Wilhelm Stekel Contributions to the theory of fetishism and of perversion What did he say about fetishes? They become pathological only when they have pushed the whole love object into the background and themselves appropriate the function of a love object, What else did he say? when a lover satisfies himself with the possession of a woman's shoe and considers the woman herself as secondary or even disturbing and superfluous
Did he have any more comments?
Did Wilhelm Stekel have any more comments about fetishes?
Stekel contrasted what he called "normal fetishes" from extreme interests: "They become pathological only when they have pushed the whole love object into the background and themselves appropriate the function of a love object, e.g., when a lover satisfies himself with the possession of a woman's shoe and considers the woman herself as secondary or even disturbing and superfluous (p. 3). Stekel also deals differently than Freud with the problem of perversion. A lot of perversions are defense mechanisms (Schutzbauten) of the moral "self"; they represent hidden forms of asceticism. To Freud, the primal sexual venting meant health, while neuroses were created because of repressing sexual drives. Stekel, on the other hand, points out the significance of the repressed religious "self" in neuroses and indicates that apart from the repressed sexuality type, there is also a repressed morality type. This type is created in the conditions of sexual licentiousness while being opposed to doing it at the same time. In the latter instance, 'Stekel holds that fetichism is the patient's unconscious religion'. "Normal" fetishes for Stekel contributed more broadly to choice of lifestyle: thus "choice of vocation was actually an attempt to solve mental conflicts through the displacement of them", so that doctors for Stekel were "voyeurs who have transferred their original sexual current into the art of diagnosis".  Complaining of Freud's tendency to indiscretion, Ernest Jones wrote that he had told him "the nature of Stekel's sexual perversion, which he should not have and which I have never repeated to anyone". Stekel's "elaboration of the idea that everyone, and in particular every neurotic, has a peculiar form of sexual gratification which is alone adequate" may thus have been grounded in personal experience.  On sado-masochism, "Stekel has described the essence of the sadomasochistic act to be humiliation". CANNOTANSWER
points out the significance of the repressed religious "self" in neuroses and indicates that apart from the repressed sexuality type, there is also a repressed morality type.
Wilhelm Stekel (; 18 March 1868 – 25 June 1940) was an Austrian physician and psychologist, who became one of Sigmund Freud's earliest followers, and was once described as "Freud's most distinguished pupil". According to Ernest Jones, "Stekel may be accorded the honour, together with Freud, of having founded the first psycho-analytic society.". However, a phrase used by Freud in a letter to Stekel, "the Psychological Society founded by you," suggests that the initiative was entirely Stekel's. Jones also wrote of Stekel that he was "a naturally gifted psychologist with an unusual flair for detecting repressed material." Freud and Stekel later had a falling-out, with Freud announcing in November 1912 that "Stekel is going his own way". Stekel's works are translated and published in many languages.

Early life 
Stekel was born in 1868 in Boiany (Yiddish Boyan), Bukovina, then an eastern province of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but now divided between Ukraine in the north and Romania in the south. His parents, who were of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardic background, were relatively poor, a fact which restricted his life choices. However, the fact that he later used "Boyan" as one of his noms de plume seems to corroborate his own account of a happy childhood. 

After an abortive apprenticeship to a shoemaker, he completed his education, matriculating in 1887. He then enlisted as a "one-year-volunteer" with the 9th Company, Prince Eugen's Imperial Infantry Regiment No 41 in Czernowitz [today's Chernivtsi, Ukraine]. Under this scheme he was not obliged to do his military service until 1890, after completing the first part of his medical studies. He was therefore free to enrol at the University of Vienna in 1887, and studied under the eminent sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Theodor Meynert,  Emil Zuckerkandl, (whose son would later marry Stekel's daughter, Gertrude), Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke, Hermann Notnagel, and Max Kassowitz. 

