Fetish, explained

[Clem Trilling]

There was a fascinating TV show on Discovery Health called "Strange Sex," which aired an episode on a particular fetish that I believe holds a mirror to our own predilections: balloon fetish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmgcJJm1elo&feature=related

Our "balloons" are internal and generate anxiety through the threat of burning seepage, rather than a snap and a bang. Otherwise, we are obviously brethren. We "bind our anxiety" with an opposite impulse -- sexual arousal. Freud would call it "reaction formation," but they seem to have made a point to avoid that term because such a "diagnosis" carries an undesirable value judgment. There are also points of salience in the more modern, information processing construct of emotion as being comprised of two dimensions, arousal and valence.

You might find the origins of your own fetish in other etiological ideas, and indeed, nobody has thus far shared my Aha! moment, despite this being the third forum I have notified. But, it closes the case for me. It's a bit unclear whether the trauma of sexual abuse (older female relative giving baby a blow job), or some less dramatic difficulty in potty training was the more significant early childhood event for me, but this model can accommodate any of the available facts.