condition which favors such deviation; a child who is precociously and
abnormally sensitive to persons of the opposite sex before puberty has
established the normal channels of sexual desire, is peculiarly liable to
become the prey of a chance symbolism. All degrees of such symbolism are
possible. While the average insensitive person may fail to perceive them
at all, for the more alert and imaginative lover they are a fascinating
part of the highly charged crystallization of passion. A more nervously
exceptional person, when once such a symbolism has become firmly
implanted, may find it an absolutely essential element in the charm of a
beloved and charming person. Finally, for the individual who is thoroughly
unsound the symbol becomes generalized; a person is no longer desired at
all, being merely regarded as an appendage of the symbol, or being
dispensed with altogether; the symbol is alone desired, and is fully
adequate to impart by itself complete sexual gratification. While it must
be considered a morbid state to demand a symbol as an almost essential
part of the charm of a desired person, it is only in the final condition,
in which the symbol becomes all-sufficing, that we have a true and
complete perversion. In the less complete forms of symbolism it is still
the woman who is desired, and the ends of procreation may be served; when
the woman is ignored and the mere symbol is an adequate and even preferred
stimulus to detumescence the pathological condition becomes complete.

Krafft-Ebing regarded shoe-fetichism as, in large measure, a more or less
latent form of masochism, the foot or the shoe being the symbol of the
subjection and humiliation which the masochist feels in the presence of
the beloved object. Moll is also inclined to accept such a connection.

"The very numerous class of boot-and-shoe-fetichists,"
Krafft-Ebing wrote, "forms the transition to the manifestations
of another independent perversion, i.e., fetichism itself; but it