From 1886 to 1896 Freud was head of the neurological department at the "1st Public Institute for Sick Children" (otherwise known as the Kassowitz Institute) of which Kassowitz had been the director since 1882. As Stekel worked at this institute during the summer semester of 1891, it seems probable that he knew about Freud then, and possibly was also introduced to him by one of the founder members of the Wednesday Psychological Society, Max Kahane, who also worked there. 

In 1890 Stekel completed the first six months of required military training, which he described as "the most disagreeable period of my life." No doubt in part because of this experience, in 1891 Stekel attended the International Pacifist Convention in Bern, funded by the well-known peace activist Berta von Suttner, and founded a University Pacifists Club supported not only by von Suttner, but also by Krafft-Ebing. 

Nevertheless, he was in such financial straits that at the instigation of his family he applied for a military scholarship. This bound him to another six years of service in the army, and also prohibited him from marrying until his release in 1897. He managed, however, by intentionally failing an examination and using a loophole in the regulations, to gain his release in 1894. 

Thereafter Stekel opened a successful doctor's practice, while as a sideline, following the example of his elder brother, the journalist Moritz Stekel, wrote articles and pamphlets covering issues around health and disease. In 1895 Stekel wrote an article, "Coitus in Childhood" which Freud cited in an article on "The Aetiology of Hysteria" in 1896. The same year Stekel cited Freud in an article on migraine, which, however, did not appear until 1897.

Career 

Stekel wrote a book called Auto-erotism: A Psychiatric Study of Onanism and Neurosis, first published in English in 1950. He is also credited with coining the term paraphilia to replace perversion. He analysed, among others, the psychoanalysts Otto Gross and A. S. Neill, as well as Freud's first biographer, Fritz Wittels. In his 1924 Freud biography, Wittels expressed his admiration for Stekel, to whose school he at that time adhered. This annoyed Freud who wrote in the margin of the copy of the book Wittels sent him 'Zu viel Stekel,' (Too much Stekel). Much later, Wittels, who by then had returned to the Freudian fold, still praised Stekel's "strange ease in understanding" but commented, "The trouble with Stekel's analysis was that it almost invariably reached an impasse when the so-called negative transference grew stronger". Stekel's autobiography was published posthumously in English in 1950.

Contributions to psychoanalytic theory

Theory of neurosis
Stekel made significant contributions to symbolism in dreams, "as successive editions of The Interpretation of Dreams attest, with their explicit acknowledgement of Freud's debt to Stekel": "the works of Wilhelm Stekel and others...since taught me to form a truer estimate of the extent and importance of symbolism in dreams".

Considering obsessional doubts, Stekel said,In anxiety the libido is transformed into organic and somatic symptoms; in doubt, the libido is transformed into intellectual symptoms. The more intellectual someone is, the greater will be the doubt component of the transformed forces. Doubt becomes pleasure sublimated as intellectual achievement.

Stekel wrote one of a set of three early "Psychoanalytic studies of psychical impotence" referred to approvingly by Freud: "Freud had written a preface to Stekel's book". Related to this may be Stekel's "elaboration of the idea that everyone, and in particular neurotics, has a peculiar form of sexual gratification which is alone adequate".

Freud credited Stekel as a potential forerunner when pondering the possibility that (for obsessional neurotics) "in the order of development hate is the precursor of love.  This is perhaps the meaning of an assertion by Stekel (1911 [Die Sprache des Traumes], 536), which at the time I found incomprehensible, to the effect that hate and not love is the primary emotional relation between men". The same work is credited by Otto Fenichel as establishing 'the symbolic significance of right and left...right meaning correct and left meaning wrong '.<ref>Otto Fenichel, 'The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 224</ref> Less flatteringly, Fenichel also associated it with "a comparatively large school of pseudo analysis which held that the patient should be 'bombarded' with 'deep interpretations,'" a backhanded tribute to the extent of Stekel's early following in the wake of his break with Freud.

