Fetishes might reflect traumatic experiences

Fetishes might not simply be personal sexual preferences. Experts say these strange sexual habits could indicate some early-age traumatic sexual experiences, and the most important, they can be cured.

"Usually, when someone has a bizarre arousal pattern, there has been something in their past that has made them susceptible to something deviant, or something unusual occurred," Dr.Mark Schwartz, a psychologist from St. Louis, told ABC News. For example, he said, asphyxiation fetishes could be boiled down to these people who were raped at childhood with their mouths covered. Dr. Schwartz, a psychologist from St. Louis, told the NY Daily News that sexual arousal can be tracked down to the first 10 years of a person's life. "At puberty, it sort of turns on. Over the time [the fetish] gets cemented through the repetition of masturbation to the arousing object and it becomes relatively permanent," he said. Now that the reasons can be found, fetishes can also be cured; core arousal patterns can be changed by reactivating that original trauma and getting in that high susceptible state, Schwartz said. Recent arrest records show people with fetishes could be annoying, such as underwear theft, or even dangerous. In September, a man in Texas was arrested because he blew pepper into an female employee's face to make her sneeze. He said a woman's sneeze turned him on.