[71]
The cases of sexual hyperaesthesia, quoted at the beginning of this study,
do but present in a morbidly comprehensive and sensitive form those
possibilities of erotic symbolism which, in some degree, or at some
period, are latent in most persons. They are genuinely instinctive and
automatic, and have nothing in common with that fanciful and deliberate
play of the intelligence around sexual imagery--not infrequently seen in
abnormal and insane persons--which has no significance for sexual
psychology.
It is to the extreme individualization involved by the developments of
erotic symbolism that the fetichist owes his morbid and perilous
isolation. The lover who is influenced by all the elements of sexual
selection is always supported by the fellow-feeling of a larger body of
other human beings; he has behind him his species, his sex, his nation, or
at the very least a fashion. Even the inverted lover in most cases is soon
able to create around him an atmosphere constituted by persons whose
ideals resemble his own. But it is not so with the erotic symbolist. He is
nearly always alone. He is predisposed to isolation from the outset, for
it would seem to be on a basis of excessive shyness and timidity that the
manifestations of erotic symbolism are most likely to develop.
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