Introductory study about the fetishism

Abstract

This article aims to make a brief bibliographical review concerning the perverse structure’s formation, specifically as occurs to the fetishism. This term as a historical heritage has its origins in the Three essays of the Freudian sexual theory (Freud, 1969a [1905]). In this paper the infant sexuality is presented as a polymorphic perverse character and the reflection of this will be expressed in an adult sexuality. This, in turn, that will have to go through the Oedipus Complex, having constituted the base that will be crystallized through the results of this development, the origin of the normal and perverse sexual behavior since it will supply all the content for the child experiencing the shocking discovery of the phallus absence in the mother. This fact enables the child by means of repression, the resolution of the identification as a neurotic elaboration of castration. It is with the refusal of castration that we find the core of the fetishist’s choices as defense form, the denial of the lack of a penis in the female parent, electing substitutes for the anxiety. Fetishism results in the maintenance of mnemonic traces of the maternal phallus or of its existential illusion. For the denial of castration, the fetishist will elect as a defense mechanism and victory a substitute, not for any penis, but for maternal phallus, which will be the fetish. Failure to interdict the paternal figure will promote the desire to transgress the father law imposing its own law under the mother’s consent, who places it in the phallic position. We conclude that the Oedipus had no effect of paternal metaphor, and it worked partially. However, we cannot affirm that the refusal of the castration can be understood as a psychotic characteristic, because the perverse will not change reality, and also a certain degree of fetishism is present as a universal human behavior.

Key words: Oedipus complex, castration, negation.