Agalmatophilia


Agalmatophilia is a paraphilia involving sexual attraction to a statue, doll, mannequin or other similar figurative object. The attraction may include a desire for actual sexual contact with the object, a fantasy of having sexual encounters with an animate or inanimate instance of the preferred object, the act of watching encounters between such objects, or sexual pleasure gained from thoughts of being transformed or transforming another into the preferred object. Agalmatophilia may also encompass Pygmalionism, which denotes love for an object of one's own creation. Agalmatophilia is a form of Object sexuality.

Clinical study

Agalmatophilia became a subject of clinical study with the publication of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis. Krafft-Ebing recorded in 1877 the case of a gardener falling in love with a statue of the Venus de Milo and being discovered attempting coitus with it.

Fantasy, transformation, role-play

An important fantasy for some individuals is being transformed into the preferred object and experiencing an associated state of immobility or paralysis. Such fantasies may be extended to role-playing, and the self-coined term used by fetishists who enjoy being transformed into what appears to be a "rubber doll" or "latex doll" or trapped within a statue and displayed in a museum.

In the arts

Sexualised life-size dolls have extensively featured in the work of famous art photographers such as Hans Bellmer, Bernard Faucon, Helmut Newton, Morton Bartlett, Katan Amano, Kishin Shinoyama and Ryoichi Yoshida.
Agalmatophilia features prominently in Luis Buñuel's L'Âge d'Or, in which the female protagonist sucks a statue's toe; in the novel Kort Amerikaans by Dutch writer Jan Wolkers, in which the main character develops an interest in, and ultimately is caught having sex with, a plaster torso; as well as in Tarsem Singh's thriller film The Cell, which centers on a serial killer who bleaches his victims' bodies so they resemble dolls.
The romantic comedy film Mannequin is about a window dresser who has a relationship with an animated mannequin, which he had found at a department store.
The character Number Five in the superhero web television series The Umbrella Academy falls in love with a mannequin named Dolores.