People have mixed feelings on tickling. Some like it, but most find it pretty unpleasant. And if you’re one of those people, it’s not hard to understand how some groups in history have come up with ways to turn it into an actual form of torture.
That’s right. Tickle torture was a real thing.
Carolyn Hax of the Washington Post once wrote that it is “no laughing matter.” She’s right, of course. in some cases, it can produce vomiting and even for someone to pass out.1 For some men in ancient times and others in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, the tickle torture was even synonymous with death.
In terms of torture it’s probably not as bad as scaphism or the methods used to coax confessions out of suspected witches. It’s still, however, really annoying.
The tickle torture
Reaching back to the year 206 BC, the Han Dynasty appears to have implemented the technique as a reliable punishment that didn’t leave marks.1 Think of it as the “phone book torture” of the ancient Chinese world. Like beating someone with a phone book, you do it so that you don’t leave physical evidence of torture on the victim.
As this period in time is considered a golden age of Chinese past you have to wonder how much tickling it takes to suppress a rebellion such as the Rebellion of the Seven States.
In Roman times, torturers actually incorporated goats.2 The victim’s feet were lathered with salt water and then given over to the unforgiving tongue of a thirsty goat or even many goats at once. The rough tongue of a goat moving across the bottom of the foot would cause an uncomfortable fit of laughter in the victim. Soon, however, the skin would break and the same tongue lashing lacerated the flesh across the millions of ultra-sensitive nerves in the foot.
The Nazis were ticklers
History’s most famous sadists also saw the value in tickle torture.
In Heinz Heger’s work, “Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel”, of The Men with the Pink Triangle, he relates the story of Josef Kohout survived an incident in which he saw the Nazi guards of the concentration camp in which he was imprisoned use tickling on a prisoner before killing him.3 The book describes accounts of the Nazis’ treatment of homosexuals in concentration camps (If you’re interested, you can get the ebook on Amazon here). Kohout’s story is one of history’s few first-hand accounts of Nazi treatment of homosexuals during the period.
The gates of Flossenbürg concentration camp, Bavaria, Germany.
The camp Kohout was held at was called “Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg”, or Flossenbürg concentration camp. Erected in 1938, the camp was not liberated until April 1945.5 There, members of the German resistance who were the conspirators of the failed assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler were summarily executed on April 9 1945. A memorial in their honor exists there today at the camp.
Tickling today
Tickle torture is still in use today.
Special operations forces may actually use it in interrogations, as a method of non-lethal torture to be employed by governments to gain information from a suspect.
But it may be more popular among a different community.
Most people don’t actually want to be tickled, but there are some who do. In fact they get immense pleasure from it. The reason they enjoy it is however somewhat confusing at first. Because the result of tickling as a sexual fetish is to not be able to end the tickling, the pleasure comes from the eventual discomfort caused by it. This is known as masochism. Masochists get pleasure from being physically or emotionally abused.
And in terms of causing discomfort, you can’t do much better than tickle torture.
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Attributions:
1. Wiehe, Vernon. Sibling Abuse: Hidden Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Trauma. New York: Lexington Books, 1990.
2-3. Irene Thompson (March 2008). “A to Z of Punishment and Torture”. Book Guild Publishing: 183.
4. Heger, Heinz. The Men With the Pink Triangle. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1980.
5.USHMM (2009). Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. 1. Bloomington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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