Contributions to the theory of fetishism and of perversion
Stekel contrasted what he called "normal fetishes" from extreme interests: "They become pathological only when they have pushed the whole love object into the background and themselves appropriate the function of a love object, e.g., when a lover satisfies himself with the possession of a woman's shoe and considers the woman herself as secondary or even disturbing and superfluous (p. 3).
Stekel also deals differently than Freud with the problem of perversion. A lot of perversions are defense mechanisms (Schutzbauten) of the moral “self”; they represent hidden forms of asceticism. To Freud, the primal sexual venting meant health, while neuroses were created because of repressing sexual drives. Stekel, on the other hand, points out the significance of the repressed religious “self” in neuroses and indicates that apart from the repressed sexuality type, there is also a repressed morality type. This type is created in the conditions of sexual licentiousness while being opposed to doing it at the same time.
In the latter instance, 'Stekel holds that fetichism is the patient's unconscious religion'. "Normal" fetishes for Stekel contributed more broadly to choice of lifestyle: thus "choice of vocation was actually an attempt to solve mental conflicts through the displacement of them", so that doctors for Stekel were "voyeurs who have transferred their original sexual current into the art of diagnosis".

Complaining of Freud's tendency to indiscretion, Ernest Jones wrote that he had told him "the nature of Stekel's sexual perversion, which he should not have and which I have never repeated to anyone". Stekel's "elaboration of the idea that everyone, and in particular every neurotic, has a peculiar form of sexual gratification which is alone adequate" may thus have been grounded in personal experience.

On sado-masochism, "Stekel has described the essence of the sadomasochistic act to be humiliation".

Freud's critique of Stekel's theory of the origin of phobias
In The Ego and the Id, Freud wrote of the "high-sounding phrase, 'every fear is ultimately the fear of death'" — associated with Stekel (1908) — that it "has hardly any meaning, and at any rate cannot be justified", evidence perhaps (as with psychic impotence and love/hate) of his continuing engagement with the thought of his former associate.

On technique
Stekel "was also an innovator in technique...devis[ing] a form of short-term therapy called active analysis which has much in common with some modern form of counselling and therapy".

On aesthetics
Stekel maintained that "in every child there slumbered a creative artist". In connection with the psychoanalytic examination of the roots of art, however, he emphasised that "...the Freudian interpretation, no matter how far it be carried, never offers even the rudest criterion of 'artistic' excellence...we are investigating only the impulse which drives people to create". Analyzing the dreams of artists and non-artists alike, Stekel pointed out that "at the level of symbol production the poet does not differ from the most prosaic soul...Is it not remarkable that the great poet Goethe and the unknown little woman...should have constructed such similar dreams?".

Personal life
Stekel committed suicide in London by taking an overdose of Aspirin "to end the pain of his prostate and the diabetic gangrene". He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 29 June 1940. His ashes lie in section 3-V of the Garden of Remembrance but there is no memorial.

He was married twice and left two children. Stekel's autobiography was published posthumously, edited by his former personal assistant Emil Gutheil and his wife Hilda Binder Stekel. She died in 1969.

A biographical account appeared in The Self-Marginalization of Wilhem Stekel (2007) by Jaap Bos and Leendert Groenendijk, which also includes his correspondence with Sigmund Freud. See also L. Mecacci, Freudian Slips: The Casualties of Psychoanalysis from the Wolf Man to Marilyn Monroe, Vagabond Voices 2009, pp. 101

In popular culture
 He is referenced in the episodes 22 and 26 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
 A quote attributed to Stekel ("The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause.  The mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.") is referenced in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Cited by a character in the novel as a statement of Stekel's, it has sometimes been attributed to Salinger and may indeed be his paraphrase of a statement by the German writer Otto Ludwig (1813-1865), which Stekel himself has quoted in his writings: "Das Höchste, wozu er sich erheben konnte, war, für etwas rühmlich zu sterben; jetzt erhebt er sich zu dem Größern, für etwas ruhmlos zu leben." Cf. q:Wilhelm Stekel#Misattributed.

