A fetish is an inanimate object believed to have magical powers. More broadly speaking, we can think of a fetish as something obsessively or excessively admired. In both of these senses, a fetish has meaning attributed to it that may not be deserved or expected.

In the sexual sense, a fetish is an ordinarily non-sexual object or body part which is connected with sexual desire or gratification. For example, when a shoe generates sexual excitement, we would consider it to be a fetish object since shoes are not ordinarily connected with sex.

Freud writes a short essay on “Fetishism” (1927) in which he claims that “the fetish is a substitute for the woman’s (the mother’s) penis that the little boy once believed in and [...] does not want to give up.” He comes to this surprising conclusion as a part of his theory of the castration complex. Put very simply, Freud claims that small boys understand the penis to be the default genital organ. When they realize that females do not have penises, they conclude that women must have been castrated. This causes them to fear that they too may be castrated one day. To alleviate this fear, they fantasize that their mothers do in fact have penises and therefore have not been castrated. A part of growing up is the abandonment of this fantasy, but the sexual fetish object acts as a substitute for this phantom penis for some individuals.