Fetichism

“ Max Müller's examples, then, fetichism turns out to be primary in point of time; secondary only, as subordinate to some later development of faith, or to some lately superimposed religion. Accepting his statement that fetichism is ubiquitous, we have the most powerful a priori argument that fetichism is primitive. As religions become developed they are differentiated; it only fetichism that you find the same everywhere. ”

“ In its relation to the love-life, true fetichism may be considered an erotic displacement in which the sex impulse is concentrated upon an object which has only indirectly an erotic significance. There is a fixation upon a symbol, instead of the normal reaction of sexual interest. It is said that many fetichists enter a business which gives them the maximum opportunity; thus, some becoming shoe salesmen to indulge their fancies to the utmost. ”

“ These physiological facts of fetichism explain the individual sympathies between husband and wife; the preference of a certain person to all others of the same sex. Since the fetich represents a symbol that is purely individual, it is clear that its effect must be individual. Since it is colored by the most intense pleasurable feeling, it follows that possible faults in the beloved object are overlooked (“Love is blind”) , and an exaltation of it is induced that to others is incomprehensible, and even silly under some circumstances. ”

“ But it must be remembered that what we see in erotic fetichism is merely the exaggeration of a normal impulse; every lover is to some extent excited by his mistress's hair, or foot, or clothing. Even here, therefore, there is really what may fairly be regarded as a congenital element; and, moreover, there is reason to believe that the erotic fetichist usually displays the further congenital element of hereditary neurosis. Therefore, the analogy with erotic fetichism does not bring much help to those who argue that inversion is purely acquired. ”

“ If fetichism be indeed one of the earliest factors of faith in the supernatural; if it be, in its rudest forms, most powerful in proportion to other elements of faith among the least cultivated races (and that Mr. Müller will probably allow) —among what class of cultivated peoples will it longest hold its ground? Clearly, among the least cultivated, among the fishermen, the shepherds of lonely districts, the peasants of outlying lands—in short, among the people. Neglected by sacred poets in the culminating period of purity in religion, it will linger among the superstitions of the rustics. ”

“ Religious fetichism differs in relation and significance from sexual fetichism, for it found, and still finds, its original motive in the delusion that the object of the fetichism, or the idol, possesses divine attributes, and that it is not simply a symbol ”

“ Here, he cries, in religions the history of which is known to us, fetichism is secondary, ‘and why should fetiches in Africa, where we do not know the earlier development of religion, be considered as primary?’ What a singular argument! According to Pausanias, this fetichism (if fetichism it is) was primary, in Greece. The oldest temples, in their holiest place, held the oldest fetich. In Rome, it is at least probable that fetichism, as in Greece, was partly a survival, partly a new growth from the primal root of human superstitions. ”

“ But if fetichism also rests upon a congenital general psychopathic disposition, yet this perversion is not, like those previously considered, essentially of an original nature; it is not congenitally perfect, as we may well assume sadism and masochism to be. ”

“ Aside from the fact that in fetichism the causative circumstance of its acquirement is often demonstrable, here the physiological conditions are wanting, which in sadism and masochism, by means of sexual hyperæsthesia, are intensified to perversions, and justify the assumption of congenital origin. In fetichism, every case requires an event which affords the subject of perversion. As has been said, it is, of course, physiological in sexual life to be partial to one or another of woman’s peculiarities, and to be enthusiastic about it ”

“ Students may hold that we hardly know enough to justify us in talking about the origin of religion, while at the same time they may believe that Fetichism is one of the earliest traceable steps by which men climbed to higher conceptions of the supernatural. Meanwhile Mr. Max Müller supports his own theory, that fetichism is a 'parasitical growth,' a 'corruption' of religion, by arguments mainly drawn from historical study of savage creeds, and from the ancient religious documents of India. ”

“ I understand individuals whose sexual interest is confined exclusively to parts of the female body, or to certain portions of female attire. One of the most frequent forms of this fetichism is that in which the female foot or shoe is the fetich, and becomes the exclusive object of sexual feeling and desire. It is highly probable, and shown by a correct classification of the observed cases, that the majority—and perhaps all—of the cases of shoe-fetichism rest upon a basis of more or less conscious masochistic desire for self-humiliation. ”

“ In other cases of fetichism which I have had under observation, the abnormal fetichistic tendency went much further back. An underclothing fetichist began at the age of seven to be greatly interested in his sister's and in the maidservant's underclothing, touching such articles of clothing as often as he could, and pressing up against them in a caressing way. The choice of reading is sometimes determined by perverse sensibilities, the sexual nature of which may often not become apparent until a considerable period has elapsed. ”

“ Krafft-Ebing describes, as masked masochism, certain cases of fetichism in which the nature of the fetich which causes sexual excitation and the manner in which it is used prove a desire for maltreatment and humiliation by a woman. This is especially the case with shoe and foot fetichism. Among those who are affected with this pathological specialty, voluptuous sensations are produced when they are trodden on by a woman's shoes or feet. They even dream of women's shoes and feet. Some of them put nails in their shoes, the pain of which gives them voluptuous sensations. ”

“ Certain feminine costumes may serve as fetiches, and these are kept in some brothels to satisfy certain customers. Shoe fetichism is more common than that of clothes or handkerchiefs. Krafft-Ebing mentions a typical case of the psychic irradiation of fetichism; the individual in question thought it immoral and scandalous that women's shoes should be exposed in shop windows. Others blush when they see such things in the windows. Fetichism is essentially a masculine perversion. ”

“ To recognise fetichism, then, in its simplest if not in its most primitive form, all we need postulate is animism—the belief that all things are animated by spirits—and the process of very natural selection which has already been described. ”

