Oral Fixation and Mazophilia

The common heterosexual-male fixation on the female breast has been an idea that has been on my mind for quite a while now. Particularly because, while I identify as a heterosexual male, I do not appear to share in the fetish — known as mazophilia. So it has gotten me wondering what it is that drives the masculine-heterosexual fixation on the opposite sex's breasts. The question that begs to be answered is essentially: why are female breasts considered so widely to be a sexual object?

An evolutionary psychological interpretation I have come across is the idea by Larry Young (Ph.D.) that the ground of mazophilia lies in the neuropsychology of the female breast. When the nerve endings of the breasts are stimulated, oxytocin is released in the brain. This flood of oxytocin creates warm and fuzzy feelings, bonding the mother to the child on a deeply emotional level. Consequently, the same release of oxytocin occurs with stimulation during the sex act, bonding the female to the their male or female partner. Dr. Young writes:

"So joke all you want, but our fascination with your breasts, far from being creepy, is an unconscious evolutionary drive prompting us to activate powerful bonding circuits that help create a loving, nurturing bond" (Huffington Post).

Regardless of the positive aspects, I think we all have to agree that while mazophilia is not terrible in-itself, it is often demeaning, lewd and objectifying in practice. And while I find the evolutionary psychological perspective highly intriguing and think that probably puts together a piece of the puzzle, I find myself wondering what the psychoanalytic perspective can add to the discussion of the nearly ubiquitous phenomenon of mazophilia in our Western society.

The image above is from Jessu at DeviantArt. The name of the art is "oral fixation," and besides the title I chose it because it poignantly exemplifies the underlying sexual nature of oral-fixation. 

It is my hypothesis that we must return to the oral-stage of human psychosexual development in order to fully understand mazophilia. For those unfamiliar with Freudian psychoanalysis, the oral-stage is the first stage of psychosexual development, that begins from birth until about one-and-a-half-years. The infant receives its primary source of pleasure from the mouth: eating, drinking and sucking. The mouth therefore becomes the infant's first erogenous zone.

What appears ubiquitous in human history is the phenomenon of breastfeeding; both the male and female infants naturally receive nourishment from the female breast. Two points need to be noted to ensure an accurate treatment of the subject: (i.) In antiquity, if the mother did not want to breastfeed the child, a wet-nurse was paid for (or coerced through the practice of slavery) to feed the child. Therefore, it was not always the mother who nursed the child; (ii.) in modernity, mothers often opt out of breastfeeding their children and substitute formula. However, the infant is still bottle-fed with a faux-nipple.

So, it is my hypothesis that mazophilia has its ground in infant's oral-stage, when the infant's libidinal-energy is focused on the satisfaction it receives from sucking on the breast. That object of our libidinal-drive does not merely disappear, but transforms itself along with much of it being repressed. Adults gain pleasure/gratification from the stimulation of the lips and the tongue. The human act of kissing can also be looked upon as a moment of oral-fixation.

The societal obsession with breasts as a sexual object is then a sublimated form of the original incestuous desire for the Mother's breast. The Freudian analysis can be pushed even further to say that all oral gratification is a transformation of the infantile incestuous desire. Such is not to impugn the legitimacy of the attraction to the female breast. In the psychoanalytic tradition, healthy sexual desire exists as a transmutation of the original incestuous desire for the Mother.

In other words, I think that the Freudian psychoanalytic attention on the libidinal union of Mother and child provides the link that Dr. Young's analysis misses. His theory focuses on the pleasure the female receives, but the psychoanalytic theory provides an answer as to why the Other finds the female breast an extremely erogenous body part.