An Acceptable Abnormality?

Unravelling the Fetish: Freud and the Riddles of Desire.

Long regarded as a marginal phenomenon, fetishism reshaped the foundations of psychoanalysis. By tracing the evolution of Freud’s thinking on fetishism — from his early pathologisation to his later understanding of it as a source of sexual and psychic meaning — this book reveals how his attention to fetishism compelled him to rethink desire, object‑choice, and the roots of inner conflict. In this book, Ednei Soares, drawing on the influence of Alfred Binet, early neuropathology, and later debates in Lacanian theory, as well as feminist, queer, and trans theory, explains why fetishism became central to discussions that shape gender studies today and contemporary reflections on identity.

An Acceptable Abnormality? invites readers to view fetishism not as a curious anomaly but as a powerful lens through which we can understand how desire takes form. This compelling book opens new ways of thinking about human sexuality, making it essential reading for specialists while remaining accessible to a broad audience.

This book will be made open access within three years of publication thanks to Path to Open, a program developed in partnership between JSTOR, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), University of Michigan Press, and The University of North Carolina Press to bring about equitable access and impact for the entire scholarly community, including authors, researchers, libraries, and university presses around the world. Learn more at https://about.jstor.org/path-to-open/

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Freud and His Forebears: Binet and Krafft-Ebing
1. The Riddle of Fetishism
2. Alfred Binet and the Riddle of Fetishism
Binet and Doubling
Binet’s Conceptualization of Fetishism: The Birth of a Riddle
3. Freud, Krafft-Ebing, and the Problem of Perversions
Krafft-Ebing’s Classification of Perversions
Fetishism, Masochism, and Shared Aetiology
4. Freud’s Clinical Framework: The Neurosis–Perversion Opposition

Chapter 3 The Neurotic “Negative”: Freud’s Early Perversion Theory
1. Freud’s Early Aetiology of Neurosis and Perversion
2. Inherited Concepts: Trauma, Splitting, and Defence in Freud’s 1890s Work
3. The Nascent “Riddle”: Fetishism’s Challenge to Freud’s Early Framework

Chapter 4 The Initial Confrontation: Fetishism in Freud’s Three Essays and Early Revisions (1905–8)
1. Fetishism and the Breakdown of Freud’s 1905 Framework
2. Childhood Impressions and the Turn to Fantasy
3. Infantile Theories, Castration Anxiety, and the Object

Chapter 5 Deepening the Riddle: Fetishism, Trauma, and the Oedipus Complex (1909–20)
1. On the Genesis of Fetishism (1909)
2. The Role of the Fetish in Totem and Taboo
3. Freud’s Development of Binet’s Theory of Childhood Trauma
4. The Oedipus Complex and the Aetiology of Perversions
5. Fetishism and the Riddle

Chapter 6 Freud’s Late Works on Fetishism
1. Freud on Fetishism: Early and Late
2. Fetishism (1927) and Other Works
3. Freud on Disavowal, Scotomization, and Splitting in Fetishism
4. Freud on Binet on Double-Sided Fetishes
5. Fetishism in Freud’s Works in the Late 1930s
6. Freud, Fetishism, and the Brain
7. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory and Fetishism

Chapter 7 “Fetishism” and Freud’s Riddle in Jacques Lacan’s Work
1. Doubling, Personality, and Perversity in Lacan’s Theorization of Fetishism
Binet’s Ideas on Paranoia as Doubling of Personality in Lacan’s Explorations
Lacan’s Initial Approach to Fetishism
Lacan’s Psychoanalytic Model of Doubling
2. Lacan’s Debate on Fetishism with Object-Relation Theory
Fetishism as an Object-Relation Phenomenon
Fetishism as a Paradigm of Perversion in Lacan’s Theory
3. The Fetish as a Model of the Object of Human Desire in Lacan’s Thinking

Conclusion
References

Ednei Soares

Ednei Soares is a psychoanalyst and holds a PhD from Radboud University. He is a Research Assistant at the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy and conducts research in Brazil and the Netherlands for the Stichting Psychoanalytische Fondsen. His academic career has included work at Radboud University's Behavioural Science Institute and teaching at universities in Brazil. He is a member of SIPP–ISPP.