ABSTRACT
Gillespie described fetishism as being one such caricature. Human sexuality seems, in this light, extraordinary in its variations and very curious in its formation. Although there are reported cases of fetishism in women, it is considered an almost exclusively male phenomenon. Like transvestism and exhibitionism, fetishism is recognized as a male perversion, essentially contingent on the severity of the castration complex. Although fetishism could be grouped together with the deviations of the sexual object, Freud decided to include fetishism in the second group because of its main characteristic, namely the sexual overvaluation of some part of the body or of some inanimate object. The fetish was for him a rather unusual "peculiarity", a crutch that unfortunately was not working effectively. Fetishism emerges as an attempt to negotiate the phallic phase of development, when for the child a human being either has a penis or is a castrated being.
