Sigmund Freud
The word fetish derives from the portuguese word feitiço which means spell, when the Portuguese colonizers arrive to West Africa they discovered that natives believed that lifeless objects had supernatural powers and had powers over them. Then it was adapted to an erotic context with Fétichisme by Alfred Binet in 1887. Binet believed that such fetishes were pathological associations that derived from childhood experiences. There were other theories such as Magnus Hirschfeld’s that stated that it was developed by the interaction with different human features that we then find interesting or arousing.
On the other hand we have Sigmund Freud that stated that male sexual fetishes were developed by their subconscious by an irrational fear of their mother’s genitalia, fear of castration and fantasies of their mothers having their penises cut off. He didn’t discuss women cases. In addition to his statement, fetishes are substitutes for the penis, it isn’t a real penis but a childhood penis that had been amputated by some kind of trauma.
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“A person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone else in a sexual relationship is also capable of enjoying as pleasure any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations. A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.”
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