Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

SEXUAL DEVIATIONIn many cases of fetichisms of all kinds not only is thereno record of any commencement in a definite episode (anabsence which may be accounted for by the suppositionthat the original incident has been forgotten), but itwould seem in some cases that the fetichism developedvery slowly. In this sense, although we cannot speak offoot-fetichism as strictly atavism, itmay be seen to ariseon a congenital basis. We may, with Gamier, regard thecongenital element as essential.This congenital element of erotic symbolism is worthother form of sexual devia-noting because more than anytion the fetichisms are those which are least clearly conditionedby inborn states of the organism and most frequentlyaroused by seemingly accidental associations orshocks in early life. Inversion is sometimes so fundamentallyingrained in the individual's constitution that itarises and develops in spite of the strongest influences ina contrary direction. But a fetichism, while it tends tooccur in sensitive, nervous, timid, precocious individualsthat is to say, individuals of more or less neuropathicheredity can usually, though not always, be traced to adefinite starting point in the shock of some sexually emotionalepisode in early life.Associations of this kind may occur in the early experiencesof even normal persons. The degree to which theywill influence the subsequent life and thought and feelingdepends on the degree of the individual's morbid emotionalreceptivity, or the extent to which he is hereditarilysusceptible of abnormal deviation. Precocity is undoubtedlya condition which favors such deviation; a child whois precociously and abnormally sensitive to persons of theopposite sex before puberty has established the normalchannels of sexual desire, is peculiarly liable to becomethe prey of a chance symbolism. All degrees of such sym-