to make themselves felt, but, owing to the physical sexual feelings having
been trained into a foreign channel, these new and more normal sex
associations remain of a purely ideal and emotional character, without the
strong sensual impulses with which under healthy conditions they tend to
be more and more associated as puberty passes on into adolescence or
mature adult life. I am fairly certain that in many women, often highly
intellectual women, the precocious excess in masturbation has been a main
cause, not necessarily the sole efficient cause, in producing a divorce in
later life between the physical sensuous impulses and the ideal emotions.
The sensuous impulse having been evolved and perverted before the
manifestation of the higher emotion, the two groups of feelings have
become divorced for the whole of life. This is a common source of much
personal misery and family unhappiness, though at the same time the clash
of contending impulses may lead to a high development of moral character.
When early masturbation is a factor in producing sexual inversion it
usually operates in the manner I have here indicated, the repulsion for
normal coitus helping to furnish a soil on which the inverted impulse may
develop unimpeded.
This point has not wholly escaped previous observers, though they
do not seem to have noted its psychological mechanism. Tissot
stated that masturbation causes an aversion to marriage. More
recently, Loiman ("Ueber Onanismus beim Weibe,"
_Therapeutische
Monatshefte_, April, 1890) considered that masturbation in women,
leading to a perversion of sexual feeling, including inability to
find satisfaction in coitus, affects the associated centres.
Smith Baker, again ("The Neuropsychical Element in Conjugal
Aversion," _Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease_, September,
1892), finds that a "source of marital aversion seems to lie in
the fact that substitution of mechanical and iniquitous
excitations affords more thorough satisfaction than the mutual
legitimate ones do," and gives cases in point.
Savill, also, who
believes that masturbation is more common in women than is
usually supposed, regards dyspareunia, or pain in coition, as one
of the signs of the habit.
Masturbation in women thus becomes, as Raymond and Janet point
out (_Les Obsessions_, vol. ii, p. 307) a frequent cause of
sexual frigidity in marriage. These authors illustrate the train
of evils which may thus be set up, by the case of a lady, 26
years of age, a normal woman, of healthy family, who, at the age
of 15, was taught by a servant to masturbate. At the age of 18
she married. She loved her husband, but she had no sexual
feelings in coitus, and she continued to masturbate, sometimes
several times a day, without evil consequences. At 24 she had to
go into a hospital for floating kidney, and was so obliged to
stop masturbating. She here accidentally learnt of the evil
results attributed to the habit. She resolved not to do it again,
and she kept her resolution. But while still in hospital she fell
wildly in love with a man. To escape from the constant thought of
this man, she sought relations with her husband, and at times
masturbated, but now it no longer gave her pleasure.
She wished
to give up sexual things altogether. But that was easier said
than done. She became subject to nervous crises, often brought on
by the sight of a man, and accompanied by sexual excitement. They
disappeared under treatment, and she thereupon became entirely
frigid sexually. But, far from being happy, she has lost all
energy and interest in life, and it is her sole desire to attain
the sexual feelings she has lost. Adler considers that even when
masturbation in women becomes an overmastering passion, so far as
organic effects are concerned it is usually harmless, its effects
being primarily psychic, and he attaches especial significance to
it as a cause of sexual anæsthesia in normal coitus, being,
perhaps, the most frequent cause of such anæsthesia.
He devotes
an important chapter to this matter, and brings forward numerous
cases in illustration (Adler, _Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes_, pp. 93-119, also 21-23). Adler
considers that the frequency of masturbation in women is largely
due to the fact that women experience greater difficulties than
men in obtaining sexual satisfaction, and so are impelled by
unsatisfying coitus to continue masturbation after marriage. He
adds that partly from natural shyness, partly from shame of
acknowledging what is commonly accounted a sin, and partly from
the fear of seeming disgusting or unworthy of sympathy in the
doctor's eyes, women are usually silent on this matter, and very
great tact and patience may be necessary before a confession is
obtained.
On the psychic side, no doubt, the most frequent and the most
characteristic result of persistent and excessive masturbation is a morbid
heightening of self-consciousness without any co-ordinated heightening of
self-esteem.[340] The man or woman who is kissed by a desirable and
desired person of the opposite sex feels a satisfying sense of pride and
elation, which must always be absent from the manifestations of
auto-erotic activity.[341] This must be so, even apart from the
masturbator's consciousness of the general social attitude toward his
practices and his dread of detection, for that may also exist as regards
normal coitus without any corresponding psychic effects.
The masturbator,
if his practice is habitual, is thus compelled to cultivate an artificial
consciousness of self-esteem, and may show a tendency to mental arrogance.
