Introduction

This chapter begins with a summary of my previous work on fetishism, from both a clinical and a philosophical point of view. It outlines Freud’s late theory of fetishism and my revision of it. This revision produced a new theory of the problem of general resistance to interpretation in psychoanalysis, often called “concreteness.” In turn, this revision affects the entire theory of psychoanalytic interpretation from a deconstructive point of view (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida). After this review, the Introduction situates the project of this book: putting the psychoanalytic theory of fetishism in dialogue with the long and surprising history of fetishism itself. Of special importance is the pattern noted by several scholars of fetishism. In many disciplines—theology, anthropology, sociology, economics, psychoanalysis—the investigation of fetishism as a specific topic winds up as a generalization of fetishism itself. Why this occurs is a major topic of the entire book.