Two Cases of Fetishism

Fenichel has emphasized the closeness of the relationship between fetishism and transvestitism in his paper on The Psychology of Transvestitism1. In both conditions there is an overvaluation of woman's clothing, and both perversions are founded upon an adherence to the idea of the phallic woman.

It is Fenichel's opinion that the transvestite differs from the fetishist in that he makes an additional identification with the woman, expressed in wearing feminine apparel in order to reduplicate the phallic nature of the woman. In the first instance, the transvestite is a woman with a penis under his clothes, in the second place the woman's clothing carries a phallic significance as a fetish, and is used for exhibitionistic purposes in this sense. The material here to be presented deals with two cases of fetishism which seem to show that Fenichel's formula, which he regards as a specific one for transvestitism, can also be extended to cover certain types of fetishism. The discussion of the specificity of the definitions of the two perversions will be postponed until after presentation of the material.

Case S. (analyzed by Sterba) was a man of thirty, in the employ of a bank, who came to analysis because of a feeling of general embarrassment. In the first analytic hour he confessed that his embarrassment was intimately connected with his sexual secret: he was "both sexes". By this odd term he wished to express this: that his sexual object was a rubber apron. He stole these rubber aprons from laundresses or fishwives, and the stealing itself was a necessary prerequisite for the satisfaction of his perverse gratification. When he was naked he took his fetish, spread it out on the bed or on the floor, sat on it, drew one corner up between his legs, like a