Self-righteousness and religiosity constitute, as it were, a protection
against the tendency to remorse. A morbid mental soil is, of course,
required for the full development of these characteristics. The habitual
male masturbator, it must be remembered, is often a shy and solitary
person; individuals of this temperament are especially predisposed to
excesses in all the manifestations of auto-erotism, while the yielding to
such tendencies increases the reserve and the horror of society, at the
same time producing a certain suspicion of others. In some extreme cases
there is, no doubt, as Kraepelin believes, some decrease of psychic
capacity, an inability to grasp and co-ordinate external impressions,
weakness of memory, deadening of emotions, or else the general phenomena
of increased irritability, leading on to neurasthenia.
I find good reason to believe that in many cases the psychic influence of
masturbation on women is different from its effect on men. As Spitzka
observed, although it may sometimes render women self-reproachful and
hesitant, it often seems to make them bold. Boys, as we have seen, early
assimilate the tradition that self-abuse is "unmanly"
and injurious, but
girls have seldom any corresponding tradition that it is
"unwomanly," and
thus, whether or not they are reticent on the matter, before the forum of
their own conscience they are often less ashamed of it than men are and
less troubled by remorse.
Eulenburg considers that the comparative absence of bad effects
from masturbation in girls is largely due to the fact that,
unlike boys, they are not terrorized by exaggerated warnings and
quack literature concerning the awful results of the practice.
Forel, who has also remarked that women are often comparatively
little troubled by qualms of conscience after masturbation,
denies that this is due to a lower moral tone than men possess
(Forel, _Die Sexuelle Frage_, p. 247). In this connection, I may
refer to History IV, recorded in the Appendix to the fifth volume
of these _Studies_, in which it is stated that of 55
prostitutes
of various nationalities, with whom the subject had had
relations, 18 spontaneously told him that they were habitual
masturbators, while of 26 normal women, 13 made the same
confession, unasked. Guttceit, in Russia, after stating that
women of good constitution had told him that they masturbated as
much as six or ten times a day or night (until they fell asleep,
tired), without bad results, adds that, according to his
observations, "masturbation, when not excessive, is, on the
whole, a quite innocent matter, which exerts little or no
permanent effect," and adds that it never, in any case, leads to
_hypochondria onanica_ in women, because they have not been
taught to expect bad results (_Dreissig Jahre Praxis_, p. 306).
There is, I think, some truth--though the exceptions are
doubtless many--in the distinction drawn by W.C.
Krauss
("Masturbational Neuroses," _Medical News_, July 13, 1901): "From
my experience it [masturbation] seems to have an opposite effect
upon the two sexes, dulling the mental and making clumsy the
physical exertions of the male, while in the female it quickens
and excites the physical and psychical movements.
The man is
rendered hypoesthetic, the woman hyperesthetic."
In either sex auto-erotic excesses during adolescence in young men and
women of intelligence--whatever absence of gross injury there may
be--still often produce a certain degree of psychic perversion, and tend
to foster false and high-strung ideals of life.
Kraepelin refers to the
frequency of exalted enthusiasms in masturbators, and I have already
quoted Anstie's remarks on the connection between masturbation and
premature false work in literature and art. It may be added that excess in
masturbation has often occurred in men and women whose work in literature
and art cannot be described as premature and false. K.P.
Moritz, in early
adult life, gave himself up to excess in masturbation, and up to the age
of thirty had no relations with women. Lenau is said--
though the statement
is sometimes denied--to have been a masturbator from early life, the habit
profoundly effecting his life and work. Rousseau, in his _Confessions_,
admirably describes how his own solitary, timid, and imaginative life
found its chief sexual satisfaction in
masturbation.[342] Gogol, the
great Russian novelist, masturbated to excess, and it has been suggested
that the dreamy melancholy thus induced was a factor in his success as a
novelist. Goethe, it has been asserted, at one time masturbated to excess;
I am not certain on what authority the statement is made, probably on a
passage in the seventh book of _Dichtung und Wahrheit_, in which,
describing his student-life at Leipzig, and his loss of Aennchen owing to
his neglect of her, he tells how he revenged that neglect on his own
physical nature by foolish practices from which he thinks he suffered for
a considerable period.[343] The great Scandinavian philosopher, Sören
Kierkegaard, suffered severely, according to Rasmussen, from excessive
masturbation. That, at the present day, eminence in art, literature, and
other fields may be combined with the excessive practice of masturbation
is a fact of which I have unquestionable evidence.
I have the detailed history of a man of 30, of high ability in a
scientific direction, who, except during periods of mental
strain, has practiced masturbation nightly (though seldom more
than once a night) from early childhood, without any traceable
evil results, so far as his general health and energy are
concerned. In another case, a schoolteacher, age 30, a hard
worker and accomplished musician, has masturbated every night,
sometimes more than once a night, ever since he was at school,
without, so far as he knows, any bad results; he has never had
connection with a woman, and seldom touches wine or tobacco.
