What is a fetish and what causes it?!
Question: always been curious
Answers: always been curious
This is when a person gets sexual gratification from a particular part of a person (ie foot, hands, etc), or an object. This is psychological. It depends on the person of course, but it is their way for a person in discovering what attracts them more.
edit: that verbal diarrhea that is posted above best explains this. You could've saved 5 points and checked wikipedia.
Sexual fetishism is the sexual attraction for material and terrestrial objects while in reality the essence of the object is inanimate and sexless. Body parts may also be subject to sexual fetishes (also known as partialism) in which the preferred body part for the fetishist takes a sexual precedent over the owner. Sexual fetishism may be regarded as a disorder of sexual preference, or as an enhancing element to a relationship.[1]
The concept has its origins in the 18th century with Charles de Brosses' theory of fetishism as a primary stage in the evolution of a religion[2], and from the advent of psychosexual/psychodynamic theories of society and individuals in 19th century Europe by (amongst others) psychologist Alfred Binet, German philosopher Max Dessoir, [3]and Sigmund Freud.[4]
Fetishism was introduced as a psychological scientific term in 1887 by Alfred Binet and meant sexual admiration of an inanimate object. At that time, fetishism was considered pathological[5]. In time, the term's meaning was extended, e. g. in 1912 Richard von Krafft-Ebing referred to fetishism as the admiration of body parts[6]. In 1927 Sigmund Freud published his psychoanalytic view of fetishism[4] which was responsible for introducing the term to common usage.
With the Kinsey report and the sexual revolution, scientists began to part from the idea of fetishism being an illness or a maladjusted form of sexual behaviour. As a consequence, the diagnostic criteria for paraphilia and fetishism developed its exclusivity. During that process, the two major diagnostic manuals ICD and DSM diverged in their interpretation: While today ICD has returned to its original focus on inanimate objects, DSM includes both objects and body parts. Today, the scientific term fetishism still is subject to discussions about scientific relevance and political correctness.
In some cases, "fetishism" has been used to include the predominant ideals of beauty within a particular society, e.g. the preference for small feet in old China, or the modern Western preference for perfect breasts. A formal social scientific concept of fetishism has never been introduced and it has not been shown that a change in the ideal of beauty goes together with a change in number or type of fetishists. However, it must be noted that all features which do not form the greater parts of an authoritative group's predominant fashion may be called fetishes.
"Sexual fetishism" must not be confused with the concept of Karl Marx's "commodity fetishism". Here, fetishism names the substitution of value within an economic system for the actual object created by that system.
Sometimes a society can absorb a fetish into its culture so that it is no longer perceived as a fetish, but merely as a normal sexual desire; for example the commonplace desire for lingerie, or women removing body hair.
Sometimes what a culture covers up eroticizes the boundaries of what remains exposed. For example, a woman's ankle was considered erotic in late-Victorian England;[7] in many European countries, women are free to be topless, while in the United States, this is both a taboo and illegal in most states.
In this regard, there can be said to be a degree of fetishistic arousal in the average person who responds to particular bodily features as sign of attractiveness. However, fetishistic arousal is generally considered to be a problem only when it interferes with normal sexual or social functioning. Sometimes the term "fetishism" is used only for those cases where non-fetishist sexual arousal is impossible.
