Tickling

“ However we may regard this extreme view, tickling is certainly a specialized modification of touch and it is at the same time the most intellectual mode of touch sensation and that with the closest connection with the sexual sphere. To regard tickling as an intellectual manifestation may cause surprise, more especially when it is remembered that ticklishness is a form of sensation which reaches full development very early in life, and it has to be admitted that, as compared even with the messages that may be sent through smell and taste, the intellectual element in ticklishness remains small. ”

“ The adequate stimulus for the ticklish points of the ribs, the loins, the abdomen, and the neck is deep isolated pressure, probably the most adequate being pressure by a tooth-shaped body. The response to tickling in these regions is actively and obviously self-defensive. The horse discharges energy in the form of a kick; the dog wriggles and makes a counter-bite; the man makes efforts at defense and escape. ”

“ Stanley Hall and Allin in their investigation of the phenomena of tickling, largely carried out among young women teachers, found that in 60 clearly marked cases ticklishness was more marked at one time than another, "as when they have been 'carrying on,' or are in a happy mood, are nervous or unwell, after a good meal, when being washed, when in perfect health, when with people they like, etc." ”

“ The sexual significance of tickling is very clearly indicated by the fact that the general ticklishness of the body, which is so marked in children and in young girls, greatly diminishes, as a rule, after sexual relationships have been established. ”

“ The fact that the effect of tickling becomes so well defined by, or soon after, the end of the second month, proves pretty conclusively that it is an inherited reflex; and the evolutionist naturally asks what it means, what its significance has been in the life of our ancestors. ”

“ Self-tickling rarely causes laughter for the reason that auto-tickling can cause only a known degree of stimulation, so that there results no excessive integration which requires relief by the neutral muscular activity of laughter. In fact, one never sees purposeful acts and laughter associated. According to its severity, an isolated stimulus causes either an action or laughter. The ticklish points in our bodies were probably developed as a means of defense against serious attacks and of escape from injurious contacts. ”

“ That man alone is affected by tickling is due firstly to the delicacy of his skin, and secondly to his being the only animal that laughs. For to be tickled is to be set in laughter, the laughter being produced such a motion as mentioned of the region of the armpit.
It is said also that when men in battle are wounded anywhere near the midriff, they are seen to laugh, owing to the heat produced by the wound. ”

“ He straightened himself to face this problem, ignoring the hint of James, who was weaving circles about his legs expectant of more tickling. A man cannot spend his time tickling cats when he has to concentrate on a dilemma of this kind. ”

“ Before coitus the sexual energy seems to be dissipated along all the nerve-channels and especially along the secondary sexual routes,—the breasts, nape of neck, eyebrows, lips, cheeks, armpits, and hair thereon, etc.,—but after marriage the surplus energy is diverted from these secondary channels, and response to tickling is diminished. I have often noted in insane cases, especially mania in adolescent girls, that they are excessively ticklish. ”

“ The sexual act, says Gowers, is, in fact, a skin reflex. [14] "The sexual parts," Hall and Allin state, "have a ticklishness as unique as their function and as keen as their importance." Herrick finds the supreme illustration of the summation and irradiation theory of tickling in the phenomena of erotic excitement, and points out that in harmony with this the skin of the sexual region is, as Dogiel has shown, that portion of the body in which the tactile corpuscles are most thoroughly and elaborately provided with anastomosing fibres. ”

“ That is, the contact must arouse a phylogenetic association with a physical struggle or with physical exertion. In the foot, the adequate stimuli for laughter are such contacts as resemble or suggest piercing by stones or rough objects.. The intention of the one who tickles must be known; if his intention be playful, laughter results, whereas if injury be intended, then an effort toward escape or defense is excited, but no laughter. If deep tickling of the ribs is known to be malicious, it will excite physical resentment and not laughter. ”

