Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 | Page 6

the instinct of nutrition, when restrained,
may exhibit something of an analogous symbolism, though in a minor
degree, to that of sex. The ways in which a hyperæsthetic hunger may
seek its symbols are illustrated in the case of a young woman called

Nadia, who during several years was carefully studied by Janet. It is a
case of obsession ("maladie du scrupule"), simulating hysterical
anorexia, in which the patient, for fear of getting fat, reduced her
nourishment to the smallest possible amount. "Nadia is generally
hungry, even very hungry. One can tell this by her actions; from time to
time she forgets herself to such an extent as to devour greedily anything
she can put her hands on. At other times, when she cannot resist the
desire to eat, she secretly takes a biscuit. She feels horrible remorse for
the action, but, all the same, she does it again. Her confidences are very
curious. She recognizes that a great effort is needed to avoid eating, and
considers she is a heroine to resist so long. 'Sometimes I spent whole
hours in thinking about food, I was so hungry; I swallowed my saliva, I
bit my handkerchief, I rolled on the floor, I wanted to eat so badly. I
would look in books for descriptions of meals and feasts, and tried to
deceive my hunger by imagining that I was sharing all these good
things,'" (P. Janet, "La Maladie du Scrupule," Revue Philosophique,
May, 1901, p. 502.) The deviations of the instinct of nutrition are,
however, confined within narrow limits, and, in the nature of things,
hunger, unlike sexual desire, cannot easily accept a fetich.
"There is almost no feature, article of dress, attitude, act," Stanley Hall
declares, "or even animal or perhaps object in nature, that may not have
to some morbid soul specialized erogenic and erethic power."[6] Even
a mere shadow may become a fetich. Goron tells of a merchant in
Paris--a man with a reputation for ability, happily married and the
father of a family, altogether irreproachable in his private life--who was
returning home one evening after a game of billiards with a friend,
when, on chancing to raise his eyes, he saw against a lighted window
the shadow of a woman changing her chemise. He fell in love with that
shadow and returned to the spot every evening for many months to
gaze at the window. Yet--and herein lies the fetichism--he made no
attempt to see the woman or to find out who she was; the shadow
sufficed; he had no need of the realty.[7] It is even possible to have a
negative fetich, the absence of some character being alone demanded,
and the case has been recorded in Chicago of an American gentleman
of average intelligence, education, and good habits who, having as a
boy cherished a pure affection for a girl whose leg had been amputated,

throughout life was relatively impotent with normal women, but
experienced passion and affection for women who had lost a leg; he
was found by his wife to be in extensive correspondence with
one-legged women all over the country, expending no little money on
the purchase of artificial legs for his various protegées.[8]
It is important to remember, however, that while erotic symbolism
becomes fantastic and abnormal in its extreme manifestations, it is in
its essence absolutely normal. It is only in the very grossest forms of
sexual desire that it is altogether absent. Stendhal described the mental
side of the process of tumescence as a crystallization, a process
whereby certain features of the beloved person present points around
which the emotions held in solution in the lover's mind may
concentrate and deposit themselves in dazzling brilliance. This process
inevitably tends to take place around all those features and objects
associated with the beloved person which have most deeply impressed
the lover's mind, and the more sensitive and imaginative and emotional
he is the more certainly will such features and objects crystallize into
erotic symbols. "Devotion and love," wrote Mary Wollstonecraft, "may
be allowed to hallow the garments as well as the person, for the lover
must want fancy who has not a sort of sacred respect for the glove or
slipper of his mistress. He would not confound them with vulgar things
of the same kind." And nearly two centuries earlier Burton, who had
gathered together so much of the ancient lore of love, clearly asserted
the entirely normal character of erotic symbolism. "Not one of a
thousand falls in love," he declares, "but there is some peculiar part or
other which pleaseth most, and inflames him above the rest.... If he gets
any remnant of hers, a busk-point, a feather of her fan, a shoe-tie, a lace,
a ring, a bracelet of hair, he wears it for a favor on