Such a case is of
considerable psychological interest. Thoinot considers that in
these cases the fleck is a fetich. That is an incorrect account
of the matter. In this case the white garments constituted the
primary fetich, but that fetich becomes more acutely realized,
and at the same time both parties are thrown into an emotional
state which to the fetichist becomes a mimicry of coitus, by the
act of defilement. We may perhaps connect with this phenomenon
the attraction which muddy shoes often exert over the
shoe-fetichist, and the curious way in which, as we have seen (p.
18), Restif de la Bretonne associates his love of neatness in
women with his attraction to the feet, the part, he remarks,
least easy to keep clean.
Garnier applied the term _sadi-fetichism_ to active flagellation
and many similar manifestations such as we are here concerned
with, on the grounds that they are hybrids which combine the
morbid adoration for a definite object with the impulse to
exercise a more or less degree of violence. From the standpoint
of the conception of erotic symbolism I have adopted there is no
need for this term. There is here no hybrid combination of two
unlike mental states.
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