Selected publications
Stekel W. (1911). Die Sprache des Traumes: Eine Darstellung der Symbolik und Deutung des Traumes in ihren BezeihungenStekel W. (1911). Sexual Root of Kleptomania. J. Am. Inst. Crim. L. & CriminologyStekel W. (1917).  Nietzsche und Wagner, eine sexualpsychologische Studie zur Psychogenese des Freundschaftsgefühles und des FreundschaftsverratesStekel W. (1921). The beloved ego, foundations of the new study of the psyche
Stekel W. (1921) The depths of the soul; psycho-analytical studies
Stekel W. (1922). Compulsion and Doubt (Zwang und Zweifel) Liveright
Stekel W. (1922). Disguises of love ; psycho-analytical sketches
Stekel W. (1922). The Homosexual Neuroses
Stekel W. (1922). Bi-sexual love; the homosexual neurosis (2003 reprint: Bisexual Love. Fredonia)
Stekel W. (1922). Sex and dreams; the language of dreams
Stekel W. (1926). Frigidity in women Vol. II. Grove Press
Stekel W., Boltz O.H. (1927). Impotence in the Male: The Psychic Disorders of Sexual Function in the Male. Boni and Liveright
Stekel W., Van Teslaar J.S. (1929).  Peculiarities of Behavior: Wandering Mania, Dipsomania, Cleptomania, Pyromania and Allied Impulsive Disorders. H. Liveright
Stekel W. (1929).  Sadism and Masochism: The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty. Liveright
Stekel W. (1943). The Interpretation of Dreams: New Developments and Technique. Liveright
Stekel W., Gutheil E. (1950). The Autobiography of Wilhelm Stekel. Liveright
Stekel W., Boltz O.H. (1950). Technique of Analytical Psychotherapy. Live right
Stekel W. (1952). Disorders of the Instincts and the Emotions -- The Parapathaic Disorders, Vol. 1 and Sexual Aberrations -- The Phenomena of Fetishism in Relation to Sex, Volume 2. (Two volumes in one.) Liveright
Stekel W., Boltz O.H. (1999 reprint). Conditions of Nervous Anxiety and Their TreatmentStekel W. (1952). Patterns of Psychosexual Infantilism Grove Press Books and Evergreen Books
Stekel W. (1961). Auto-erotism: a psychiatric study of masturbation and neurosis''. Grove Press

References

Further reading

External links

 Wilhelm Stekel's article "Poetry and Neurosis. Psychology of the Artist", Heksis 2/2010
 Kazimierz Dąbrowski "Remarks on Wilhelm Stekel's Active Psychoanalysis", Heksis 2/2010
 

1868 births
1940 deaths
1940 suicides
People from Novoselytsia Raion
Austrian Jews
Austrian psychologists
Freudians
Austrian sexologists
Austrian psychoanalysts
History of psychiatry
Suicides in London
Jewish psychoanalysts
Austrian emigrants to the United Kingdom
Drug-related suicides in England
The comments section is a feature on most online blogs, news websites, and other websites in which the publishers invite the audience to comment on the published content. This is a continuation of the older practice of publishing letters to the editor. Despite this, comments sections can be used for more discussion between readers.

History 

Various methods have been used for written commentary on published works.  In Germany during the 1500s it was common practice for academics to post copies of their ideas on public places, such as church doors (see for example Luther's Ninety-five Theses). Newspapers and magazines later came to publish letters to the editor. With the advent of computers, the bulletin board system allowed publication of information, and users to comment on or discuss posts.

The first online website to offer a comments section was Open Diary, which added reader comments shortly after its launch in October 1998. Readers of blog posts on the site were able to post public or private comments to the authors directly on the page. The history of comment sections on news articles started in 1998 with The Rocky Mountain News, as they were one of the first newspapers to add online comments on the same page.

