Somnophilia

Somnophilia, also referred to as a sleeping beauty fetish, is a rare inclination to obtain sexual gratification while engaging with someone who is asleep or unconscious. The paraphilia was discussed for the first time by John Money, a sexologist, in the 1980s. The concept of somnophilia is troubling and unethical, as it involves a fetish for a person lacking the ability to think or act rationally enough to provide consent. With the aid of the available research on paraphilic preferences, somnophilia is the least represented. Fantasies that involve somnophilia are benign and are often confined within the perimeters of agreeable role-play scenarios. More often than not, they do not depict any risk to the somnolent partner. Such forms of benign somnophilia are triggered by a external stimuli. However, the act of engaging with a somnolent partner is viewed by legal standards as a violent act that proposes an imbalance of power to the awake partner, thus leading to an imbalance of control. The risk this act proposes moves the concept of somnophilia closer to criminal behavior. Legal standards are not the objective of therapy and as such, therapy focuses on something as deviant.