tickle

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Example tickling

Tickling describes the attempt to create a reflex in the form of involuntary laughing, screaming or twitching by lightly touching the body . Most people react to the so-called tickling in the manner described; some animals by twitching or making sounds. A distinction is made between Knismesis , a gentle tickling, for example by a feather or by caressing , and Gargalesis , a massive, often almost painful tickling attack, in which selective pressure is exerted on sensitive parts of the body.

Etymology and usage

The term is seen as a sound and movement imitating affective formation of Germanic.

Related words and word forms are Old High German kizzilōn (8th century), kuzzilōn (only Upper German, 10th century), Middle High German tickling , kützeln ; Old Saxon kitilon , Middle Low German kettelen , Middle Dutch / Dutch kittelen , English (dialect) kittle ; Old Norse kitla , Swedish kittla .

In children's language, the expression killekille or killekille make is used for tickling. The Nubian word kilkile for "tickle" is almost the same .

In a figurative sense, one speaks of "tickle" in the case of an attractive temptation to do something improper, dangerous or forbidden, and of " thrill " when aroused by a particularly exciting or dangerous situation.

Theories and research

Laughter and a pained look - a typical reaction to the tickling

Tickling is almost always a form of social interaction .

There are many theories in science. Charles Darwin proposed the connection between tickling and social relationships; accordingly, tickling provokes laughter through the expectation of pleasure. If a stranger tickles and surprises a child without warning, the likely reaction is withdrawal or displeasure rather than laughter and exultation. Darwin hypothesized that tickling was only effective if the exact point of stimulation was not known in advance, justifying this by saying that self-tickling was not possible. However, this is controversial because tickling is also possible if the exact point is seen by the person concerned, i.e. is known.

The psychologist Clarence Leuba interprets the tickling as a pure protective reflex. Other researchers speak of a relief function after a fright, because the brain notices that the touch is not a threat.

The tickle reflex is also known in animals. So to Washoe , a female chimpanzee that American Sign Language has learned repeatedly researchers the character for "tickle me" have given. In experiments with rats, which are likely to be transferable to humans, specialized cells have been discovered in the brain that are particularly responsive to tickling. If you touch yourself, these cells are suppressed. Like humans, rats have to laugh, especially when they are in a good mood and at a young age.

Tickle yourself

A distinctive feature of tickling is that people don't laugh when they tickle themselves. Self-tickling is possible for some people, but to a lesser extent than normal tickling by another person. Already Aristotle came to the realization that everything that comes from someone himself, even if it is a tickling movement, does not represent any danger and is therefore ignored.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and colleagues measured the brain activity of people who were teased or tickled themselves, with the help of magnetic resonance and made so tight that the cerebellum during self-tickling is less active than the foreign tickling. A robotic arm was used to tickle the test subjects. When the test subjects controlled the tickling robot themselves with a joystick, they rated their sensation as less ticklish. If the reaction of the tickling robot to the joystick control was gradually delayed by up to 0.2 seconds, they perceived the stimulus as increasingly ticklish. This suggests that the cerebellum provides the somatosensory cortex with accurate information about the location of the tickling site and the sensation that is to be expected. Apparently a cortical mechanism is responsible for reducing or suppressing the tickling stimulus. In further experiments, the authors found that not only a time delay in the reaction of the tickling robot leads to a ticklier feeling; a clear deviation of the direction of movement during the tickling touch from the expected direction of movement has the same effect. So the less someone knows in advance when and where they will be tickled, the more intense the feeling of tickling. Self-tickling doesn't work because you always know when and how you are going to tickle yourself.

torture

Prolonged tickling can be so unbearable for people that it can be described as a method of torture . In addition to the tickling stimulus itself, lung and muscle pain caused by laughter and movement reflexes come after a long time. Tickling as torture survived into the Middle Ages and the time of colonial America, but essentially for public humiliation. If an evildoer was fixed with his bare feet in the " stick " (foot block), passers-by could tickle the soles of his feet.