Curschmann knew a young and able author who, from the age of 11
had masturbated excessively, but who retained physical and mental
freshness. It would be very easy to refer to other examples, and
I may remark that, as regards the histories recorded in various
volumes of these _Studies_, a notable proportion of those in
which excessive masturbation is admitted, are of persons of
eminent and recognized ability.
It is often possible to trace the precise mechanism of the relationship
between auto-erotic excitement and intellectual activity. Brown-Séquard,
in old age, considered that to induce a certain amount of sexual
excitement, not proceeding to emission, was an aid to mental work. Raymond
and Janet knew a man considering himself a poet, who, in order to attain
the excitation necessary to compose his ideal verses, would write with one
hand while with the other he caressed his penis, though not to the extent
of producing ejaculation.[344] We must not believe, however, that this is
by any means the method of workers who deserve to be accepted seriously;
it would be felt, to say the least, as unworthy. It is indeed a method
that would only appeal to a person of feeble or failing mental power. What
more usually happens is that the auto-erotic excitement develops, _pari
passu_ and spontaneously, with the mental activity and at the climax of
the latter the auto-erotic excitement also culminates, almost or even
quite spontaneously, in an explosion of detumescence which relieves the
mental tension. I am acquainted with such cases in both young men and
women of intellectual ability, and they probably occur much more
frequently than we usually suspect.
In illustration of the foregoing observations, I may quote the
following narrative, written by a man of letters:
"From puberty
to the age of 30 (when I married), I lived in virgin continence,
in accord with my principle. During these years I worked
exceedingly hard--chiefly at art (music and poetry).
My days
being spent earning my livelihood, these art studies fell into my
evening time. I noticed that productive power came in
periods--periods of irregular length, and which certainly, to a
partial extent, could be controlled by the will.
Such a period of
vital power began usually with a sensation of melancholy, and it
quickened my normal revolt against the narrowness of conventional
life into a red-hot detestation of the paltriness and pettiness
with which so many mortals seem to content themselves. As the
mood grew in intensity, this scorn of the lower things mixed with
and gave place to a vivid insight into higher truths. The
oppression began to give place to a realization of the eternity
of the heroic things; the fatuities were seen as mere fashions;
love was seen as the true lord of life; the eternal romance was
evident in its glory; the naked strength and beauty of men were
known despite their clothes. In such mood my work was produced;
bitter protest and keen-sighted passion mingled in its building.
The arising vitality had certainly deep relation to the
periodicity of the sex-force of manhood. At the height of the
power of the art-creative mood would come those natural emissions
with which Nature calmly disposes of the unused force of the
male. Such emissions were natural and healthy, and not exhaustive
or hysterical. The process is undoubtedly sane and protective,
unless the subject be unhealthy. The period of creative art power
extended a little beyond the end of the period of natural seed
emission--the art work of this last stage being less vibrant, and
of a gentler force. Then followed a time of calm natural rest,
which gradually led up to the next sequence of melancholy and
power. The periods certainly varied in length of time, controlled
somewhat by the force of the mind and the mental will to create;
that is to say, I could somewhat delay the natural emission, by
which I gained an extension of the period of power."
How far masturbation in moderately healthy persons living without normal
sexual relationships may be considered normal is a difficult question only
to be decided with reference to individual cases. As a general rule, when
only practiced at rare intervals, and _faute de mieux_, in order to obtain
relief for physical oppression and mental obsession, it may be regarded as
the often inevitable result of the unnatural circumstances of our
civilized social life. When, as often happens in mental degeneracy,--and
as in shy and imaginative persons, perhaps of neurotic temperament, may
also sometimes become the case,--it is practiced in preference to sexual
relationships, it at once becomes abnormal and may possibly lead to a
variety of harmful results, mental and physical.[345]
It must always be remembered, however, that, while the practice of
masturbation may be harmful in its consequences, it is also, in the
absence of normal sexual relationships, frequently not without good
results. In the medical literature of the last hundred years a number of
cases have been incidentally recorded in which the patients found
masturbation beneficial, and such cases might certainly have been
enormously increased if there had been any open-eyed desire to discover
them. My own observations agree with those of Sudduth, who asserts that
"masturbation is, in the main, practiced for its sedative effect on the
nervous system. The relaxation that follows the act constitutes its real
attraction.... Both masturbation and sexual intercourse should be classed
as typical sedatives."[346]
Gall (_Fonctions du Cerveau_, 1825, vol. iii, p.