“ It is certain, then, that the patriarchal, we may say, the Christian religion, is the earliest known religion of the race, and therefore that fetichism, as contended by the positivists and the professor after them, cannot be asserted to have been the religion of the human race in the earliest stage of its existence, nor the germ from which all the various religions or superstitions of the world have been developed. ”

“ Nor does he withhold the still, small voice, which breathes upon minds most darkened, and into breasts the most savage, a spirit of progress, which, if a people be left to the free fulfillment of their destiny, is sure, sooner or later, to ripen into full development.
ORIGIN OF FETICHISM.
We will now glance at the origin of fetichism, which indeed may be called the origin of ideal religion, from the other standpoint; that which arises from the respect men feel for the memory of their departed ancestors.
The first conception of a dualty in man's nature has been attributed to various causes ”

“ The ordinary morbid obsession cannot usually be harmoniously co-ordinated with the other experiences of the subject's daily life, and shows, therefore, no tendency to become pleasurable. Sexual fetichisms, on the other hand, have a reservoir of agreeable emotion to draw on, and are thus able to acquire both stability and harmony. It will also be seen that no element of masochism is involved in Restif's fetichism, though the mistake has been frequently made of supposing that these two manifestations are usually or even necessarily allied. ”

“ In many cases he has good reason for believing that his act will be pleasurable, and frequently he finds complacent witnesses among the low-class servant girls, etc.
It may be pointed out here that we are quite justified in speaking of a penis-fetichism and also of a vulva-fetichism. This might be questioned. We are obviously justified in recognizing a fetichism which attaches itself to the pubic hair, or, as in a case with which I am acquainted, to the clitoris, but it may seem that we cannot regard the central sexual organs as symbols of sex, symbols, as it were, of themselves. ”

“ Shoe-fetichism, more especially if we include under this term all the cases of real or pseudo-masochism in which an attraction to the boots or slippers is the chief feature, is a not infrequent phenomenon, and is certainly the most frequently occurring form of fetichism. Many cases are brought together by Krafft-Ebing in his Psychopathia Sexualis. Every prostitute of any experience has known men who merely desire to gaze at her shoes, or possibly to lick them, and who are quite willing to pay for this privilege. ”

“ Regarded as a means the organ is indeed an object of desire, but it only becomes a fetich when it arrests and fixes the attention. An attention thus pleasurably fixed, a vulva-fetichism or a penis-fetichism, is within the normal range of sexual emotion (this point has been mentioned in the previous volume when discussing the part played by the primary sexual organs in sexual selection) , and in coarse-grained natures of either sex it is a normal allurement in its generalized shape, apart from any attraction to the person to whom the organs belong. ”

“ Nevertheless, the sexual appetite gives rise to much conflict with human morality, for the simple reason that it looks upon human beings as objects of pleasure. Fetichism, in which the sexual appetite is directed toward inanimate objects, and sodomy, directed to animals, are by themselves almost incapable of entering into conflict with morality as we understand it.
The opinion of many people who consider the employment of anticonceptional measures as immoral, while defending prostitution, shows how much ideas vary on the subject of sexual ethics. ”

“ It is this mighty force which lies behind and beneath the aberrations we have been concerned with, a great reservoir from which they draw the life-blood that vivifies even their most fantastic shapes. Fetichism and the other forms of erotic symbolism are but the development and the isolation of the crystallizations which normally arise on the basis of sexual selection. Normal in their basis, in their extreme forms they present the utmost pathological aberrations of the sexual instinct which can be attained or conceived. In the intermediate space all degrees are possible. ”

“ Normally these unconscious memories lead one to admire certain features or characteristics of members of the opposite sex. When an individual becomes so fixed with an obsession that his principal interest is concentrated on a certain part of the body, such as the foot, or hair or on some object that is associated with that part, such as the shoe or a garment, then it is recognized as a perverse condition, or fetichism. ”

“ Next, when it is believed that an object may lose its spirit and become dead indeed, there is room and opportunity for the belief to grow that its spirit may pass into some other object: that there may be a transmigration of spirits. And when this belief arises, a fresh stage in the history of fetichism is evolved. And the fresh stage is evolved in accordance with the law that governs the whole evolution of fetichism. ”

“ In pathological fetichism the creation of lust is effected through a certain part of the body or through a certain piece of clothing of the other sex without any reference to any personality. The fetich creates tumescence which may lead to the desire of effecting detumescence either concarnatione aut stupro manu. ”

“ In these cases the fetich plays the essential part, and is in no way associated with the image of a woman. The fetich is the sole object of "love." The sight or touch of the fetich, the pleasure of pressing it against the heart or the genital organs, are alone capable of producing erections and ejaculations. There are even fetichists whose sexual desire is only excited by the sight of certain feminine deformities, such as clubfoot, squint, etc. Hairdressers, who masturbate after dressing women's hair, are well-known examples of fetichism. ”

“ The greatest amount of fetichism seems directed toward the hair, ankles, feet and breasts. It is common for fetichism to be focused on inanimate objects, such as handkerchiefs, shoes, stockings, petticoats and hair ornaments, which are suggestive of the parts of the body upon which these objects are worn. ”

“ A weak-minded, timid youth, who was very sexual but not attractive to women, would watch for women who were about to urinate and immediately they had passed on would go and lick the spot they had moistened, at the same time masturbating. Such a fetichistic perversion is strictly analogous to the fetichism by which women's handkerchiefs, aprons or underlinen become capable of affording sexual gratification. A very complete case of such urolagnic fetichism—complete because separated from association with the person accomplishing the act of urination—has been recorded by Moraglia in a woman. ”