In Grimmelshausen's novel The adventurous Simplicissimus , the use of a goat for the purpose of tickle torture is mentioned. The hero of the novel tells how soldiers in the Thirty Years 'War raided his parents' court and tormented his father to find out where he had hidden his valuables:

“They put him by a fire, tied him so that he could neither move his hands nor feet, and rubbed the soles of his feet with moistened salt, which our old goat had to lick off again, and thereby tickled him so that he laughed like to burst; It came out so well that I had to laugh with all my heart for company or because I didn't understand better. In such laughter he confessed his duty and opened 'the hidden treasure, which was much richer in gold, pearls and jewels than one might have looked for behind peasants. "

With the exception of Grimmelshausen, the goat torture has not been documented with certainty in the literature and could also have sprung from his imagination. In a historical picture in the Medieval Crime Museum in Rothenburg ob der Tauber , licking the goat is shown as an accompanying circumstance of an honorary penalty: next to two women with shameful masks standing in the pillory , a man sits on a stick ; a passerby lets his goat lick the cramped feet of the delinquent.

Tickle torture is known as a sadomasochistic practice in the BDSM scene.

literature

Newest first:

  • Christian Metz: Kitzel: Genealogy of a human sensation. Fischer, Frankfurt / M. June 24, 2020, ISBN 978-3-10-002450-3 (“brilliant study” by a literary scholar; excerpt in Google book search).
  • K. Carlsson, P. Petrovic, S. Skar, et al. a .: Neural processing in anticipation of a sensory stimulus. In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Volume 12, 2000, pp. 691-703 (English).
  • I. Fried, CL Wilson, KA MacDonald, EJ Behnke: Electric current stimulates laughter. In: Nature . No. 391, 1998, p. 650 (English).
  • CK Yoon: Don't make me laugh: scientists tackle tickling. In: J. NIH Research. Volume 9, 1997, pp. 34-35 (English).
  • F. Boiten: Autonomic response patterns during voluntary facial action. In: Psychophysiol. Volume 33, 1996, pp. 123-131 (English).
  • WF Fry Jr .: The physiologic effects of humor, mirth, and laughter. In: JAMA . Volume 267, 1992, pp. 1857-1858 (English).
  • LS Berk, SA Tan, WF Fry et al. a .: Neuroendocrine and stress hormone changes during mirthful laughter. In: Am. J. Med. Sci. Volume 298, 1989, pp. 390-396 (English).
  • P. Ekman, RW Levenson, WV Friesen: Autonomic nervous system activity distinguishes among emotions. In: Science . Volume 221, 1983, pp. 1208-1210 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ G. Stanley Hall, Arthur Allin: The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing, and the Comic. In: American Journal of Psychology. 9 (1897), pp. 11f.
  2. ^ Wolfgang Pfeifer : Etymological Dictionary of German , 5th edition, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2000, p. 658.
  3. ↑ Duden online: killekille
  4. ^ Carl Meinhof : The languages ​​of the Hamites . In: Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, p. 413.
  5. ^ Duden online: Tickling
  6. ^ Charles Darwin: The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. Edition 2009, ISBN 978-1-60501-641-2 .
  7. ↑ C. Leuba: Tickling and laughter: two genetic studies. In: Journal of Genetic Psychology. Volume 58, 1941, pp. 201-209 (English; doi: 10.1080 / 08856559.1941.10534563 ).
  8. ↑ Tina Baier: Why can't you tickle yourself? Retrieved on October 7, 2019 (German article on the following English-language publication: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.07.085 ).
  9. ↑ Janka Arens, Markus Peick, Meike Srowig: Why men laugh less: 100 other everyday phenomena explained scientifically. CH Beck, 2006, ISBN 3-406-54138-0 , p. 17.
  10. ^ Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Daniel M. Wolpert, Chris D. Frith: Central cancellation of self-produced tickle sensation. In: Nature Neuroscience . Volume 1, 1998, pp. 635-640.
  11. ^ Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Daniel Wolpert, Chris Frith: Why can't you tickle yourself? In: NeuroReport 11 (11), August 2000.
  12. ↑ Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen: Simplicius Simplicissimus , first book, 4th chapter at projekt-gutenberg.org.
  13. ↑ The adventurous Simplicissimus - origin of tickle torture? Federflügel's Kitzelblog, July 8, 2010.
  14. ^ Justice in old times, in the Kriminalmuseum Rothenburg , in: Rothenblog, March 11, 2014.
  15. ↑ tickle torture - a BDSM adventure for beginners amorjoya.de, October 8th 2018th
  16. ↑ Tickling torture on the rack: Tied and tickled domina-frankfurt.net