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Updated: June 6, 2025
His mother had been insane and he himself was subject to obsessions, especially of being incapable of urinating; he had had nocturnal incontinence of urine in childhood. All the women of the people in the West Indies go about with naked feet, which are often beautiful. His puberty evolved under this influence, and foot-fetichism developed.
Eccentric as foot-fetichism may appear to us, it is simply the re-emergence, by a pseudo-atavism or arrest of development, of a mental or emotional impulse which was probably experienced by our forefathers, and is often traceable among young children to-day.
To amalgamate the two is the result of inadequate psychological analysis and only leads to confusion. It is, however, often very difficult to decide whether we are dealing with a case which is predominantly one of masochism or of foot-fetichism. The nature of the action desired, as we have seen, will not suffice to determine the psychological character of the perversion.
The desire to be trodden on may be fundamentally an erotic symbolism, closely approaching foot-fetichism, and such slight indications of masochism as appear may be merely a parasitic growth on the symbolism, a growth perhaps more suggested by the circumstances involved in the gratification of the abnormal desire than inherent in the innate impulse of the subject.
The foregoing history, while it very distinctly brings before us a case of erotic symbolism, is not strictly an example of shoe-fetichism. The symbolism is more complex. The focus of beauty in a desirable woman is transferred and concentrated in the region below the knee; in that sense we have foot-fetichism. But the act of coitus itself is also symbolically transferred.
In determining whether we are concerned with a case of foot-fetichism or of masochism we must take into consideration the whole of the subject's mental and emotional attitude. An act, however definite, will not suffice as a criterion, for the same act in different persons may have altogether different implications.
The significance of the sexual emotion aroused by the female foot in China and the origin of its compression begin to become clear when we realize that this foot-fetichism is merely an extreme development of a tendency which is fairly well marked among nearly all the peoples of yellow race.
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