[There's a lot on Freud available on the web, but you might want to take a tour of the Freud Museum in Vienna or the Freud Museum in London.
Unsuitable Substitutes for the Sexual Object - Fetishism, from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905)
There are some cases which are quite specially remarkable - those in which the normal sexual object is replaced by another which bears some relation to it, but is entirely unsuited to serve the normal sexual aim. From the point of view of classification, we should no doubt have done better to have mentioned this highly interesting group of aberrations of the sexual instinct among the deviations in respect of the sexual object. [. . .]
What is substituted for the sexual object is some part of the body (such as the foot or hair) which is in general very inappropriate for sexual purposes, or some inanimate object which bears an assignable relation to the person whom it replaces and preferably to that person's sexuality (e.g. a piece of clothing or underlinen). Such substitutes are with some justice likened to the fetishes in which savages believe that their gods are embodied.
A transition to those cases of fetishism in which the sexual aim, whether normal or perverse, is entirely abandoned is afforded by other cases in which the sexual object is required to fulfil a fetishistic condition - such as the possession of some particular hair-colouring or clothing, or even some bodily defect - if the sexual aim is to be attained. No other variation of the sexual instinct that borders o the pathological can lay so much claim to our interest as this one, such is the peculiarity of the phenomena to which it gives rise. Some degree of diminution in the urge towards the normal sexual aim (an executive weakness of the sexual apparatus) seems to be a necessary pre-condition in every case. The point of contact with the normal is provided by the psychologically essential overvaluation of the sexual object, which inevitably extends to everything that is associated with it. A certain degree of fetishism is thus habitually present in normal love, especially in those stages of it in which the normal sexual aim seems unattainable or its fulfillment prevented.
The situation only becomes pathological when the longing for the fetish passes beyond the point of being merely a necessary condition attached to the sexual object and actually takes the place of the normal aim, and, further, when the fetish becomes detached from a particular individual and becomes the sole sexual object. These are, indeed, the general conditions under which mere variations of the sexual instinct pass over into pathological aberrations.
In other cases the replacement of the object by a fetish is determined by a symbolic connection of thought, of which the person concerned is usually not conscious. It is not always possible to trace the course of these connections with certainty. (The foot, for instance, is an age-old sexual symbol which occurs even in mythology; no part the part played by fur as a fetish owes its origin to an association with the hair of the mons Veneris.) None the less even symbolism such as this is not always unrelated to sexual experiences in childhood.
Touching and Looking
A certain about of touching is indispensable [. . . ] The same holds true of seeing - an activity that is ultimately derived from touching. Visual impressions remain the most frequent pathway along which libidinal excitation is aroused; indeed, natural selection counts upon the accessibility of this pathway [. . .] when it encourages the development of beauty in the sexual object. The progressive concealment of the body which goes along with civilization keeps sexual curiosity awake. This curiosity seeks to complete the sexual object by revealing its hidden parts. It can, however, be diverted ('sublimated') in the direction of art [. . .] This pleasure in looking (scopophilia) becomes a perversion (a) if it is restricted exclusively to the genitals, or (b) if it is connected with the overriding or disgust [. . .] or (c) if, instead of being preparatory to the normal sexual aim, it supplants it.
Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming (1907)
We laymen have always been curious to know [. . .] from what sources that strange being, the creative writer, draws his material, and how he manages to make such an impression on us with it and to arouse in us emotions of which, perhaps, we had not even thought ourselves capable.
Should we not look for the first traces of imaginary activity as early as in childhood? The child's best-loved and most intense occupation is with his play or games. Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or rather, re-arranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him? [. . . ] The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real. [. . .]
The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously - that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion - while separating it sharply from reality. [. . .] The unreality of the writer's imaginative world, however, has very important consequences for the technique of his art; for many things which, if they were real, could give no enjoyment, can do so in the play of phantasy, and many excitements which, in themselves, are actually distressing, can become a source of pleasure for the hearers and spectators at the performance of a writer's work.
[Freud then talks about day-dreaming, a fantasy-substitute for playing - adults cannot play like children, so they fantasize, an activity which works as wish-fulfillment, as "a correction of unsatisfying reality." Freud claims that fantasies fall into two main groups: ambitious wishes, or erotic ones (he says that in "young women the erotic wishes predominate almost exclusively, for their ambition is as a rule absorbed by erotic trends."]
