Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Fetishism, Psychiatric”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

The clinical and forensic psychiatric issues of retifism.

The literature on the etiological theories, clinical manifestations and treatment of retifism (foot fetishism) and fetishisms in general are briefly reviewed. The case of a 27 year old married male foot-fetishist is presented with emphasis on the psychosexual development leading to the specific sexual deviation. The specific behavioural treatment consisted of covert aversive conditioning using self-reports of sexual urges and psychophysiological monitoring as objective measures of therapeutic change. The theoretical basis for the therapeutic response is discussed.

Adult↗

Healthy limb amputation: ethical and legal aspects.

A surgeon in Scotland has amputated the legs of two consenting, physically healthy patients. Although a handful of medical professionals believe that the desire for healthy limb amputation is symptomatic of a mental disorder that can be treated only by amputation, there is currently no consensus on what causes a person to desire such a disabling intervention. As long as there is no established body of medical opinion as to the diagnosis and treatment of such a condition, performing the surgery may be a criminal act. Given the ethically problematic history of surgery for psychiatric conditions, as well as the absence of sound medical data on this condition, surgeons should exercise great caution before complying with a request to amputate a healthy limb.

Amputation, Surgical↗

"Your feet's too big": an inquiry into psychological and symbolic meanings of the foot.

The foot is a highly cathected appendage that is commonly singled out as the brunt of humorous or derisive remarks, as if it embodies repugnance and disgust. Attitudes toward the foot are overdetermined, bearing the imprint of man's early linguistic patterns and individual dynamics. This article suggests that feet are symbolic because they bear the feelings derived from earlier separations, good and bad object representations, collective memories, and genital representations. The foot's role as symbol of both the male and female genitals, repository of badness, symbol of passivity, initiator of movement, and site of self-mutilation have been briefly reviewed. As Fats Waller rhapsodizes that the "feet's too big," he finds a convenient way to displace his symbiotic and erotic anxieties vis-à-vis women. Similarly, patients who come for psychiatric treatment and psychotherapy frequently make references to their feet or use them in specific ways. An understanding of this type of communication can often provide insight into individual dynamics and enhance treatment. The weight placed on these communications depends, of course, on the vicissitudes of the previous therapeutic work as well as on the particular problems of the patient.

Adult↗

[Negative hallucination, denial of reality and scotomization].

In this paper, the authors intended to outline the history of three psychiatric and psycho-analytical concepts (negative hallucination, disavowal and scotomisation) and to analyse the psychic processes that they stand for. Historical study: Bernheim coined the expression negative hallucination in 1884. Freud used it from 1895 until 1917 when he discarded it. Freud put forward the concept of disavowal in 1914. In its wider meaning it is equivalent to negative hallucination. In its more specific meaning it designates the simultaneous acknowledgement and non-acknowledgement of a traumatic perception. Scotomisation, introduced by Pichon and Laforgue, is identical to negative hallucination. Freud and Laforgue had a long and polemical discussion about it. Psychological, metapsychological and psychopathological study: Only the concepts of negative hallucination and disavowal, in their more specific meaning, ought to be considered here. In their first phases, both processes are identical. The first phase is a "preliminary position", a conception of things, related to wishes and the pleasure principle. The second phase is marked by a stimulus which is unconsciously perceived as "unbearable". During the third phase, perception is suspended by various processes. It is with the fourth phase that the mechanisms differ. In the negative hallucination, the ego keeps the perception unconscious whereas in disavowal (in its specific meaning) it is split, one part acknowledges the perception, the other disavows it. The authors stress the importance of the negative hallucination and disavowal for psychopathology and psychoanalysis.

Denial, Psychological↗

Centerfold. An essay on excitement.

A woman who poses for soft-core pornography reports that she has never felt she belonged to her body, that she is and wants only to be an erotic product manufactured by a team of specialists for the use of a viewing audience of males, that since age 5 she has been a nude dancer, and that she has no other material existence except in this form. She is, then, a fetish. Her success illustrates the hypothesis that erotic daydreams in pronography represent fantasies of revenge in which the consumer imagines he is degrading--dehumanizing--women.

Adult↗

Josephine Baker: psychoanalysis and the colonial fetish.

This paper traces an intricate path connecting racial fantasy, aesthetic judgment, and the larger cultural problem of inter-subjective recognition. In particular, the author examines the theme of fetishism, both sexual and racial, in a Western historical, colonial context, in order to unravel a set of disturbances that cohere around the racial fetish then and now. Taking the figure of an entertainment icon of the 1920s, Josephine Baker, as a case study, the author shows how the imagination of the colonizing white male was both articulated and disrupted by Baker as a ready-made representation of the cultural, racial, and sexual other.

Black People↗

Treatment of young adults with sexual maladaptation.

Three clinical cases were presented to demonstrate the capacity to utilize psychoanalytic techniques in the treatment of young adults with sexual maladaptations. Psychoanalytic treatment of adolescents with sexual maladaptation can be gratifying, as the young patient is amenable to the reworking of earlier developmental psychopathology. Where symptomatic sexual disturbance is noted, the pregenital and oedipal instinctual impulses can be creatively examined in a psychoanalytic situation. Therapeutic flexibility and cultural awareness are vital ingredients for a successful outcome.

Adolescent↗

Can fetishism occur in transsexuals?

The literature concerning the relationships between transsexualism and transvestism and their association with fetishism is reviewed. Sexual activity, including sexual arousal to women's clothes, is frequently reported in histories of transsexuals. Characteristics are reported of 12 male subjects who have shown sexual arousal to women's clothes and who have a sustained cross-gender identity combined with a desire for a change-of-sex operation. Diagnostic categories alternative to transsexualism for subjects who cross-dress are inadequate to classify at least some of the 12 subjects reported. Restricting the definition of transsexualism so as to exclude those who have shown fetishistic features is considered premature.

