The energy of its
movements becomes a substitute for the energy of the sexual organs
themselves in coitus, and exerts the same kind of fascination. The young
girl (page 35) "who seemed to have a passion for treading upon things
which would scrunch or yield under her foot," already possessed the germs
of an erotic symbolism which, under the influence of circumstances in
which she herself took an active part, developed into an adequate method
of sexual gratification.[23] The youth who was her partner learned, in the
same way, to find an erotic symbolism in all the pressure reactions of
attractive feminine feet, the swaying of a carriage beneath their weight,
the crushing of the flowers on which they tread, the slow rising of the
grass which they have pressed. Here we have a symbolism which is
altogether different from that fetichism which adores a definite object;
it is a dynamic symbolism finding its gratification in the spectacle of
movements which ideally recall the fundamental rhythm and pressure
reactions of the sexual process.
We may trace a very similar erotic symbolism in an absolutely normal form.
The fascination of clothes in the lover's eyes is no doubt a complex
phenomenon, but in part it rests on the aptitudes of a woman's garments to
express vaguely a dynamic symbolism which must always remain indefinite
and elusive, and on that account always possess fascination.
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