Reference may be made here to a case of contrary sexuality, to be described later, in which the principal sexual interest was in the boots of male servants. The desire was to be trod upon by them.
Case 65. (Dr. Pascal, “Igiene dell’ amore.”) X., merchant, from time to time (but particularly in bad weather) had the following desire: He would accost some prostitute and ask her to go to a shoe-shop with him, where he would buy her the handsomest pair of shoes of patent leather, under the condition that she would put them on immediately. After this took place, she had to go about in the street, walking in manure and mud as much as possible, in order to soil the shoes. After this, X. would lead the person to an hotel, and, almost before they had reached a room, he would cast himself on her feet, feeling an extraordinary pleasure in applying his lips to them. When he had cleansed the shoes in this manner, he paid her and went his way.
From these cases it may be plainly seen that the shoe is the fetich of the masochist, and apparently because of the relation of the dressed female foot to the idea of being trod upon and other acts of humiliation. When, therefore, in other cases of shoe-fetichism, the female shoe appears alone as the excitant of sexual desire, one is justified in presuming that masochistic motives have remained latent. The idea of being trod upon, etc., remains in the depths of unconscious life, and the idea of the shoe alone, the means for such acts, rises into consciousness. Cases that are otherwise wholly inexplicable are thus sufficiently explained. Here one has to do with larvated masochism; and this may always be assumed as the unconscious motive, when, as occurs not exceptionally, the origin of the fetichism, from an association of ideas on the occasion of some particular event, can be proved, as in Cases 87 and 88.
Such cases of desire for ladies’ shoes, without conscious motive and without demonstrable origin, are really innumerable.[1] Three cases are here given as examples:—
- ↑ There is apparently a connection between foot-fetichism and the fact that certain persons of this kind, whom coitus does not satisfy, or who are unable to perform it, find a substitute for it in tritus membri inter pedes mulieris.
