In Sigmund Freud’s “Fetishism”, men have a fear of castration that is repressed into the unconscious. As a way to cope, men subconsciously creates a fetish, a coping mechanism to deal with the fear. Men turn a non-genital body part or an object and gives that item value. Consciously, they will see that valued object—a fetish, whether it be a nose or a shoe, as an object of sexuality. A sexuality that they are satisfied with and as Freud states, “even praise the way in which it eases their erotic life” (841).

Freud explains that the fetish is a substitute for the penis— a particular and special penis, that had been lost in early childhood. Fetishes exist, in order to preserve the penis that had been lost. He continues to explain, “the fetish is a substitute for the woman’s (the mother’s) penis that the little boy once believed in and— for reasons familiar to us—does not want to give up” (842). Men go through this trauamatic event and use scotomization to forget, replace, and repress this event. The traumatic event is the realization that women (specifically their mother) are actually castrated by the father and in result, creates this fear of his own castration. He can then preserve his altered belief that women have a phallus, but, the phallus is not the same as before, and has substituted and become something else. That non-genital body part or item has become their fetish, which is a symbolic representation of a penis. Men give value to that fetish and immerses a part of themselves into the fetish. It becomes so that when they see the fetish item, consciously, it creates a sexual desire and arousal for it. In result, unconsciously, men lose the fear of castration because that fetish is a symbol of a penis. It eases their uncanny feelings.

Freud continues to say that “no male human being is spared the fright of castration at the sight of a female genital” (843). There is this generalization and continuous idea Freud makes that all men are afraid of seeing the genitals of a female. While some, choose to repress and fetishize, others turn to homosexuality. Yet is is striking because fetishes can applied and created by anyone. A homosexual as well as a woman can also fetishize objects or non-genital body parts. Freud does not go into detail about the fetishes of homosexuals and females and how it is applied to them. Freud closes his writing with, “the normal prototype of fetishes is a man’s penis, just as the normal prototype of inferior organs is a woman’s real small penis, the clitoris” (845). Freud’s analysis raises a few questions. Should men have a castration fear if women do have a penis yet is just a really small one? Why do men believe that it is their father who castrated them? Lastly, what is this penis obsession and fixation that Freud has?