The Encyclopedia of Sins, Vol. 3Today’s volume is dedicated ..
Added 2025-04-11 01:02:15 +0000 UTCThe Encyclopedia of Sins, Vol. 3
Today’s volume is dedicated to a thing that doesn’t even have a specific name, although it’s fairly well known. It’s usually referred to as an extreme form of fetishism. The best description of it is found in the movie Crash (1996) by David Cronenberg, or the novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard (1973).
It portrays a group of car-crash fetishists who are inspired by the famous accidents of celebrities, and who become sexually aroused by staging or participating in car crashes. Both the movie and the book were extremely shocking at the time. It’s not just about the accidents—these people are also aroused by the injuries.
Technology, sexuality, and dea.th are the central themes. It’s quite complex and difficult to explain, so if you’re curious, I strongly recommend watching the film or reading the book.
For many years, I thought this was purely theoretical. It was described in our psychopathology textbooks back when I was a psychology student, but I had never met anyone who was truly into it... until recently.
Last November, a girl called Lisa came to my office to tell me about a very strange client. She began talking about a guy who was obsessed with cars—which didn’t seem so unusual at first. But the more she spoke, the more familiar it all started to sound.
The man had been in a serious accident a few years ago. He constantly talked about it—in a very strange way. The crash happened in the middle of the night on a deserted road. He collided with a car driven by a woman. While both being slighty injured (nothing major), they had sex while waiting for the police at the accident scene. And later, with Lisa, he wanted to watch footage of car crashes before having sex.
Immediately, I thought of Crash.
It’s often the case that people with this fetish have personally experienced a serious car accident. And because sexuality and dea.th have a strangely intertwined bond, being close to death might, in some cases, trigger arousal.