In 1886 the French psychologist Alfred Binet proposed a dualism of "spiritual love" and "plastic love" in which to categorise the fetishes. "Spiritual love" occupied the devotion for specific mental phenomena, for example; attitudes, social class, or occupational roles; while "plastic love" referred to the devotion exhibited towards material objects such as body parts, textures or shoes.[8][9] The existential approach to mental disorders developed in the 1940s and influenced a view that fetishes had complex personal meanings beyond the general categories of psychoanalytical treatment. For instance, the Austrian neurologist and existential therapist Viktor Frankl once noted the case of a man with a sexual fetish involving simultaneously both frogs and glue.[10]
Modern psychology assumes that fetishism either is being conditioned or imprinted or the result of a traumatic experience. But also physical factors like brain construction and heredity are considered possible explanations. In the following, the most important theories are presented in chronological order:
In 1887, psychologist Alfred Binet introduced the term fetishism, suspecting that it was the pathological result of associations. Accidentally simultaneous presentation of a sexual stimulus and an inanimate object, thus his argument, led to the object being permanently connected to sexual arousal. About 1900, sexual psychologist Havelock Ellis brought up the revolutionary idea that already in early childhood erotic feelings emerged and that it was the first experience with its own body that determined a child's sexual orientation. Psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing consented to Binet's theory in 1912, recognizing that it predicted the observed wide variety of fetishes but unsure why these particular associations persisted over the whole of a lifetime while other associations changed or faded. In his eyes, the only possible explanation was that fetishists suffered from pathological sexual degeneration and hypersensitivity. [6]
Sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld followed another line of thought when he proposed his theory of partial attractiveness in 1920. According to his argumentation, sexual attractiveness never originated in a person as a whole but always was the product of the interaction of individual features. He stated that nearly everyone had special interests and thus suffered from a healthy kind of fetishism, while only detaching and overvaluing of a single feature resulted in pathological fetishism. Today, Hirschfeld's theory is often mentioned in the context of gender role specific behavior: females present sexual stimuli by highlighting body parts, clothes or accessories, males react to them.
Havelock Ellis' theory of erotic symbolism, according to which unusual sexual practice symbolically replaced normal sexual intercourse, and his thoughts about erotic thoughts in children, had laid the foundations for psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In 1927, Freud stated that fetishism was the result of a psychological trauma. A boy, longing to see his mother's penis, averts his eyes in horror when he discovers that she has none. To overcome the resulting castration anxiety he clings to the fetish as a substitute for the missing genital. Freud never commented on the idea of female fetishists. [4]
In 1951, Donald Winnicott presented his theory of transitional objects and phenomena, according to which childish actions like thumb sucking and objects like cuddly toys are the source of manifold adult behavior, amongst many others fetishism. [11]
Behaviorism traced fetishism back to classical conditioning and came up with numerous specialized theories. The common theme running through all of them is that sexual stimulus and the fetish object are presented simultaneously causing them to be connected in the learning process. This is similar to Binet's early theory, though it differs in that it specifies association to classical conditioning and leaves out any judgment about pathogeneity. The super stimulus theory stressed that fetishes could be the result of generalization. For example, it may only be shiny skin that arouses a person at first, but in time more common stimuli, such as shiny latex, may have the same effect. The problem with such a theory was that classical conditioning normally needs many repetitions, but this form would require only one. To account for this the preparedness theory was put forward; it stated that reacting to an object with sexual arousal could be the result of an evolutionary process, because such a reaction could prove to be useful for survival. In pointing to how conditioned sexual behavior can persist over time, one may cite how, in 2004, when quails were trained to copulate with a piece of terry cloth, their conditioning was sustained through ongoing repetition. [12]
Because classical conditioning seemed to be unable to explain how the conditioned behavior is kept alive over many years, without any repetition, some behaviorists came up with the theory that fetishism was the result of a special form of conditioning, called imprinting. Such conditioning happens during a specific time in early childhood in which sexual orientation is imprinted into the child's mind and remains there for the rest of his or her life.
Various neurologists pointed out that fetishism could be the result of neuronal cross links between neighboring regions in the human brain. For example, in 2002 Vilaynur S. Ramachandran stated that the region processing sensory input from the feet lies immediately next to the region processing sexual stimulation.
Today, psychodynamics has parted with the idea of proposing one explanation for all fetishes at the same time. Instead, it focuses on one form of fetishism at a time and the patients' individual problems. Over the past decades, various case studies have been published in which fetishism could successfully be linked to emotional problems. Some argue that a lack of parental love leads to a child projecting its affection to inanimate objects, others state in consent with Freud's model of psychosexual development that premature suppression of sexuality could lead to a child getting stuck in a transitory phase.
A fetish is associating something/some type of person/some act/etc. with sexual gratification. The cause depends on the fetish and the individual afflicted with it. Many studies show that men develop fetishes at very early ages. I'd elaborate, but you got a great answer from the cut/paste person above me, and it was too much for you, so c'est ca.