Place, or/of the fetish

Already, in “Fetishism,” the fetish will have taken place, will have arisen. That is, before we even start reading Freud’s description of fetishism, his Beschreibung des Fetischismus (GW, 316 [see the end of this post for citation information and abbreviations]), the fetish will have come up: there were fetishes, and they dominated a number of men. Freud is sure of this, even though his title (and not just his title, as we shall see) announces that in 1927, and despite even the extended discussion in the Three Essays and other places, it still remains for him to place the fetish clearly in psychoanalytic discourse, to show how the fetish takes place in psychoanalysis. Freud is sure, he announces it, despite this disappointment: "In the last few years I have had the opportunity of studying analytically a number of men whose object-choice was dominated by a fetish" (SE, 152; GW, 311). He has had this opportunity, this chance laid out (Gelegenheit) before him and, somewhere before this essay, has taken it up and studied it. Analytically. That is, in the manner that takes its proper place in the discourse of psychoanalysis, that takes place in the place of psychoanalysis. Surely, Freud announces, the fetish has been studied analytically: there has been no opportunity for him in which the fetish would not have been studied in analysis, studied in a way that is not proper to psychoanalysis, that does not make it come up right inside 19 Berggasse (a place, let us note, that is not too far away from, and thus is next to or beside the Schmerlingplatz—and thus the Rathaus and the Justizpalast). So then, here, the fetish has arisen for him, Freud asserts it, there.

That Freud begins his description asserting he has studied the fetish he has not yet theorized or described—this might seem to us so compelling that we are ready to expect it will come up again. We might almost be sure, in other words, that in the laying out of the Beschreibung, the fetish having taken place will take place again. That, in elaborating this announcement that the fetish has taken place, in the position or place of elaboration, Freud will make it arise again. That he will make this rise up out of his language, from down below or at his side—as if someone did not believe him and he were raising up his weapon in a counter-attack. Or perhaps, to put it in a less forceful way, we might expect Freud will again allow this announcement another chance to arise. That he will lay out the space in which it can appear once more—as if he were summoning or calling it up, compelling it, craftily. That, as if he were some sort of conjurer, one who split up reality with tricks and slight of hand, he will make us believe again that that which we have not seen has, indeed, happened. All this is to say we might expect his psychoanalytic description will have to show us once more that which it is announcing it is certain has taken place. As if Freud both had given into doubt and forsaken belief in what he was saying, and still preserved his belief in it.

And yet, almost in the same space as this expectation, right next to our readiness to expect all this, there is a possibility (we hesitate to call it an expectation as well) that the fetish will not have come up—again, or even, as Freud announces it, already. In other words, we cannot be so ready to expect what we expect, we cannot be so sure, since in expecting the fetish to come up again we are saying precisely that Freud is not so sure about the fetish and its having come up. As if he were expecting what we expect about him, he begins to seem like he always will have said something different, heading us off, oscillating (as he will soon say another man—one of the two brothers who had lost their father, SE, 156; GW, 316—indeed oscillates, schwankte) between the place in which we expect him and another place in which he is saying that the fetish will never come up.

Thus, in almost the same place as his first sentence (in the next two, three, or four sentences, depending on the German or English version we are reading) Freud seems to expect us, and hints the fetish is something that we should not expect to come up in analysis. “There is no need to expect that these people came to analysis on account of their fetish,” he says (SE, 152; GW, 311). He means, in short, that we need not expect that analysis will directly address the patient and his fetish. This is so not only because the fetish will have readily up in analysis, as Freud might confidently assert, but that, precisely as he indeed asserts this, uncertain and unsure, he also asserts that the fetish will only be indirectly or incidentally addressed by analysis—such that in analysis we cannot clearly say if it came up. To assert this a little more forcefully (though merely to repeat Freud’s language): Freud says that we really need not expect fetishists will be, insofar as they are fetishists, patients—and thus we need not expect that the fetish will come up in analysis. Indeed, though these people, these Männern, these Personen have obviously been patients in analysis, Freud seems uncertain about this and never throughout the entire Beschreibung actually calls them patients, Kranken or Patienten. So in almost same space as his assertion that the fetish will surely come up in analysis, he is also marking them as mere adherents, as devotees (hangers-on, Anhängern) of the fetish, and saying that they have not come to analysis for what analysis is for, like a patient would. For, he continues, these people—Freud has studied this, no doubt, es wird wohl—are not feeling the fetish as a symptom of suffering, as a Leidenssymptom, even though they recognize the fetish as an abnormality. And he thereby announces that, for the purposes of our Beschreibung here, analysis is first and foremost something for dealing with suffering patients:

There is no need to expect that these people [Personen] came to analysis on account of their fetish. For though no doubt a fetish is recognized [der Fetisch wird wohl … erkannt] by its adherents [Anhängern] as an abnormality, it is seldom felt by them as the symptom of an ailment accompanied by suffering [ein Leidenssymptom] (SE, 152; GW, 311).