While today comments sections are common, newspapers were hesitant to add them at first. In the late 2000s, comments sections were rapidly added to news sites, between 2007 and 2008 there was a 42% growth in the number of top circulating news sites with comments sections. In 2008, 75% of the top 100 most circulated newspapers had comments sections. In 2010, The American Journalism Review stated that news sites should not have anonymous comments sections. Following that statement Reuters, ESPN, The Huffington Post, Popular Science, Sporting News, and USA Today either made comments gated or removed them.

Closing of comments sections 
Vice Media closed its comment section in 2016. On closing, they noted "we had to ban countless commenters over the years for threatening our writers and subjects, doxxing private citizens, and engaging in hate speech against pretty much every group imaginable."
NPR closed its comment section in 2016. One of the stated reasons for this was that "commenters were behaving inappropriately and harassing other commenters".
IMDb closed its comment section (the discussion boards, not the user reviews section) in 2017. On closing, one journalist noted that the comments section on that website was "notoriously known for hosting some of the most pointless and hateful commentary around".

YouTube 
In February 2019, YouTube began deleting and demonetizing channels and videos based on their comments section. This came after Youtuber "MattsWhatItIs" made a video exposing a ring of videos exploiting minors. He explained that videos featuring minors would have comments sections made up mostly of people making explicit and suggestive comments about those featured in the video and, in some cases, sharing links to child pornography. After advertisers began pulling ads off of the site, Youtube began deleting and demonetizing videos deemed "violating terms and services".

Types 
There are two types of comment sections, gated and non-gated. Gated comments sections require users to give the website some information before they can post a comment. Many news websites such as The New York Times and most social media websites are gated, as users have to log in and post under a username that identifies them. Comments sections can also be accessed in different ways, either directly attached to an article or video, or through a separate web page. Websites such as The New York Times found that user participation increased when the comments section was located directly below.

Non-gated comment sections don’t require users to provide information before posting. This lack of an entry barrier can allow more people to post and potentially lead to a discussion with more viewpoints covered. This anonymity, however, is believed by some to lead to uncivil behavior and a higher likelihood of seeing or experiencing verbal aggression in the comments. In response to this, both the Illinois and New York State senates have considered bills to limit non-gated comment sections. The Illinois bill would have incentivized websites to gate their comments requiring users to provide their real name, a home address and a confirmed IP address. The New York Bill would have made websites remove anonymous commenting.

Behavior and moderation 
Comments section across the internet have gained a reputation for being rude, argumentative, and being generally described as "toxic". Toxic comments refer to rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable comments that are likely to make one leave a discussion. Comments sections have been known for frequent arguing and disagreements. The reason for this may be due to the fact that those with strongly-held beliefs are more likely to comment and reply to others when the comments section is widely opposed to them. Likewise, users tend to stay silent when their views are widely supported. Furthermore, thanks to the internet's principle element being the ability to stay anonymous, many people realise they can be more aggressive to others without fear of real-world accountability. In addition to this, people are more likely to comment on news articles when they are more personally affected. Participation in comments is usually low in frequency, as most will only comment on articles twice, and are more likely to comment on issues that have a determinable end.

If a comment section is moderated, it is typically done in any one of the three ways: post-moderation, pre-moderation, or through a flagging system. Comments that are post-moderated are checked after they've been posted. Pre-moderated comments are checked before they are made publicly visible. Comments that are moderated with a flagging system can be marked, or "flagged", by other users for official website moderators to look at. In some cases, both the publishers and users can offer varying degrees of moderation in comments sections through voting systems and reporting options.

In February 2017, Google-founded technology incubator Jigsaw unveiled a tool based on artificial intelligence, called Perspective API, to identify toxic comments in online forums.