“ Some, if not all, of the Jumpers, are ticklish—exceedingly so—and are easily irritated by touching them in sensitive parts of the body. It would appear that in the evenings, in the woods, after the day's toil, in lieu of most other sources of amusement, the lumbermen have teased each other, by tickling, and playing, and startling timid ones, until there has developed this jumping, which, by mental contagion, and by practice, and by inheritance, has ripened into the full stage of the malady as it appears at the present hour. ”

“ Here, again, the question how far animals are susceptible of the effect becomes important. I have already alluded to Darwin’s remark, that if a young chimpanzee is tickled, more particularly under the armpits, he responds by a kind of laughter. The sound is of a chuckling or laughing kind. The emission of these sounds is accompanied by retraction of the corners of the mouth, and sometimes by a slight amount of wrinkling in the lower eyelids.112 Dr. Louis Robinson publishes other observations of the effect of tickling on the young of anthropoid apes. ”

“ There is interest, however, in pointing out in this connection that, like tickling, itching has a real parallelism to the specialized sexual sensations. Bronson, who has very ably interpreted the sensations of itching (New York Neurological Society, October 7, 1890; Medical News, February 14, 1903, and summarized in the British Medical Journal, March 7, 1903; and elsewhere) , regards it as a perversion of the sense of touch, a dysæsthesia due to obstructed nerve-excitation with imperfect conduction of the generated force into correlated nervous energy. ”

“ Fay, before you and Micro go off half cocked, I want you to know there’s one insuperable objection to the tickler as a mass-market item. The average man or woman won’t go to the considerable time and trouble it must take to load a tickler. He simply hasn’t got the compulsive orderliness and willingness to plan that it requires.”
“We thought of that weeks ago,” Fay rapped, his hand on the door. “Every tickler spool that goes to market is patterned like wallpaper with one of five designs of suitable subliminal supportive euphoric material. ‘Ittier and ittier,’ ‘viriler and viriler’—you know. ”

“ On the other hand, you can’t keep them quiet by keeping them under dope because their nervous system just won’t stand it for any length of time. That’s why a race horse seldom recovers from a broken leg—he’s such a nervous animal he won’t keep still.”
“Ticktock’s not nervous,” said Jim promptly.
“No, he’s a rather calm little pony, but on the other hand, he’s no placid cow. I’ve seen times when he acted pretty spirited; so it won’t be beer and skittles keeping him quiet. And you’ve got to do it. Now you notice how sloping a horse’s leg is. ”

“ CHAPTER III A STRANGE PROPOSITION Perhaps some of my readers may not know what the contrivance known as a "tic-tac" is like. Those of you who have made them, of course, do not need to be told. If you ever put them on any person's window, I hope you selected a house where there were only boys and girls or young people to be startled by the tic-tac. It is no joke, though at first it may seem like one, to scare an old person with the affair. So if any boy or girl makes a tic-tac after the description given here, I trust he or she will be careful on whom the prank is played. ”

“ That there is a difference of ticklishness, in different persons, you all know; some being easily excited even to convulsive laughter, by slight motions, that scarcely produce any effect in others, beyond that of the simple primary sensation of touch. A person who is ticklish, and a person who is not ticklish, agree in receiving this first tactual sensation; but they differ afterwards, in this respect, that when the same slight impulse is rapidly repeated, on the same surface, it produces a livelier effect than before, in the one, but not in the other. ”

“ Mr. Tickell gave a little sigh of satisfaction; the young woman beside him was distinctly a find--as he would himself have phrased it, "a ripping dancer, awfully well turned out, and a dazzler to look at." He had no doubt that he was in for an extremely good time, and therein showed that the prophetic eye was certainly not his, because he had been there only a very few minutes before he began very ardently to wish that that alcove had been occupied by a dozen, or even twenty, people, instead of being left invitingly open for him.
"Are you fond of dancing?" ”

