To speak about something I have little qualification to speak upon…and furthermore to oversimplify even that…
“Explanations” of particular facets of human behavior, explanations considered outmoded and in many respects deligitimated by decades of criticism and experimentation, live on in popular books, pop psychology, recurrent TV talk show “experts,” cops asked to comment on the cause of this or that, novels, movies, and (thus) the mind of the general public.
Classical Freudian explanations of so-called fetishistic behavior are given little credence these days by persons in the general field of behavioral science: perhaps largely because classical Freudian psychodynamic models are given little credence nowadays over all. Whatever the “cause” of, say, a so-called foot fetish, there is no (impartial and replicable) evidence whatever that it usually represents a “cover memory” from infancy, expresses some unresolved anal- or oral-phase issue, or anything of the sort.
The business about a fetish being some object associated with the pleasure of an early sexual experience is equally unsupported–at least as anything robust enough to be termed a “cause.” Why only one particular element in a situation, and no other? What of all the non-fetishists?..did they manage to have an initiatory experience without any surrounding particulars to fixate upon? More to the point, the whole “association of ideas” theory, which I associate with William James, turns out to be either (a) unsupported in an evidentiary sense, or (b) “supported” in what is ultimately a trivial or tautological sense. (All ideas come with “associations”; but mere association does not demonstrate causation.)
Behaviorists of the Watsonian/Skinnerian line point to provable links between excitatory reinforcement schedules and repetition of the corresponding behavioral complex. What is lacking in the usual case is any indication that the requisite reinforcement schedule ever occurred. Oral accounts by most fetishists express, again, the sought after phenomenon in only a trivial and expected sense: yes, the fetish repeatedly gave them pleasure. But that is, of course, what a fetish does. Where is the initial reinforcement series? What made the very first exposure so impactful? Or: how did a series of unimpactful and unnoticed events manage to create a fetishistic response?
So what do I think?
I note that a great many aspects of behavior once deemed to have a psychodynamic or cognitive basis have been shown, over the last 15 years or so, to be amenable to a fairly routine and uneventful pharmacological regimen. Yep, I’m talking Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Paxil and all that stuff. Something like kleptomania–which has a bit in common with fetishism–seems to respond well to the right meds. And this is not a trick solution; I’m not saying people are “getting better” by becoming zombified. Most people report that the right meds and dosages leave them feeling clear-headed and active, but relatively asymptomatic. (To be fair, one recent study questioned the effectiveness of these meds on the treatment of depression.)
Now I’m not pumping for the big drug companies. But to me the picture suggests that humans come loaded with a variety of innate micro-programs that are supposed to interact with one another in a certain way, or to turn themselves off at a certain point; and sometimes the mechanism gets out of tune. Chemical activation of what one might call the “right” neural paths dampens the unwanted behavior almost immediately. The genetic predispositions to certain behaviors that sometimes shows up may in truth be a genetic marker of this developmental neuro-chemical deficiency.
It has nothing to do with breast-feeding, Mom and Dad, dreams, bed-wetting, too-early kinky sex, or the drawing of irrational conclusions equating two unrelated occurences: “it” being significant, intrusive fetishistic behavior. It has everything to do with the very same general mechanisms in the nervous system that lead to the ordinary and typical bahaviors of homo sapiens sapiens.
In a way, it may be no more “crazy” to be a foot-fetishist than a breast-fetishist…or to have a very pronounced preference for chocolate, a phenomenon equally unexplained.
Because in his time this was not a subject a good doctor would take about. In anycase psychodynamics ( which is the modern form of psychanalysis ) does have explanation for fetishism. But let’s not go into this and let’s try the humanist psychology point of view, it’s a lot easier to understand and, i believe, closer to reality.
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