Binet deserves great credit for having studied and analyzed in detail the fetichism of love. The particular sympathies all spring from it. Thus one is attracted to slender, another to plump beauties, to blondes or brunettes. For one a peculiar expression of the eyes; for another a peculiar tone of the voice, or a particular (even an artificial) odor (perfume); or the hand, the foot, the ear, etc., may be the individual fetich (charm),—the beginning of a complicated chain of mental processes which, as a whole, represent love, i.e., the longing to possess, physically and mentally, the beloved object.
This fact is important, as showing a condition for the origin of a fetichism that falls within physiological limits. The fetich may constantly retain its significance without being pathological; but this is possible only when the particular concept is developed to a general concept; when the resulting love comes to take as its object the whole mental and physical personality.
Normal love can be nothing but a synthesis, a generalization. Ludwig Brunn,[1] under the heading, “The Fetichism of Love,” cleverly says:—
“Thus normal love appears to us as a symphony of tones of all kinds. It results from the most various stimuli. It is likewise polytheistic. Fetichism recognizes only the tone of a single instrument; it results from a certain stimulus; it is monotheistic.”
On slight reflection any one will see that real love (this word is only too often abused) can be spoken of only when the whole person is both physically and mentally the object of adoration. Love must always have a sensual element, i.e., the desire to possess the beloved object, to be united with it and fulfill the laws of nature. But when merely the body of the person of the opposite sex is the object of love, when satisfaction of sensual pleasure is the sole object, without desire to possess the soul and enjoy mutual communion, love is not genuine, no more than that of platonic lovers, who love only the soul and avoid sensual pleasure (many cases of contrary sexuality). For the former merely the body, for the latter simply the soul, is a
- ↑ Deutsches Montagsblatt, Berlin, August 20, 1888.
