ich is a marked object in infant experience. Some children
develop an almost fetichistic propensity to pull or later to
stroke the hair or beard of every one with whom they come in
contact." (G. Stanley Hall, "The Early Sense of Self," _American
Journal of Psychology_, April, 1898, p. 359.)

It should be added that the fascination of hair for the infantile
and childish mind is not necessarily one of attraction, but may
be of repulsion. It happens here, as in the case of so many
characteristics which are of sexual significance, that we are in
the presence of an object which may exert a dynamic emotional
force, a force which is capable of repelling with the same energy
that it attracts. Fere records the instructive case of a child of
3, of psychopathic heredity, who when he could not sleep was
sometimes taken by his mother into her bed. One night his hand
came in contact with a hairy portion of his mother's body, and
this, arousing the idea of an animal, caused him to leap out of
the bed in terror. He became curious as to the cause of his
terror and in time was able to observe "the animal," but the
train of feelings which had been set up led to a life-long
indifference to women and a tendency to homosexuality. It is
noteworthy that he was attracted to men in whom the hair and
other secondary sexual characters were well developed. (Fere,
_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, pp. 262-267.)

As a sexual fetich hair strictly belongs to the group of parts of
the body; but since it can be removed from the body and is
sexually effective as a fetich in the absence of the person to
whom it belongs, it is on a level with the garments which may
serve in a similar way, with shoes or handkerchiefs or gloves.
Psychologically, hair-fetichism presents no special problem, but
the wide attraction of hair--it is sexually the most generally
noted part of the feminine body after the eyes--and the peculiar
facility with which when plaited it may be removed, render
hair-fetichism a sexual perversion of specially great
medico-legal interest.

The frequency of hair-fetichism, as well as of the natural
admiration on which it rests, is indicated by a case recorded by
Laurent. "A few years ago," he states, "one constantly saw at the
Bal Bullier, in Paris, a tall girl whose face was lean and bony,