In September 2017, Disqus, a company that provides comment-hosting services, analysed over 92 million comments written by 2 million people over 16 months, on about 7,000 forums that used its service, and concluded that 25% of all commenters made at least one toxic comment. The study was carried out using Google's Perspective API. In the United States, the time of the day at which maximum proportion of comments were toxic was 3 am. However, Engadget denounced the underlying API, bringing attention to its discriminatory classifications phrases like "I am a gay black woman" were scored as 87% toxic. It described the algorithm as "sexist, racist and ableist".

Comments sections have often been known for containing highly sexist and misogynistic statements. In a study involving feminist articles on several news websites, it was found that many were not supportive or contributing to the feminist subject. Many comments were found to be intentionally combative and considered some form of Internet trolling.

Good moderation of news websites is expensive. However, most news sites do moderate. Studies of newspaper website and blog comments have shown incivility to be present in as many as 25% of comments. Most publishers and writers have been found to tolerate and accept incivility in the comments section. This is due to the fact that incivility is subjective, and to remove those comments can lead to accusations of bias and unfair censorship.

See also
Blog comment hosting service
Reading the Comments

References

User-generated content
Criticism
Web 2.0 neologisms Spam in blogs (also called blog spam, comment spam, or social spam) is a form of Spamdexing. (Note that blog spam also has another meaning, specifically when a blog author creates posts without adding any informational or educational value solely for publishing them on other websites.) By posting random comments on other blog websites (usually automated process.) By copying other websites' content and using it on free-to-use publishing services like Blogger and WordPress or publicly accessible wikis, digital guest books, and internet forums.

In those posts and comments, spammers use these methods to artificially inflate their website ranking by linking back (also called backlink) to their web pages. Backlink help search algorithms to determine the popularity of a web page, which contributes a major role for search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing to decide a web page ranking on a certain search query. Normally, a web page with more backlinks is considered the most valuable. This helps the spammer's website to list ahead of other sites for certain searches, which help them to increase the number of visitors to their website.

History
This type of spam originally appeared in internet guestbooks, where spammers repeatedly filled a guestbook with links to their own sites and irrelevant comments, to increase their search engine rankings.  If an actual comment is given it is often just "cool page", "nice website", or keywords of the spammed link.

In 2003, spammers began to take advantage of the open nature of comments in the blogging software like Movable Type by repeatedly placing comments to various blog posts that provided nothing more than a link to the spammer's commercial web site. Jay Allen created a free plugin, called MT-BlackList, for the Movable Type weblog tool (versions prior to 3.2) that attempted to alleviate this problem. Many blogging packages now have methods of preventing or reducing the effect of blog spam built in due to its prevalence, although spammers too have developed tools to circumvent them. Many spammers use special blog spamming tools like trackback submitter to bypass comment spam protection on popular blogging systems like Movable Type, Wordpress, and others.

Other phrases typically used in the comment content can be copied comments from other websites, "nice article", plagiarised parts from books, unfinished sentences, nonsense words (usually to defeat a minimum comment length restriction) or the same link repeated.

Application-specific implementations
Particularly popular software products such as Movable Type and MediaWiki have developed or included anti-spam measures, as spammers focus more on targeting those platforms due to their prevalence on the Internet. Whitelists and blacklists that prevent certain IPs from posting, or that prevent people from posting content that matches certain filters, are common defences although most softwares tend to use a combination of the variety of different techniques documented below.

The goal in every potential solution is to allow legitimate users to continue posting their comments (and often even add links to their comments, as that is considered by some to be a valuable aspect of any comments section, when the links are relevant or related to the article or content) whilst preventing all spam links or irrelevant comments from being viewable to the site's owner and visitors.

See also

References

External links
 Project Honeypot Directory of Content Spammers
 Gilad Mishne, David Carmel and Ronny Lempel: Blocking Blog Spam with Language Model Disagreement, PDF. From the First International Workshop on Adversarial Information Retrieval (AIRWeb'05) Chiba, Japan, 2005.

Spamming
Black hat search engine optimization