is generally a part of the body but
little adapted for sexual purposes, such as the foot, or hair, or an
inanimate object which is in demonstrable relation with the sexual
person, and preferably with the sexuality of the same (fragments of
clothing, white underwear). This substitution is not unjustly compared
with the fetich in which the savage sees the embodiment of his god.

The transition to the cases of fetichism, with a renunciation of a
normal or of a perverted sexual aim, is formed by cases in which a
fetichistic determination is demanded in the sexual object if the sexual
aim is to be attained (definite color of hair, clothing, even physical
blemishes). No other variation of the sexual impulse verging on the
pathological claims our interest as much as this one, owing to the
peculiarity occasioned by its manifestations. A certain diminution in
the striving for the normal sexual aim may be presupposed in all these
cases (executive weakness of the sexual apparatus).[17] The connection
with the normal is occasioned by the psychologically necessary
overestimation of the sexual object, which inevitably encroaches upon
everything associatively related to it (sexual object). A certain degree
of such fetichism therefore regularly belong to the normal, especially
during those stages of wooing when the normal sexual aim seems
inaccessible or its realization deferred.

"Get me a handkerchief from her bosom--a garter of my love."
--FAUST.

The case becomes pathological only when the striving for the fetich
fixes itself beyond such determinations and takes the place of the
normal sexual aim; or again, when the fetich disengages itself from the
person concerned and itself becomes a sexual object. These are the
general determinations for the transition of mere variations of the
sexual impulse into pathological aberrations.

The persistent influence of a sexual impress mostly received in early
childhood often shows itself in the selection of a fetich, as Binet
first asserted, and as was later proven by many illustrations,--a thing
which may be placed parallel to the proverbial attachment to a first
love in the normal ("On revient toujours a ses premiers amours"). Such a
connection is especially seen in cases with only fetichistic
determinations of the sexual object. The significance of early sexual
impressions will be met again in other places.

In other cases it