Object-Relation Changes in the Analysis of a Fetishist1

Recent work on fetishism (Payne 1939), (Gillespie 1940) and (1952), (Wulff 1946) has sought to clarify the meaning of fetishism in terms of early object relations. In writing about the analysis of a fetishist I have chosen to focus on the changes in object relations which took place during the analysis and especially in its closing phases. I shall try to show something of the interplay of the analytic relationship, and how changes there produced movement towards a gradual reordering of the patient's inner world and of his attitudes to people. The emphasis will therefore be not on the fetishism as such but on the character disorder behind it. Indeed it is now my conviction that in all sexual per version what matters most is the turning away from the primary object, and that what most helped my patient to discard his fetish was not interpretations bearing directly on the fetish but work on his intense paranoid and depressive anxieties (the former open, the latter concealed). These anxieties had origin in his early relations with his mother, impeded relationships with women throughout life, and ultimately became the focal point of his analytic relationship with me.2

My patient came to analysis wishing to free himself from the anxieties surrounding his mackintosh fetishism and seeking help 'to live a normal life'. The work was brought to an end after five and a half years and approximately 900 sessions.

He came for treatment at the age of thirty-one, a schoolmaster, an only child, single, living alone with his parents. They came from Scottish artisan families. His father was a true craftsman and latterly manager of a workshop; but his mother, formerly a dressmaker, was socially ambitious and determined that her son should not 'work with his hands'. The patient was sent to a private day-school, from which he obtained a scholarship to a grammar school. To be top of the class was the key to maternal approval. He worked hard and eventually obtained a university sch