Macrophilia: symptoms, causes and treatment

Those who experience this sexual tendency feel the desire to be crushed by giants.

Throughout history, human beings have imagined a great diversity of fantastic creatures, generally with the purpose of trying to explain through different narratives 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, mermaids, fairies... and giants.

The latter creatures are usually 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 from the paraphilia known as macrophilia or gigaphiliawhich we are going to talk about next.

Macrophilia: the attraction for the giants

It receives the name of macrophilia the sexual attraction for the giants (independently of his sex) or for the idea of being able to be devoured or crushed by them.. This is a type of sexual attraction linked to fantastic beings that do not exist in real life, which means that this sexual preference is generally limited to fantasy and onanism.

It is necessary to take into account that having occasional fantasies of this type can be, although relatively infrequent (although pornography web pages state that contents of this type enjoy a certain popularity), not pathological, and can serve as a fetish without further ado.

However, it becomes a paraphilic problem when the sexual fixation on giants becomes the only stimulus capable of generating sexual arousal, or it generates discomfort or becomes an element that limits the person's life (e.g., by not being able to enjoy (for example, not being able to enjoy relationships or occupying a high percentage of their thoughts and behavior on a daily basis) for 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 normal-sized woman or man starts to grow by tearing up his clothes, the room and/or the building he is in. Another of the most common fantasies has to do, as mentioned above, with crushing or the idea of being devoured: the idea that the giant in question will proceed to smash the environment and crushing or eating people becomes sexually suggestive for these subjects.

The type of interaction between giant and human in these fantasies can be very varied, from the maintenance of sexual relations with penetration (either being the recipient of the member of a male giant or penetrating the vagina / anus of a giantess), oral contact or being licked, chewed or swallowed by one of these beings (without the need for the contact to be sexual in itself), masturbating in contact with some part of the body of one of these beings, being flooded by the sexual effluvium of these beings, being crushed or manipulated like a toy...

The fantasy can also be related to the The fantasy can also be related to the subject in question being shrunk to a minuscule size while his object of desire while his object of desire retains its usual measurements, the important thing being in reality the perception of differences in size or power.

Generally those who have this type of paraphilia tend to be heterosexual men (whose object of desire are giant women), but there are also heterosexual women and homosexual macrophilic men whose attraction is to giants, as well as homosexual women whose object of desire are also giants. In fact, macrophilia transcends sexual orientation per seIn fact, macrophilia transcends the sexual orientation itself, and heterosexual or homosexual subjects may be attracted to entities of the opposite sex to their preference because they are 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. Thus, a person with macrophilia does not have, for the most part, the possibility of putting his or her sexual fantasies into practice, and is limited to fantasizing about an interaction with these beings. and/or masturbatory practices.

As a general rule, this fact is known by macrophiliacs and is not the result of any kind of loss of the sense of reality. This does not imply, however, that in some cases there may be a loss of contact with reality due to substance abuse or some neurological or psychiatric disorder, but this would be a coincidence and not something that defines 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 they play with perspective, optical effects or image modification programs to make the actors or actresses appear larger than the size of a building, or in which toys such as tin soldiers are used 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 height and wingspan above average or considerably taller than the subject or quite a bit taller than the subject himself. Thus, a person with this sexual inclination could look for a woman over two meters tall (which are called amazons), or men with gigantism in order to get as close as possible to their erotic fantasy.

Causes

As with other paraphilias, the exact mechanism through which this type of erotic inclination arises is not known. 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 has much to do with sadomasochism. has a lot to do with sadomasochism and domination-submissive games. and games of domination-submission: a giant is a force of nature before which one is insignificant, a raw power capable of destroying us and before which one can only submit or be destroyed.

Thus, a possible explanation for this type of paraphilia is linked to the need or desire to be subdued 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, who may wish to reverse their usual role. In addition, in some cases there may also be links with dangerous or even criminal paraphilias such as vorarephilia (sexual arousal derived from the fantasy or practice of acts of cannibalism).

Another type of theories could be linked to the existence of infantile traumas derived from sexual abuse during childhood. 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 with sex these behaviors on the part of people who surpass him/her in strength and size, in some cases developing sexual fantasies with beings capable of destroying them once in adulthood.

Finally, other authors consider that in the case of sexual preference for giant women (whether fantasies of men or women) there could be behind a sexual desire for empowered women, capable of dominating, crushing and defeating traditional gender roles that saw the female sex as inferior and weak.

Treatment of paraphilia

Macrophilia, when we are not talking about a sporadic fantasy but about a paraphilia that generates discomfort or dysfunctionality in the life of the person who has this type of erotic fantasy (or of the people with whom he/she has relationships), may require psychological and psychiatric intervention..

When it comes to intervening, the first thing to assess is the type of fantasies that the subject has and the meaning that is given to them, what is exciting about them and where the subject considers that they come from. The existence of possible traumatic or aversive experiences in the subject's life that have made him/her feel incapable or impotent, or that have led to a great inhibition of his/her own psyche and the need for excessive control of the situation, can also be assessed.

Based on this, elements such as cognitive restructuring could be required 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 stepped on/destroyed/manipulated in order to maintain human contact.

Training in emotion management could also be positive for those who suffer from for those who suffer from some kind of self-management problem, as well as working on self-esteem. If there is any traumatic event, this should be treated in a specific way depending on each case. In addition, the possible difficulties or limitations that may arise in the daily life of this type of sexual attraction should be worked on.

Beyond this, aspects such as the search for the development of positive bonding with respect to non-paraphilic stimuli can be worked on with techniques such as masturbatory reconditioning, as well as the de-eroticization of the paraphilic stimulus.

It should be noted, however, that only in those cases in which these fantasies involve a great functional limitation or discomfort in the subject or discomfort in the subject himself we would be talking about a paraphilia that could require treatment, being the mere occasional and non-exclusive fantasy one more sexual preference that does not have to be considered pathological.