Odors can be, not only fetishes but very often powerful antifetishes. This is partly due to a repression of the child's interest in his excretions which later burst forth in the use of perfume by women, smoking by men and women. Cigar smoking for instance supplies an outlet for a number of childish polymorphous perversions, to use Freud's expression.
In this case as in many others, violent repugnance to odors good or bad in adulthood may be traced to a morbid craving for them in childhood.
The Sense of Taste is not very important in love, altho some experienced lovers detect a distinct flavor in the skin of various parts of one woman's skin, cheeks, arms, etc.
Taste observed in purely nutritional activities reveals constantly its unconscious infantile origin. However completely we may have been weaned, we constantly pay a tribute of appreciation to our first food.
The exaggerated and unjustified importance we attribute to milk in the diet of adults, the way in which we designate a white complexion as "milky" or "creamy," and in which we praise many tender foods by stating that they are "like cream" or "melt in our mouth" illustrates, together with the popularity of breast fetishism, the influence which infantile gustatory impressions have made on all of us.
Touch is probably as important as sight for physico-chemical reasons. All animals seem to enjoy the close contact of other animals of their own species. Even on very warm days, puppies, kittens and young birds derive a very great comfort from being huddled together in kennel, basket or nest.
There are two reasons for that craving for contact. The safest period of our life which our automatic nerves remember is the fetal period during which the contact of the child with the womb is constant and in perfect relation to the fetus' growth.
Also, contact facilitates the electrical exchanges between human beings, especially between male and female, exchanges which owing to the removal of organic inhibitions, must be singularly powerful between lovers.
Holding Hands. Whenever conditions separate their bodies, lovers generally revert to the childish practice of holding hands, which to the child meant an assurance of safety when led by the strong parents and also facilitated electrical exchanges of distinct value to the young and old alike.
The Kiss. This brings us to the consideration of a love manifestation in which sensations of a tactile, gustatory and olfactory character are combined: the kiss.