Adolescent↗

Manifest sadomasochism of males: results of an empirical study.

Two hundred forty-five manifestly sadomasochistic West German completed an anonymous questionnaires concerning their sexual behavior and psychosocial problems. They were reached as placers of sadomasochistic contact advertisements or as members of sadomasochistic clubs. Thirty percent were exclusively heterosexually oriented, 31% bisexually oriented, and 38% homosexually oriented. Results are described with respect to the invisibility of deviant behavior, seeking of partners, participation in the subculture, realization of the deviant desires, self-acceptance, preferences for sadomasochistic roles and practices, masturbation, and coming out. The possibilities for realization of the deviance are poorer for heterosexual sadomasochists than for the other groups. However, subcultural groups exist among heterosexual sadomasochists.

Adult↗

The discrete syndromes of transvestism and transsexualism.

The literature concerning the relationship between transvestism and transsexualism is briefly reviewed. Some workers consider the two conditions to be on a continuum, whereas others feel that they are independent clinical entities. To clarify the relationship between the two syndromes, biographical data were collected and penile volume changes recorded in 29 subjects who identified themselves as transsexuals and 35 who identified themselves as transvestites. In comparison to the transvestite subjects, significantly more transsexuals were younger, were single, cross-dressed fully, and reported homosexual interest, a feminine gender identity, and a desire for a sex-change surgery. In comparison to the transsexual subjects, significantly more transvestites reported heterosexual interest, cross-dressed partially, and had shown fetishistic arousal. It is concluded that transvestism and transsexualism are separate clinical entities.

Adult↗

The clinical syndromes of femmiphilic transvestism.

Thirty-four members of a club established for heterosexual transvestites were interviewed. They were categorized into two groups. Subjects in group I were satisfied with cross-dressing and did not desire additional feminization. Subjects in group II desired to alter their bodily appearance toward female by taking female hormones or by having surgical intervention. Group II transvestites cross-dressed more frequently and had a more intense feminine gender identity and stronger homosexual interests than did group I transvestites. A feminine gender identity appeared to be present from childhood in both groups but to be stronger in group II. Cross-dressing in subjects of both groups often occurred first during childhood and almost always prior to age 15. All subjects showed a period of fetishistic arousal to women's clothes during adolescence. With increasing age, fetishistic arousal diminished or disappeared and the frequency of cross-dressing increased. Terms in the literature used to describe the type of transvestism reported in this study are discussed. It was suggested that the term "femmiphilic transvestism" be used to describe the condition of the subjects of both groups. The term has fewer disadvantages than terms previously suggested.

Age Factors↗

Two types of cross-gender identity.

A revision of the typology of male cross-gender identity was carried out by means of formalized, easily replicable methods. The results suggest (1) that there are two discrete types of cross-gender identity, one heterosexual, the other homosexual; (2) that transvestism, and closely related conditions of cross-gender identity, occur exclusively or almost exclusively in heterosexuals; (3) that of the two types of transsexualism distinguished in this study, type A is, in heterosexuals, very rare or completely nonexistent; (4) that (in the course of time) transvestites or borderline transsexuals (defined below) may develop sustained cross-gender identity, as observed by Stoller (1971); (5) that although, according to Hoenig and Kenna (1974), transsexualism by itself is not an anomalous erotic preference, it is (virtually) always either preceded by transvestism or accompanied by homosexuality or cross-gender fetishism.

Adult↗

The childhood and family dynamics of transvestites.

This article reports a survey of childhood experiences and family dynamics reported by a sample of 85 cross-dressing males drawn from the readership of a magazine for transvestites. The sample had a higher percentage of only children and eldest children compared to a national sample and also a much closer relationship with their mothers than with their fathers. Their identification as nuclear or marginal transvestites or transsexuals is related to the quality of the reported relationship with the mother, to the factors they identify as associated with their cross-dressing, and to their sexual orientation. Covert cross-dressers account for over three fourths of the subjects, but those who were overt (their cross-dressing openly encouraged by female family members) show significantly different patterns and distributions on several variables. A constellation of family and parental relationships is proposed--drawn in part from the insights of object relations and family systems theory--which may contribute to the development of transvestism.

Adult↗

The fetish object: phylogenetic considerations.

Direct observations of behavior evoked by a fetish object (wet shoe) in one patient are reported. The intrinsic qualities of an object endowing it with fetish power are reported. The intrinsic qualities of an object endowing it with fetish power are examined. Such qualities may be related to human perceptual preferences, a product of phylogeny, stemming from such factors as the primate interest in body parts and extracorporeal objects. The capicity to relate to an inanimate object including the assimilation of the object by variedmotor acts reflects the crucial role of objects (tools) in hominid evolution. Also phylogenetically based is the human capacity to assign mutiple meanings to an object.

Adolescent↗

Homosexual foot fetishism.

262 respondents from an organization for homosexual foot fetishists provide information from a broader sample than clinical cases and allow examination of the effects of sexual preference on fetishism. Data show a wide range of feet/footwear objects to be arousing. Such interests were often associated with particular types of men, yet interests were subject to change over time. Fetishistic arousal rested on both sensual and symbolic aspects of the fetish. Symbolically, it was the theme of "masculinity" that made male feet/footwear arousing, showing parallels to "femininity" evoked by female feet/footwear for male heterosexual fetishists. For many of the respondents, fetishism did not seem to be a substitute for living persons. Respondents had intimate relationships and were able to incorporate their fetish interests into stable relationships and less intimate ones. Considerable involvement in sadomasochistic practices was also found as was involvement in the gay world. Finally, nothing about a fetishistic interest seemed to preclude the development of subcultural forms around the practice.

Adult↗