Analysis is for what analysis addresses—namely, suffering—and these men will be patients insofar as analysis will address their suffering. But this means that insofar as these men will not have come to analysis for their Leidenssymptom—specifically insofar as they have come to analysis feeling happy or satisfied (zufrieden) about their fetish—analysis proper will not, except incidentally or in a subsidiary way, have provided the space in which it came up. So Freud continues:

…it is seldom felt by them as the symptom of an ailment accompanied by suffering. Usually they are quite satisfied with it, or even praise the way in which it eases their erotic life. As a rule, therefore, the fetish made its appearance […] as a subsidiary finding [eines Nebenbefundes] (SE, 152; GW, 311).

The fetish will have been a subsidiary finding—something that came to light incidentally, as another translator renders eines Nebenbefundes (F 95). Insofar as analysis addresses the fetish, the taking place of the fetish will only be an incident of analysis, a chance happening next to or beside (neben) its work of addressing suffering. And therefore the fetish will perhaps not arise, will not take place, as all English translations of Freud have added to the German, in analysis: “As a rule, therefore, the fetish made its appearance in analysis as a subsidiary finding,” the Standard Edition says (SE, 152, which merely copies Riviere [R, 204]; so too Frankland [F, 95]: “As a rule, then, their fetish came to light only incidentally during analysis,” which admits more of our stress on the incidental, but still interpolates “analysis” unnecessarily, still trying to show where the incident occurred). These are sentences that, attentive to Freud’s oscillations, we cannot yet cite wholly—translations between two places to which we cannot lend much credence. For we are seeing that in question in Freud’s words—where “in analysis” does not appear or, perhaps, even play a part, as we will see momentarily: Der Fetisch spielte also in der Regel die Rolle eines Nebenbefundes (SE, 152; GW, 311)—in question in these words is precisely the place where the fetish takes place: the subsidiary finding seems to be, precisely because it is subsidiary, exactly that which analysis did not address, something that perhaps takes place when analysis occurs but only takes place beside its proper place and proper concerns (even if analysis tries to address this place, to take place in its place). Both beside and besides analysis, can we then make Freud say that the fetish arises in analysis? Can we make this arise, when we might hear him differently? Perhaps we are seeing another reason why there is no need to expect that these people came to analysis on account of their fetish? Perhaps Freud is saying, not that we need not expect what will surely take place in analysis (despite what it usually addresses), but that, because the fetish will take place only beside analysis, only next to it, incidentally, we need not expect what will never take place? Namely, that that these people, insofar as they are fetishists, will ever come to analysis properly, will ever take their place in analysis properly, such that their fetish could properly arise? There is no need to expect—man braucht nicht zu erwarten: but, Freud makes us ask, who needed to expect this other than those who expected that the fetish would take place or arise again in analysis?

To be continued...

Note: This is from a paper I wrote for a class on Freud, taught by Diana Fuss. I’m citing the three English translations of this essay (by Joan Riviere, James Strachey [in a revised version of Riviere’s work], and the New Penguin version by Graham Frankland) while following the Standard Edition as close as possible, as well as the German. I use the following abbreviations: GW, “Fetischismus” in Gesammelte Werke. Bd. XIV, Werke aus den Jahren 1925-1931. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1991. p. 311-317; R, “Fetishism,” tr. Joan Riviere. In Sexuality and the Psyhology of Love. ed. Philip Rieff. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963. 204-209; SE, “Fetishism,” ed. and tr. James Strachey. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXI. London: Hogarth, 1961. p. 153-7; F, “Fetishism,” tr. Graham Frankland. in The Unconscious. ed. Adam Phillips. London: Penguin, 2002. 93-100. I’ll also be more freely quoting from “The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defense,” in the Standard Edition (cited above), Volume XXIII, 271-278, and “Die Ichspaltung im Abwehrvorgang,” in Gesammelte Werke, (cited above) Bd. XVII, 59-62.