The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 26, 1957, No. 4: Weissman, Philip. 'Some Aspects of Sexual Activity in a Fetishist.'

The author stresses the importance of studying fetishism uncomplicated by homosexuality or transvestitism. The resulting confusion has caused undue emphasis to be laid on castration fear, though the presence of symptoms known to be so much related to castration fear simultaneously with fetishism should act as a warning not to exaggerate this

factor in the aetiology of fetishism itself. Moreover, since fetishism is known to have extensive connexions with pregenital disturbances, Weissman thinks it unlikely that such a phenomenon would appear only in response to a threat of castration.

He reports a case to illustrate the thesis that the sexual act in fetishism is a continuation of the fetishistic practice, having as its aim the restoration of equilibrium in the ego as the result of the presence of a good introject. In this instance it was the mother's good breast with which the patient needed to identify himself. This need followed fantasies of frustration by the mother's breast which produced in him separation anxiety and an identification with the bad breast. The patient's sexual act was not the result of heightened genital tension, but of depression. When genital tension was heightened he was capable of satisfactory intercourse without recourse to the use of a fetishistic object. Moreover, on these occasions he was free from the anxiety over the sight of the woman's genitals which affected him at other times. Weissman suggests that in some children the sight of the female genitals may produce intense separation anxiety instead of castration fear, and that for these few the trauma must be overcome by fetishism.