Sight perceives the exposed and obvious fetishes and, thru memory associations, imagines those which are neither exposed nor obvious.
Visual sensations are the most powerful experienced by the organism; a slight injury to the optic nerve produces a greater shock than major injuries to any other nerve of the body. The popularity of the movies is based upon that characteristic. To the unimaginative, primitive people who relish that childish form of entertainment, visual sensations replace and suggest almost every other form of sensory gratification.
I have shown in Chapter III that the large majority of fetishes are visual, being impressions of color and size, which were produced on the child's visual nerves thru close proximity with the mother's body.
Auditory Sensations which enhance erotic states also hark back very obviously to infancy. The caressing tone of the lovers' voices, the well modulated words of praise which they speak to each other in a low monotonous sing-song during their embraces, the baby talk in which so many lovers indulge, remind one unavoidably of the crooned lullabies with which the loving mother created a state of peace and safety that would enable the nursling to doze off.
Smell. In animals the sense of smell plays probably a more important part than the sense of sight. In man the olfactory sense has become more negative and protective than positive. It enables him to avoid rather than to locate certain objects. This partial atrophy of the positive olfactory capacities is undoubtedly due to the progress of hygiene and cleanliness in human life.
The child whose mother is carefully shampooed and bathed will not consider strong odors emanating from hair or arm pits as a symbol of safety. On the contrary, they will be something foreign to him, hence suggestive of danger.
In ancient times, bodily odors were frequently mentioned as love stimulants. The Homeric poems, the Song of Songs, the Kamasutra and other Hindoo erotic works, the Arabian Perfumed Garden and even in more recent times, poems like Herrick's "Julia's Sweat," extolled strong body odors which at the present day not only are deemed offensive but cannot be mentioned except in medical writings.
The modern bathroom has exiled olfactory allusions from literature.