235) mentioned a
woman who was tormented by strong sexual desire, which she
satisfied by masturbation ten or twelve times a day; this caused
no bad results, and led to the immediate disappearance of a
severe pain in the back of the neck, from which she often
suffered. Clouston (_Mental Diseases_, 1887, p. 496) quotes as
follows from a letter written by a youth of 22: "I am sure I
cannot explain myself, nor give account of such conduct.
Sometimes I felt so uneasy at my work that I would go to the
water-closet to do it, and it seemed to give me ease, and then I
would work like a hatter for a whole week, till the sensation
overpowered me again. I have been the most filthy scoundrel in
existence," etc. Garnier presents the case of a monk, aged 33,
living a chaste life, who wrote the following account of his
experiences: "For the past three years, at least, I have felt,
every two or three weeks, a kind of fatigue in the penis, or,
rather, slight shooting pains, increasing during several days,
and then I feel a strong desire to expel the semen.
When no
nocturnal pollution follows, the retention of the semen causes
general disturbance, headache, and sleeplessness. I must confess
that, occasionally, to free myself from the general and local
oppression, I lie on my stomach and obtain ejaculation. I am at
once relieved; a weight seems to be lifted from my chest, and
sleep returns." This patient consulted Gamier as to whether this
artificial relief was not more dangerous than the sufferings it
relieved. Gamier advised that if the ordinary _régime_ of a
well-ordered monastry, together with anaphrodisiac sedatives,
proved inefficacious, the manoeuvre might be continued when
necessary (P. Garnier, _Célibat et Célibataires_, 1887, p. 320).
H.C. Coe (_American Journal of Obstetrics_, p. 766, July, 1889)
gives the case of a married lady who was deeply sensitive of the
wrong nature of masturbation, but found in it the only means of
relieving the severe ovarian pain, associated with intense sexual
excitement, which attended menstruation. During the intermenstrual period the temptation was absent.
Turnbull knew a
youth who found that masturbation gave great relief to feelings
of heaviness and confusion which came on him periodically; and
Wigglesworth has frequently seen masturbation after epileptic
fits in patients who never masturbated at other times. Moll
(_Libido Sexualis_, Bd. I, p. 13) refers to a woman of 28, an
artist of nervous and excitable temperament, who could not find
sexual satisfaction with her lover, but only when masturbating,
which she did once or twice a day, or oftener; without
masturbation, she said, she would be in a much more nervous
state. A friend tells me of a married lady of 40, separated from
her husband on account of incompatibility, who suffered from
irregular menstruation; she tried masturbation, and, in her own
words, "became normal again;" she had never masturbated
previously. I have also been informed of the case of a young
unmarried woman, intellectual, athletic, and well developed, who,
from the age of seven or eight, has masturbated nearly every
night before going to sleep, and would be restless and unable to
sleep if she did not.
Judging from my own observations among both sexes, I should say that in
normal persons, well past the age of puberty, and otherwise leading a
chaste life, masturbation would be little practiced except for the
physical and mental relief it brings. Many vigorous and healthy unmarried
women or married women apart from their husbands, living a life of sexual
abstinence, have asserted emphatically that only by sexually exciting
themselves, at intervals, could they escape from a condition of nervous
oppression and sexual obsession which they felt to be a state of hysteria.
In most cases this happens about the menstrual period, and, whether
accomplished as a purely physical act--in the same way as they would
soothe a baby to sleep by rocking it or patting it--or by the co-operation
of voluptuous mental imagery, the practice is not cultivated for its own
sake during the rest of the month.
In illustration of the foregoing statements I will here record a
few typical observations of experiences with regard to
masturbation. The cases selected are all women, and are all in a
fairly normal, and, for the most part, excellent, state of
health; some of them, however, belong to somewhat neurotic
families, and these are persons of unusual mental ability and
intelligence.
OBSERVATION I.--Unmarried, aged 38. She is very vigorous and
healthy, of a strongly passionate nature, but never masturbated
until a few years ago, when she was made love to by a man who
used to kiss her, etc. Although she did not respond to these
advances, she was thrown into a state of restless sexual
excitement; on one occasion, when in bed in this restless state,
she accidentally found, on passing her hand over her body, that,
by playing with "a round thing" [clitoris] a pleasurable feeling
was produced. She found herself greatly relieved and quieted by
these manipulations, though there remained a feeling of tiredness
afterward. She has sometimes masturbated six times in a night,
especially before and after the menstrual period, until she was
unable to produce the orgasm or any feeling of pleasure.
OBSERVATION II.--Unmarried, aged 45, of rather nervous
temperament. She has for many years been accustomed, usually
about a week before the appearance of the menses, to obtain
sexual relief by kicking out her legs when lying down. In this
way, she says, she obtains complete satisfaction.
She never
touches herself. On the following day she frequently has pains
over the lower part of the abdomen, such pains being apparently
muscular and due to the exertion.