Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

June 13, 1967. AN INFANTILE FETISH AND ITS PERSISTENCE INTO YOUNG WOMANHOOD. Nancy Tow Spiegel, M.A. (by invitation).

A female patient entered analysis because of agitation about masturbating and feelings of emptiness. The analysis centered on her changing relationship with an inanimate object, a shoelace. As a result of 'losses, hypersexual exposures at phase specific periods, together with constitutional proclivities', the inanimate object played the part of a biphasic fetish in masturbatory rituals that began in adolescence.

The masturbatory ritual consisted of a 'bad' act followed by a 'purifying' act. A typical accompanying fantasy in the bad act was of an old man masturbating and weeping as he watched his cruel wife perform fellatio on a virile man he had procured for her. The shoelace had to be kept out of this act to preserve it from contamination and degradation. In order to recapture a feeling of 'purity' after this bad act, the patient lay clothed across the bed, legs closed and stiff, staring unblinkingly at a blank wall, while she clutched and then twirled the shoelace. The purifying act was also carried out when she felt morally bad because of feelings of hatred or desires to steal, as well as 'an expression of joy' when she had mastered some realistic task. A fantasy associated with the purifying act was that on a car trip with a young man, her mother, and 'her mother's son', the mother is killed, the patient assumes care of the boy, and gives birth to a girl baby without any man being involved.

Mrs. Spiegel feels that the 'bad' act followed by the 'pure' act exemplified doing and undoing. Analysis revealed the changing functions of the shoelace in the patient's life. At the time of weaning at age nine months, she was fascinated by a string of beads. Enemas administered by her mother for 'cramps' from infancy to age eight caused fear and excitement and disposed the patient to an anal organization. At about age two, she had several traumatic