Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 423 pages of information about Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5.

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 423 pages of information about Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5.
feet in sign of assent, and Madame d’Aulnoy stated that in her time to show her lover her feet was a Spanish woman’s final favor.

The tendency, which we thus find to be normal at some earlier periods of civilization, to insist on the sexual symbolism of the feminine foot or its coverings, and to regard them as a special sexual fascination, is not without significance for the interpretation of the sporadic manifestations of foot-fetichism among ourselves.  Eccentric as foot-fetichism may appear to us, it is simply the re-emergence, by a pseudo-atavism or arrest of development, of a mental or emotional impulse which was probably experienced by our forefathers, and is often traceable among young children to-day.[19] The occasional reappearance of this bygone impulse and the stability which it may acquire are thus conditioned by the sensitive reaction of an abnormally nervous and usually precocious organism to influences which, among the average and ordinary population of Europe to-day, are either never felt, or quickly outgrown, or very strictly subordinated in the highly complex crystallizations which the course of love and the process of tumescence create within us.

It may be added that this is by no means true of foot-fetichism only.  In some other fetichisms a seemingly congenital predisposition is even more marked.  This is not only the case as regards hair-fetichism and fur-fetichism (see, e.g., Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, English translation of tenth edition, pp. 233, 255, 262).  In many cases of fetichisms of all kinds not only is there no record of any commencement in a definite episode (an absence which may be accounted for by the supposition that the original incident has been forgotten), but it would seem in some cases that the fetichism developed very slowly.

In this sense, it will be seen, although it is hazardous to speak of foot-fetichism as strictly an atavism, it may certainly be said to arise on a congenital basis.  It represents the rare development of an inborn germ, usually latent among ourselves, which in earlier stages of civilization frequently reached a normal and general fruition.

It is of interest to emphasize this congenital element of foot symbolism, because more than any other forms of sexual perversion the fetichisms are those which are most vaguely conditioned by inborn states of the organism and most definitely aroused by seemingly accidental associations or shocks in early life.  Inversion is sometimes so fundamentally ingrained in the individual’s constitution that it arises and develops in spite of the very strongest influence in a contrary direction.  But a fetichism, while it tends to occur in sensitive, nervous, timid, precocious individuals—­that is to say, individuals of more or less neuropathic heredity—­can usually, though not always, be traced to a definite starting point in the shock of some sexually emotional episode in early life.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.