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"[[fetishism]]" ([[Fr]]. ''[[fétichisme]]'')
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The term "[[fetish]]" first came into widespread use in the eighteenth century in the context of the study of "[[religion|primitive religions," in which it denoted an inanimate object of worship.
In the nineteenth century, [[Marx]] borrowed the term to describe the way that, in capitalist societies, social relations assume the illusory form of relations between things ("[[commodity fetishism]]]").
It was Krafft-Ebing who, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, first applied the term to sexual behavior.
He defined [[fetishism]] as a [[perversion|sexual perversion]] in which sexual excitement is absolute dependent on the presence of a specific [[object]] (the [[fetish]]).
The [[fetish]] is usually an inanimate [[object]] such as a shoe or piece of underwear.
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[[Freud]] argued that [[fetishism]] (seen as an almost exclusively [[male]] [[perversion]]) originates in the [[child]]'s horror of [[female]] [[castration]].
Confronted with the [[mother]]'s [[lack]] of a [[penis]], the [[fetishist]] [[disavow]]s this [[lack]] and finds an [[object]] (the [[fetish]]) as a [[symbolic]] [[substitute]] for the mother's [[lack|missing]] [[penis]].<ref>{{F}}. 1927e</ref>
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In [[Lacan]]'s first approach to the subject of [[fetishism]], in 1956, he argues that [[fetishism]] is a particularly important area of study and bemoans its neglect by his contemporaries.
He stresses that the equivalence between the [[fetish]] and the [[mother|maternal]] [[phallus]] can only be understood by reference to linguistic transformations, and not by reference to "vague analogies in the visual field' such as comparisons between fur and pubic hair."<ref>{{L}} 1956b: 267)</ref>
He cites [[Freud]]'s [[analysis]] of the phrase "''Glanz auf der Nase''" as support for his argument.<ref>{{F}} 1927e.</ref>
In the following years, as [[Lacan]] develops his distinction between the [[penis]] and [[phallus]], he emphasises that the [[fetish]] is a substitute for the latter, not the former.
[[Lacan]] also extends the mechanism of [[disavowal]], making it the operation constitutive of [[perversion]] itself, and not just of the [[fetishistic]] [[perversion]].
However, he retains [[Freud]]'s view that [[fetishism]] is an exclusively [[male]] [[perversion]],<ref>{{Ec}} 734</ref> or at least extremely rare among [[women]].<ref>{{S4}} p.154</ref>
In the [[seminar]] of 1956-7, [[Lacan]] elaborates an important distinction between the [[fetish]] [[object]] and the [[phobic]] [[object]]; whereas the [[fetish]] is a [[symbolic]] substitute for the [[mother]]'s [[lack|missing]] [[phallus]], the [[phobia|phobic]] [[object]] is an [[imaginary]] substitute for [[symbolic]] [[castration]].
Like all [[perversion]]s, [[fetishism]] is rooted in the [[preoedipal]] [[structure|triangle]] of [[mother]]-[[child]]-[[phallus]].<ref>{{S4}} p.84-5, 194</ref>
However, it is unique in that it involves both [[identification]] with [[mother]] and with the [[imaginary]] [[phallus]]; indeed, in [[fetishism]], the [[subject]] oscillates between these two [[identification]]s.<ref>{{S4}} p.86, 160</ref>
[[Lacan]]'s statement, in 1958, that the [[penis]] "takes on the value of a fetish" for heterosexual women raises a number of interesting questions.<ref>{{E}} p.290</ref>
Firstly, it reverses [[Freud]]'s views on [[fetishism]]; rather than the [[fetish]] being a [[symbolic]] substitute for the [[real]] [[penis]], the [[real]] [[penis]] may itself become a [[fetish]] by substituting the [[woman]]'s [[absent]] [[symbolic]] [[phallus]].
Secondly, it undermines the claims (made by both [[Freud]] and [[Lacan]]) that [[fetishism]] is extremely rare among [[women]]; if the [[penis]] can be considered a [[fetish]], then [[fetishism]] is clearly far more prevalent among [[women]] than among [[men]].
