What is Scopophilia?

Scopophilia in terms of health and human behavior is a love of looking. It is also used in film studies to describe mental processes of viewing a film. When a person is said to derive pleasure from looking in a sexual manner, the act is often termed voyeurism. While it is not typically discussed except in private, scopophilia is not necessarily a negative trait in human sexuality, because the subject viewed is not always viewed discreetly or secretly. In fact, pornography and other recordings of human sexuality are also arousing to many people who have scopophilia.

Voyeurism is usually treated as a negative expression of sexuality in humans because people think of voyeurs as people who spy on others without their knowledge. In fact, scopophilia can often also be satisfied by looking at those who know they are being watched. Scopophilia can be thought of as pleasure from viewing any erotic object, whether or not someone's gaze is hidden. The secretiveness of some types of voyeurism is not a necessary trait in scopophilia.

One of the reasons looking is pleasurable for many people is because it places the viewer in the position of one of the players, giving him or her a role in the action. In many pornographic films, for example, the viewer is in the position of one of the people engaging in intercourse. From the film studies perspective, the viewpoint assumed by the viewer is often the hero's perspective or even the monster's in a horror film. For this reason, viewing is not always a passive act, and pleasure is derived from being pulled in with the action going on.

There are many arguments about whether deriving pleasure from viewing a person has negative effects on the person being viewed. Many feminists argue that by deriving pleasure from looking at a person's image, that person in the image is affected negatively, as is that person's gender as a whole. This is one of the primary arguments against pornography from a theoretical standpoint.

Why some people derive more pleasure than others from looking at objects is a complicated topic. It is commonly believed that men derive more sexual pleasure from visual stimuli than women, although this varies among individuals. Theoretically, it is possible that part of the reason people enjoy some films more than other is the degree to which they identify with the perspective and take pleasure in the action being viewed. From some perspectives, all people experience scopophilia in some contexts, be it eroticism or simply viewing media.