Torture and pleasure - it would seem, what do they have in common? Meanwhile, these are often two sides of the same coin. At times, bodily influences, which should cause pain or severe physical discomfort, give us pleasure. Let's turn to the facts.
Tickling phenomenon
Tickling a person often triggers involuntary laughter. Specialists from the University
Tübingen believe that tickling, by irritating the nerve endings, activates the region of the brain "responsible" for anticipating pain. And laughter is part of the defense mechanism. In addition, the hypothalamus, which becomes active when tickled, is also associated with the control of sexual behavior.
Tickling torture was common in China. The ancient Romans did the same. They applied a special saline solution to the feet of the convict, which was then given to the goat to lick. Sometimes it was even fatal.
At the same time, tickling is often used in erotic games and helps bring a partner to the peak of bliss. By the way, people can react in different ways to tickling: for some it delivers terrible torment, while for others it causes sexual arousal.
Promotional video:
Whipping ecstasy
Whipping - with lashes, rods, whips, etc. - has been a fairly common physical punishment for many centuries. If a person received a large number of blows, his body could turn into a continuous wound, which did not heal for a long time and caused terrible suffering. And sometimes the convict was beaten to death.
Today many people know the term "flagellation" (from the Latin flagellatio - "scourging"). We are talking about the practice of BSDM, which consists in flogging a partner with various, usually long and flexible objects, such as a whip, stack, cane or flogger. In this case, the "lower" partner experiences sexual arousal and pleasure.
In some sects (for example, among the Khlysty), it was customary to engage in self-flagellation to "pacify" the flesh. This often led the sectarians into a state of ecstasy, which is now called "subpeis". “The fact that flogging can cause strong emotional arousal, up to religious ecstasy, which has obvious, though not always conscious, sexual
components have been known since time immemorial,”writes the sociologist I. Kon in the book“To beat or not to beat? Corporal punishment of children”. Sexual masochists often grow out of children who were actively flogged in childhood.
Pain and pleasure
Have you ever wondered why there are expressions such as "sweet torture" or "sweet pain"? Scientists claim that the center of pain in our brain is adjacent to the center of pleasure. The line between pain and pleasure is very thin. So, Barry Komisaruk from Rutgers University reports that when observing a person's facial expressions, it is clear that the facial expression at the moment of orgasm or pain is practically the same.
The American psychoanalyst Alexander Lowen has studied the connection between pain and pleasure in detail. He came to the conclusion that the features of the work of the so-called sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems play a role here. “Parasympathetic activity expands peripheral arterioles, increasing blood flow to the surface of the body and producing a feeling of warmth,” Lowen writes in Pleasure: A Creative Approach to Life. - The sympathetic action shrinks the superficial arterioles, forcing blood to rush to the internal organs of the body to deliver more oxygen to vital organs and muscles. Thus, the work of the parasympathetic department contributes to the expansion of the body and the appeal to the environment, that is, it causes a pleasant reaction. Sympathetic activity produces contraction and distance from the environment, painful reaction."
Another proof of the close connection between pain and pleasure was the following experiment. A group of students were given either the pain reliever, paracetamol, or a placebo. Then they were shown a series of erotic pictures. If the subject received paracetamol, then he responded more calmly to exciting photographs.
Pepper effect
American Jason McNabb won the hot pepper-eating contest. According to the champion, at first it seemed to him that his mouth was full of wasps, which simultaneously sting him. But gradually the sensations changed for the better: "The pain subsided rather quickly, and I felt an adrenaline rush and euphoria when eating pepper."
Neuroscientist David Linden of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine writes in The Compass of Pleasure that after pain signals enter the central nervous system, the body releases the hormone dopamine, which blocks pain. But it not only acts on pain receptors, but also stimulates the limbic and prefrontal areas of the brain. Its effect is ultimately similar to that of opiates, which induce a feeling of euphoria.
In addition, the human brain in most cases distinguishes pain that can lead to dangerous bodily injury, from simple irritation of nerve receptors. So, when eating hot pepper, we feel a burning sensation in the mouth. But at the same time, the brain "knows" that there is nothing hot in the mouth and we cannot really get burned.
Irina Shlionskaya