“ Indeed, in the young chimpanzee and the young ourang these ticklish areas are approximately the same as in the child. {181}
From all this he concludes that ticklishness, being bound up with the mimic warfare which fills so large a space in the life of many young animals, has its utility. The strong liking to be tickled, which children and, apparently, some other young animals express, serves, in combination with the playful impulse to carry out this gentle mode of attack, to develop mimic attacks and defences which are of high value as training for the later and serious warfare. ”

“ He says he thinks they must often be sore driven; for he has sometimes seen a gaunt dog crunching a dirty bone till he has actually almost eaten it! I am sure Tickler is not without feeling; for one day he was sitting on a chair, with his paws resting on the top of it, near the window, in a warm dining-room, on a blighting day in February—the dust-laden wind without seeming to cut both man and beast to the very bone: and at the foot of our steps there had presumed to sit a dirty half-starved cur, shivering miserably in every muscle, but uttering no sound—neither whine nor bark. ”

“ Tickler to give him an account of how he came to be so comfortably situated. "Honestly, your excellency," replied Mr. Tickler, "though it cannot be said of me that I have faults as a critic, I confess to have weaknesses which are strong in the nature, as it is called; and these weaknesses run to making love, which is a passion with me."
"Pray, sir," interrupted the general, with a nod, "remember that men of your profession cannot lay exclusive claim to this, for it is common to the soldier, and indeed the very best proof of his gallantry." ”

“ But many another pastime we pursued upon those pastoral hills, for even angling has its due measure, and unless that be preserved, the passion wastes itself into lassitude, or waxes into disease. "I would not angle alway," thinks the wise boy—"off to some other game we altogether flew." Never were there such hills for hare and hounds. There couched many a pussy—and there Bob Howie's famous Tickler—the Grew of all Grews—first stained his flews in the blood of the Fur. ”

“ He, Tickner, a hard-working, much-respected farm labourer, clung to the rope like a monkey, only to be drawn up into the air as the balloon rose. Higher and higher we went, with the hapless man 427 dangling two hundred feet below us and the crowd watching with horror in their eyes. Presently, when he was about eighty feet from the earth, the poor fellow’s strength gave out and he was compelled to let go, falling with an awful thud to the ground. ”

“ Raphael was again stretching forth a timid hand when a sudden squawk of anguish from the corner of the room riveted Ticher’s attention.
Anita Perez stood at bay, frantically protecting her gorgeous new white dress against the teasing, dirty paws of Felipe. Near by Manuelo clownishly repulsed an imaginary attack upon his own coveralls with mincing falsetto shrieks. As Miss Lipscomb rushed to Anita’s rescue, there was a general cry of, “Ticher, ticher, the bell rinks. The bell rinks! Now weel they come—all thoss people. ”

“ Gussy, you don’t know progress when you see it. Tickler is the greatest invention since language. Bar none, it’s the greatest instrument ever devised for integrating a man into all phases of his environment. Under the present routine a newly purchased tickler first goes to government and civilian defense for primary patterning, then to the purchaser’s employer, then to his doctor-psycher, then to his local bunker captain, then to him. ”

“ An enormous slatternly woman, a mountain of inert flesh, appeared. She bade the dog be quiet. He did not obey, but Emmeline had a sense of protection. It had occurred to her more than once that perhaps Mrs. Ticknor, in consideration of the eggs, would, if Spotty actually attacked her, sit upon him; that she would not actually let her be bitten. Behind Mrs. Ticknor the close room swarmed with children—children with gaping, grinning faces, some of them with impudent faces, but most of them placidly inert like their mother. The Ticknors represented the very doldrums of humanity. ”

“ The muscles in the leg are very powerful and if the horse starts moving, the contraction of those muscles is enough to pull the bones out of apposition, by that I mean out of line, and then he’s done for.”
[227]
“I’ll keep him quiet,” said Jim with determination. “I’ll stay right here beside Ticktock all the time.”
“It’ll be a long vigil,” said Dr. Cornby smiling sympathetically. “He’s going to be in that sling at least six weeks. Of course, the first two weeks are the most important. After that the bone has begun to knit and won’t pull apart so easily. ”