THREE ESSAYS ON SEXUALITY THE SEXUAL ABERRATION is provided by the psychologically essential overvaluation of the In other cases the replacement of the object by a fetish is sexual object, which inevitably extends to everything that is determined by a symbolic connection of thought, of which the associated with it. A certain degree of fetishism is thus habitually person concerned is usually not conscious. It is not always pos- present in normal love, especially in those stages of it in which sible to trace the course of these connections with certainty the normal sexual aim seems unattainable or its fulfilment The foot, for instance, is an age-old sexual symbol which occurs prevented: even in mythology; no doubt the part played by fur as a fetish chaff"mir ein Halstuch von ihrer Brust owes its origin to an association with the hair of the mons Ein Strumpfband meiner Liebeslus Veneris. None the less even symbolism such as this is not always The situation only becomes pathological when the longing for the fetish passes beyond the point of being merely a B)FIXATIONS OF PRELIMINARY SEXUAL AIMS sary condition attached to the sexual object and actually takes APPEARANCE Every external or internal factor that hinders the place of the normal aim, and, further, when the fetish be comes detached from a particular individual and becomes the OF NEW AIMS or postpones the attainment of the normal xual aim(such as impotence, the high price sole sexual object. These are, indeed the general conditions of the sexual object or the danger of the sexual act) will under which mere variations of the sexual instinct pass over into pathological aberrations. fetishism, as well as the choice of the fetish itself, are constitutional Binet(1888)was the first to maintain(what has since been Footnote added 1910: The shoe or slipper is a corresponding symbol onfirmed by a quantity of evidence) that the choice of a fetish is an after-effect of some sexual impression, received as a rule in a Footnote added 1910: Psycho-analysis has cleared up one of the early childhood. (This may be brought into line with the pro verbial durability of first loves: on revient toujours a ses premiers helling which has disappeared owing to repression. Both the feet and amours. )This derivation is particularly obvious in cases where he hair are objects with a strong smell which have been exalted into there is merely a fetishistic condition attached to the sexual shes after the olfactory sensation has become unpleasurable and been object. We shall come across the importance of early sexual abandoned. Accordingly, in the perversion that corresponds to foot- impressions again in another connection [p. 108] evil-smelling feet that become be accidentally determined, by the occurrence of reference for the foot is to be found among the sexual theories absence of which is deeply felt. [Added 1915: In a number of cases 1 [Get me a kerchief from her breas foot-fetishism it has be a garter that her knee has presse Scene 7.(Trans. Bayard Taylor. ) was brought to a halt in its pathway by prohibition and a [Footnote added 1920: Deeper-going psych tic re it became attached to a fetish in the form of a gression. Fo aised a just criticism of ts assertion. All the pectations of childhood companying circumstances to explain the fact. Moreover all of thes med to the subject at the end of his analysis of the'Rat Man' submerged t. The fetish, like topic of fetishism was further considered in Freud,'s pauished fat sube sents this phase and is thus a remnant and precipitate of of the ego(1940e[1938 the end of Ch it. The fact that this early infantile phase turns in of his Outline of Psyucho-Analysis1940a[1938])