Nose, lips, mouth (cf. Belot’s novel, “La Bouche de Madame X.”), and ears, can all become the objects of sexual fetichism, though in most cases only of the lesser fetichism; the eyes also, which as fetichistic charms play an important part, and are effective especially through their colour. It is uncertain if, in this relationship, clear blue eyes or sparkling black eyes have the greater importance. The female breast is a natural physiological fetich for the male sex. But over and above this there exists a remarkable variety of breast fetichists, who employ the isolated breast, separated from the body, for the binding of books. According to Witkowski (“Tetoniana,” p. 35; Paris, 1898), certain bibliomaniacs and erotomaniacs have books bound with women’s skin taken from the region of the breast, so that the nipple forms a characteristic swelling on the cover! A further account of these human skin fetichists is given by Dr. Picard in the Gazette Médicale de Paris, July 19, 1906.
Von Krafft-Ebing contests the existence of a special “genital fetichism”; but the universal diffusion of the phallus-cult contradicts his opinion; the phallus-cult is unquestionably connected with fetichistic ideas, which are embodied in the symbols of the lingam and the yoni. According to Weininger,[629] woman, speaking generally, is only a phallus fetichist; man exists for her only as a sexual organ.
“I think people have been unwilling to see—or they have been unwilling to say; they have hardly formed accurate idea for themselves—what the copulatory organ of a man is for a woman, as wife, even as virgin; what it psychologically signifies; how it dominates to the uttermost the entire life of woman, although she herself may be completely unconscious of the fact. I do not mean at all that woman regards the male penis as beautiful, or even pretty. She regards it as man regards the Gorgon’s head, as the bird regards the snake—it exercises upon her a hypnotizing, magical, fascinating influence.”
Goethe lays stress on the beauty which the male penis has in woman’s eyes, when, in the paralipomena to the first part of “Faust” (Weimar edition, vol. xiv., p. 307), he makes Satan say in his address to women:
“Für euch sind zwei Dinge
Von köstlichem Glanz,
Das leuchtende Gold
Und ein glänzender....”
Georg Hirth also (“Ways to Love,” pp. 566, 567) speaks of an instinctive belief on the part of woman in the “beauty and the paradisaical force of the phallus,” and he regrets “the unnatural depreciation and mendacious concealment of this portion of the male body” by the conventional morality discovered by the world of men.
The wide diffusion of the genital fetichistic tendencies in man and woman is clearly manifested by the extremely frequent occurrence of isolated adoration of the genital organs in the practices of cunnilinctus and fellatio, which in numerous individuals completely replace normal coitus.
Very rare is a case, which came under my own observation, of isolated penis-foreskin fetichism in a heterosexual man. He is thirty years of age, and a student of natural science, in whom at the age of four years the first manifestation of sexual excitement occurred; later, towards the age of puberty, sexual excitement became always associated with the mental representation of a male penis, and more especially of the foreskin of that organ, whilst he felt antipathy to the idea of actual sexual intercourse with men, and felt attracted to women. Still, from time to time the imaginative representation of the membrum virile takes possession of his mind as a sort of coercive idea, and when this happens the patient masturbates, at the same time often making sketches of a penis.
A singular case of exclusively genital fetichism is reported by P. Garnier (“Les Fetichistes,” pp. 170-174; Paris, 1896).
This case was that of a man, forty-eight years of age, who in normal sexual intercourse was almost completely impotent, and who could obtain sexual gratification only by the observation of the genital organs of human beings and animals, and who, as in the case just mentioned, was sexually excited by making sketches of genital organs. This person exhibited obvious symptoms of nervous disorder.