ed into an
auditory shoe-fetichism; in the streets he was compelled to
follow ladies whose shoes creaked, ejaculation being thus
produced, while to obtain complete satisfaction he would make a
prostitute, otherwise naked, sit in front of him in her shoes,
moving her feet so that the shoes creaked. (Moraglia, _Archivio
di Psichiatria_, vol. xiii, p. 568.)

Bechterew, in St. Petersburg, has recorded the case of a man who
when a child used to fall asleep at the knees of his nurse with
his head buried in the folds of her apron; in this position he
first experienced erection and voluptuous sensations; when a
youth he had no attraction to naked women, and in real life and
in dreams was only excited sexually under conditions recalling
his early experience; in his relations with women he preferred
them dressed, and was excited by the rustling sound of their
skirts; in this case there was no traceable neuropathic taint nor
any other personal peculiarity. (Summarized in _Journal de
Psychologie Normale et Pathologique_, January-February, 1904, p.
72.)

In a curious case recorded in detail by Moll, a philologist of
sensitive temperament but sound heredity, who had always been
fond of flowers, at the age of 21 became engaged to a young lady
who wore large roses fastened in her jacket; from this time roses
became to him a sexual fetich, to kiss them caused erection, and
his erotic dreams were accompanied by visions of roses and the
hallucination of their odor; the engagement was finally broken
off and the rose-fetichism disappeared (_Untersuchungen ueber
Libido Sexualis_, bd. i, p. 540).

Such associations may naturally occur in the early experiences of even the
most normal persons. The degree to which they will influence the
subsequent life and thought and feeling depends on the degree of the
individual's morbid emotional receptivity, on the extent to which he is
hereditarily susceptible of abnormal deviation. Precocity is undoubtedly a
condition which favors such deviation; a child who is precociously and
abnormally sensitive to persons of the opposite sex before puberty has
established the normal channels of sexual desire, is peculiarly liable to
become the prey of a chance symbolism. All degrees of such symbolism are
possible. While the average insensitive person may fail to perceive them
at all, for the more alert and