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Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 - Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy by Havelock Ellis
page 17 of 437 (03%)
Scrupule," _Revue Philosophique_, May, 1901, p. 502.) The
deviations of the instinct of nutrition are, however, confined
within narrow limits, and, in the nature of things, hunger,
unlike sexual desire, cannot easily accept a fetich.

"There is almost no feature, article of dress, attitude, act," Stanley
Hall declares, "or even animal or perhaps object in nature, that may not
have to some morbid soul specialized erogenic and erethic power."[6] Even
a mere shadow may become a fetich. Goron tells of a merchant in Paris--a
man with a reputation for ability, happily married and the father of a
family, altogether irreproachable in his private life--who was returning
home one evening after a game of billiards with a friend, when, on
chancing to raise his eyes, he saw against a lighted window the shadow of
a woman changing her chemise. He fell in love with that shadow and
returned to the spot every evening for many months to gaze at the window.
Yet--and herein lies the fetichism--he made no attempt to see the woman or
to find out who she was; the shadow sufficed; he had no need of the
realty.[7] It is even possible to have a negative fetich, the absence of
some character being alone demanded, and the case has been recorded in
Chicago of an American gentleman of average intelligence, education, and
good habits who, having as a boy cherished a pure affection for a girl
whose leg had been amputated, throughout life was relatively impotent with
normal women, but experienced passion and affection for women who had lost
a leg; he was found by his wife to be in extensive correspondence with
one-legged women all over the country, expending no little money on the
purchase of artificial legs for his various protegées.[8]

It is important to remember, however, that while erotic symbolism becomes
fantastic and abnormal in its extreme manifestations, it is in its
essence absolutely normal. It is only in the very grossest forms of sexual
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