The term “fetish” and the element around it can be taken as far back and before the 18th century, the Portuguese, predominantly West African natives, referred to certain objects that were used in religious cults and their workings during worship. These religious objects and artefacts described were mainly used in voodoo and witch craft and were believed to be incredibly supernatural items.
From this, the concept evolved from an item or object that is seen to have magical and enchanting powers in a more primitive situation to something closer to what we know now.
Attention turned away from the people’s relationship with a higher being to relationship with material objects which in comparison would not seem to hold such power as the
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Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was one of the first people to address the subject of sexual fetishism and wrote an essay on the matter. After his investigation he’d come to believe that the purpose and meaning behind an individual’s “fetish” would always be one and the same;
"The fetish is a substitute for the penis...for a particular and quite special penis that had been extremely important in early childhood but had later been lost……It remains a token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it."
- Sigmund Freud, FETISHISM (1927)
According to Freud, a person’s fetish, whether it may be a material object, act or some sort of obsessive compulsive conduct, then that person is substituting the connection to the penis that they had emotionally lost at childhood and finding support in that object or action. The word FETISH in fact originated from Portugal, the word feitiço which means “spell”. This suggests a representation of power or power over something, in this case power over an individual and one’s extreme attachment to an object, body part or specific situation.
Carrying on from Freud’s conclusions, which were made after studying and analysing a number of men, he decided that the determination
There are several articles that talk about sexual fetishes that you may not have heard of. This article talks about them in more detail.
The Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, collected and put into text by Chinese scholar Pu Songling, is a collection of mostly tales of alchemic, supernatural, and paranormal nature. One of the common threads that run through the collection is that of the sexual encounter and sexual relations between people, people and creatures, and people and supernatural beings. These stories deal with the subject of sexual indulgence, and very much regard sex as a more negatively connotated aspect of human life. The last story in Strange Tales, however, forcefully deviates from that trend of the perception of sexual desire. In Stir-Fry, the story of the scholar and his dildo, it appears Songling glides over the topic of the dildo, treating it as if it were
Nonetheless, the idea of penis envy becomes extremely important when examining Freud’s view on women for several reasons. Freud based the majority of his work on female sexual and personality development around penis envy, and Freud held the view that considered penis envy as natural and universal in all women (Slipp 16). According to Freud, the realization by the little girl that they had no penis was the defining moment in the realization of a female’s sexual identity. In The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney, Marcia Westkott comments: “In sum, the Freudian concept of penis envy explains all one needs to understand of female behavior” (53). Freud
My group’s chosen case study focused on a man named Mr. C. Mr. C was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety and mood disorders, depression, anxiety, marital conflict and fetishism. He had attended psychotherapy for six years to treat his various symptoms, however none of the treatments helped him to overcome his fetishism. Mr. C’s fetishistic thoughts began after he was sexually assaulted during his childhood and adolescent years, but he didn’t begin to act on these thoughts until he went to war later in life. His particular fetish focused on women’s feet and shoes, and accelerated to the point where he could not be sexually satisfied unless women partook in an activity called “stomach trampling” in which they stepped on his stomach while he masturbated. Mr. C’s preoccupation and obsession with women’s feet and shoes interfered with his daily functioning causing him to isolate himself in his home so he could spend hours looking up women’s feet on the internet. He couldn’t control his impulses, lacked the ability to concentrate, and engaged in high risk behaviors that involved paying homeless people and prostitutes to step on his stomach. His inability to be sexually satisfied without his fetish led to marital problems and dissatisfaction.
Freud argued that an individual’s instinctual drive was sexually orientated. In the same way that “hunger seeks nutrition,
He asserted that if these psychosexual stages are completed successfully, result is a healthy personality. However, Freud identified that if the psychosexual stages of development were in any way interrupted at a certain time, then this would cause problems in later life; he believed that it was possible to link the psychosexual stages to adult neurosis. If certain issues are not resolved at the appropriate stage, fixation can occur. A fixation is a persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage. Until this conflict is resolved, the individual will remain "stuck" in this stage; the term "psychosexual infantilism," refers to those who become fixated in this way and fail to mature through the psychosexual stages into heterosexuality. For example, a person who is fixated at the oral stage may be over-dependent on others and may seek oral stimulation through smoking, drinking, or eating.
The Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, collected and put into text by Chinese scholar Pu Songling, is a collection of tales of mostly alchemic, supernatural, and paranormal nature. One of the common threads that runs through the collection is that of the sexual encounters and sexual relations between people, people and creatures, and people and supernatural beings. These stories deal with the subject of sexual indulgence, and clearly connote sex as a negative and dangerous aspect of human desires. Stir-Fry, the last story in Strange Tales, however, forcefully deviates from that trend of the perception of sexual desire. In Stir-Fry, Pu glides over the topic of the dildo and treats it as if it were just any normal other object that would be ridiculous to cook and serve guests at dinner. A scholar’s sexual desires are no less strange than the tales of sex in stories such as “The Fornicating Dog,” “The Painted Skin,” “Snake Island,” and especially “Lotus Fragrance.” The sexual nature of the toy Pu ignores completely, and he enforces the idea that sexual desires or encounters are not as strange or taboo as Pu himself makes them out to be in his earlier stories in the Strange Tales collection.
Key words in this text are fetishism and fetish. Freud uses the word fetishism in the context of a disorder commonly characterized
‘Fetishizing is the norm for males, not for females’ (Stoller, cited in Steele, 1996). Is there little wonder then that Freud’s later development of Krafft-Ebbing’s definition of fetishism relates almost solely to the male sex? As a woman, I can safely say that the very idea of even sexually fantasizing about a sole male body part, let alone an article of male clothing, seems highly unimaginative, if not perverse.
The third aspect of society that is discussed by Gmelch, in his article is fetishes. He
From a Freudian perspective human development is based on psychosexual theory. From a psychosexual perspective maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development (Shaffer et al., 2010). Ultimately, Freud believed that sex was the most important instinct and any mental disturbance revolved around sexual conflicts that were suppressed from childhood. Furthermore, Freud believed that parents permitting too much or too little gratification of sexual needs led
Whether he discusses envy of it, obsession with it, activity, passivity, sex, object-cathexes, or the Oedipus complex, Freud holds the phallocentric view that the penis is Most Desirable. He refers to the penis as “superior equipment,” (126) and thereby implies a superiority of phallus to vagina and clitoris. It is unfathomable to him that a girl could be without penis envy, not want a baby, or have a noncompetitive relationship with her mother. Though femininity is never explicitly defined by Freud, women are. He pointedly states that “In these circumstances [of feminine Oedipus complexes] the formation of the super-ego must suffer; it cannot attain the strength and independence which give it its cultural significance, and feminists are not pleased when we point out to them the effects of this factor upon the average feminine character.” Freud never expressed his view on the definition of femininity, but did express his distain for women and phallocentric beliefs which culminate in sexist generalizations about women, but without ever including
Here the idea of a fetish becomes important. A fetish, by Freud’s description is the male impulse to eroticize objects or female body parts, which derives from a disavowal of a material lack (of the penis on the mother’s body). The second understanding of the word is through Marx’s account of the felicitation of the commodity: at the moment of exchange, the commodity appears to be separate from the workers who product it; the ‘special social character of private labours’ disavowed.
From as early as the 1760’s, prostitution has been referred to by different names. French philosophers used the word fetichisme, which loosely translated to mean “primitive” religion. Later, according to Anne McClintock, Marx, in 1887, used the term commodity fetish which was believed to mean “primitive” magic to express the idea of an economic side to the fetish, thus claiming it to be an industry. McClintock goes on to explain that Freud evolved fetishism in to sexuality and finally into what is known as erotic perversions. Later, religion combined the term sexuality and money, therefore removing the “primitive” idea, making prostitution a racial and sexual degeneration (McClintock, 1992). It is believed by certain scholars, however,
Well, this is a rather simple thing to explain, right? Wrong, actually it is a whole topic ranging from erotic conversations, to virtual sex, roleplaying, to self-stimulation to achieve sexual gratification. Makes sense? No? Then go ahead reading and hopefully you can decipher this practice.