The standard translation used in English (although it is in fact a Greek word) of Freud, Sigmund’s concept of ‘Besetzung’, which in German ranges in meaning from military occupation of a town to filling a bus. Freud’s translator James Strachey took the term from Greek, contrary to Freud’s own practice of using ordinary words. In Freud’s work cathexis refers to the process of libidinal energy---i.e. affective, emotional, as well as sexual energy drawn from within the psyche---being attached to a specific object. A shoe fetishism, then, to take an extreme example, is somebody whose cathexis is directed at shoes. The French translation of ‘Besetzung’ as ‘investissement’ (investment) is in many ways a happier choice as it captures Freud’s sense that cathexis is an investment of psychical energy in a specific object. It should in this sense be contrasted with mere excitation, which is spontaneous and instinctual and not in receipt of input from the unconscious.