not real at all!) idealized reality of such an implausibility is what give it's fetishtic power.

That's a funny stuffy way of saying that often we're attracted to things that aren't real. The unreality of them is desirable even. We may know things like Bimbos, goths and caricatured stereotypes purely because they're so absurd, not unlike clowns or really any fetish. Can you really think of a fetish that doesn't sound silly and super weird under some context?
Now how many of those weird fetishes can be put into words or sentences that make sense under the same context?