Editing Sexual fetishism (section)

=== Early perspectives on cause ===
Alfred Binet suspected fetishism was the pathological result of ''associations''. He argued that, in certain vulnerable individuals, an emotionally rousing experience with the fetish object in childhood could lead to fetishism.<ref>{{cite journal | last1= Freund |first1=K. |last2=Seto |first2=M. C. |last3=Kuban |first3=M. | year = 1996 | title = Two types of fetishism | journal = Behaviour Research and Therapy | volume = 34 | issue = 9 | pages = 687–694 | doi=10.1016/0005-7967(96)00047-2| pmid = 8936751 }}</ref> [[Richard von Krafft-Ebing]] and [[Havelock Ellis]] also believed that fetishism arose from associative experiences, but disagreed on what type of predisposition was necessary.<ref>{{cite journal | author = Raymond, M. J. | year = 1956 | title = Case of fetishism treated by aversion therapy | journal = British Medical Journal | volume = 2 | issue = 4997 | pages = 854–7 | pmc=2035612 | pmid=13364343| doi = 10.1136/bmj.2.4997.854 }}</ref>

The sexologist [[Magnus Hirschfeld]] followed another line of thought when he proposed his theory of ''partial attractiveness'' in 1920. According to his argument, sexual attractiveness never originates in a person as a whole but always is the product of the interaction of individual features. He stated that nearly everyone had special interests and thus suffered from a healthy kind of fetishism, while only detaching and overvaluing of a single feature resulted in pathological fetishism. Today, Hirschfeld's theory is often mentioned in the context of gender role specific behavior: females present sexual stimuli by highlighting body parts, clothes or accessories; males react to them.

[[Sigmund Freud]] believed that sexual fetishism in men derived from the unconscious fear of the mother's genitals, from men's universal fear of castration, and from a man's fantasy that his mother had had a penis but that it had been cut off. He did not discuss sexual fetishism in women.

In 1951, [[Donald Winnicott]] presented his theory of ''transitional objects and phenomena'', according to which childish actions like thumb sucking and objects like cuddly toys are the source of manifold adult behavior, amongst many others fetishism. He speculated that the child's [[transitional object]] became sexualized.<ref>Winnicott, D. W. (1953) ''Übergangsobjekte und Übergangsphänomene: eine Studie über den ersten, nicht zum Selbst gehörenden Besitz.'' (German) Presentation 1951, 1953. In: ''Psyche'' 23, 1969.</ref>