What is fetishism?
Fetishism is an intense sexual attraction to an inanimate object or specific body parts. Having a fetish – or many fetishes – is abnormal sexual behaviour. Fetishism is a disorder when it adversely affects sexual, social and emotional functioning and starts to damage relationships. People with fetishism disorder find it difficult or impossible to achieve sexual arousal and gratification without the fetishized object.
Subjects of fetishism vary and include:
- Feet and shoes
- Sheer stockings
- Rubber products such as raincoats, gloves
- Toilet articles
- Fur garments and underwear
Fetishism belongs to a group of paraphilias (sexual disorders) including:
- Paedophilia
- Sadism
- Exhibitionism
- Masochism
- Frotteurism
- Voyeurism
What do people with fetishism have in common?
- Low self-confidence and low self-esteem
- Personality disorders
- Depression
- Generalised anxiety and social anxiety
- Intimacy issues and difficulty forming close and intimate romantic relationships
- Sexual and gender identity disorders
- Sexual dysfunctions
- Erectile dysfunction
How is a fetishism disorder formed?
Through our life journey we all get to experience challenges, hurts and traumas. Hurtful experiences leave negative impressions and conditioning in our conscious and unconscious mind, forming negative perceptions about ourselves and the world.
Negative thoughts cause ill health via the ‘poisons in the mind’ – the thoughts which are hateful, angry, critical, rejecting, deceitful, belittling, betraying or disrespectful. Heart-closing judgments about yourself or the world include such thoughts as, “I am nothing’, ‘I am bad’, ‘I never get anything right’, or ‘people are bad’.