genitals.

[19] Psychoanalysis has filled up the gap in the understanding of
fetichisms by showing that the selection of the fetich depends on a
coprophilic smell-desire which has been lost by repression. Feet and
hair are strong smelling objects which are raised to fetiches after the
renouncing of the now unpleasant sensation of smell. Accordingly, only
the filthy and ill-smelling foot is the sexual object in the perversion
which corresponds to the foot fetichism. Another contribution to the
explanation of the fetichistic preference of the foot is found in the
Infantile Sexual Theories (see later). The foot replaces the penis which
is so much missed in the woman. In some cases of foot fetichism it could
be shown that the desire for looking originally directed to the
genitals, which wished to reach its object from below, was stopped on
the way by prohibition and repression, and therefore adhered to the foot
or shoe as a fetich. In conformity with infantile expectation, the
female genital was hereby imagined as a male genital.

[20] I have no doubt that the conception of the "beautiful" is rooted in
the soil of sexual excitement and originally signified the sexual
excitant. The more remarkable, therefore, is the fact that the genitals,
the sight of which provokes the greatest sexual excitement, can really
never be considered "beautiful."

[21] Cf. here the later communication on the pregenital phases of the
sexual development, in which this view is confirmed. See below,
"Ambivalence."

[22] Instead of substantiating this statement by many examples I will
merely cite Havelock Ellis (The Sexual Impulse, 1903): "All known cases