So much for phantasies. And now for the creative writer. May we really attempt to compare the imaginative writer with the 'dreamer in broad daylight,' and his creations with day-dreams? [Freud qualifies his discussion here: he speaks only of writers who seem to originate their own material, particularly novelists and story-writers.] One feature above all cannot fail to strike us about the creations of these story-writers; each of then has a hero who is a centre of interest. [Freud describes this hero as indomitable, protected by Providence.] It seems to me, however, that through this revealing characteristic of invulnerability we can immediately recognize His Majesty the Ego, the hero alike of every day-dream and of every story.
Other typical features of these egocentric stories point to the same kinship. The fact that all the women in the novel invariably fall in love with the hero can hardly be looked on as a portrayal of reality, but it is easily understood as a necessary constituent of a day-dream. [. . .]
[Freud posits that creative writers turn to fiction in order to recapture, or compensate for, the lost childhood realm of play . . . just as adult day-dreamers do. Even myths, he suspects,] are distorted vestiges of the wishful phantasies of who nations, the secular dreams of youthful humanity.
[. . .] You will remember how I have said that the day-dreamer carefully conceals his phantasies from other people because he feels he has reasons for being ashamed of them. I should now add that even if he were to communicate them to us he could give us no pleasure by his disclosures. [. . .] But when a creative writer presents his plays to us or tells us what we are inclined to take to be his personal day-dreams, we experience a great pleasure, and one which probably arises from the confluence of many sources. How the writer accomplishes this is his innermost secret; the essential ars poetica lies in the technique of overcoming the feeling of repulsion in us which is undoubtedly connected with the barriers that rise between each single ego and the others. We can guess two of the methods used by this technique. The writer softens the character of his egoistic day-dreams by altering and disguising it, and he bribes us by the purely formal - that is, aesthetic - yield of pleasure which he offers us in the presentation of his fantasies. [. . . ] In my opinion, all the aesthetic pleasure which a creative writer affords us has the character of a fore-pleasure [analogous to sexual fore-play], and our actual enjoyment of an imaginative work proceeds from a liberation of tensions in our minds. It may even be that not a little of this effect is due to the writer's enabling us thenceforward to enjoy our own day-dreams without self-reproach or shame.
About the Oedipus Complex, from The Ego and the Id (1923)
[Freud is discussing the difficulties of ego-identification in children, which includes sexual identification.] The intricacy of the problem is due to two factors: the triangular character of the Oedipus situation and the constitutional bisexuality of each individual.
In its simplified form the case of a male child may be described as follows. At a very early age the little boy develops an object-cathexis for his mother, which originally related to the mother's breast [. . .] the boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him. For a time these two relationships proceed side by side, until the boy's sexual wishes in regard to his mother become more intense and his father is perceived as an obstacle to them; from this the Oedipus complex originates. His identification with his father then takes on a hostile colouring and changes into a wish to get ride of his father in order to take his place with his mother. Henceforward his relation to his father is ambivalent [. . .]
Along with the demolition of the Oedipus complex, the boy's object-cathexis of his mother must be given up. Its place may be filled by own of two things: either an identification with his mother or an intensification of his identification with his father. We are accustomed to regard the latter outcome as the more normal; it permits the affectionate relation to the mother to be in a measure retained. In this way the dissolution of the Oedipus complex wold consolidate the masculinity in a boy's character. [. . .]
The broad general outcome of the sexual phase dominated by the Oedipus complex may, therefore, be taken to be the forming of a precipitate in the ego, consisting of these two identifications in some way united with each other. This modification of the ego retains its special position; it confronts the other contents of the ego as an ego-ideal or super-ego. (Freud's italics.)
[Freud explains the super-ego as an "energetic reaction-formation" against the identification choices involved in the Oedipus complex. Its relation to the ego includes the] prohibition: 'You may not be like this (like your father) - that is, you may not do all that he does; some things are his prerogative.' Clearly the repression of the Oedipus complex was no easy task. The child's parents, and especially his father, were perceived as the obstacle to a realization of his Oedipus wishes; so his infantile ego fortified itself for the carrying out of the repression by erecting this same obstacle within itself. It borrowed strength to do this, so to speak, from the father [. . . .] The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on - in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt. [This concept will be developed by Lacan as the signature of the Symbolic, the Name-{or Law-}-of-the-Father.]
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