Very soon the masturbator discovers that visions, once sufficient to produce the requisite excitement, have lost their power, and that the images need to be of a more extravagant salacity. In this way, the masturbator accustoms himself to extraordinary means of sexual gratification, so that attempts of normal copulation are no longer successful. When he attempts coition, he finds that reality is so much less than his imagination has led him to believe and that it is incapable of rousing his appetite.
Another injury done to the character of the masturbator is the guilty conscience. Almost every masturbator seems to feel that his acts degrade his manhood.[AR] He seems to know by intuition that his practice is injurious to his health and is morally wrong, because it is not in accord with the general plan of the creative power in the universe. Still in spite of himself, he continues to indulge in it. The will seems to have entirely lost its control. The masturbator is thus engaged in a conflict between moral conviction and sensual indulgence. Herein lies one of the most harmful effects of masturbation. It is undermining the individual’s will-power and destroying his character. Every masturbator resolves again and again, after each exercise, to resist henceforth the inclination and to overcome the temptation,[AS] each time with the same futile result. A paralyzing sensation arises in him, a feeling of shame and self-contempt overtakes him, because he has again failed to show enough energy, has again been too weak to resist the impulse. Finally these disturbing and paralyzing sensations give rise to the conviction of his being lacking in will-power and to the feeling of being generally deficient in everything else in life. In this way, excesses in masturbation harm the generative organs not only directly but also indirectly by first injuring the individual’s entire nervous system, and the different kinds of impotencies are only symptoms of the general neurasthenia.
Mental erethism.—The other kind of sexual excesses, those of mental erethism and frustrate eroticism, are even more harmful than excesses in copulation and masturbation.
By mental erethism or, as it is generally called, or rather misnamed, mental masturbation, is understood the filling of the phantasy with lascivious pictures. The dreamers give themselves up to sensual thoughts, allowing the mind to dwell constantly on sexual ideas, or erotic subjects of connubial enjoyments, conjuring before the unruly imagination extravagant and voluptuous visions and bawdry portrayals. The mind is fixed on images of individuals of the other sex, all in lustful positions, on pictures of the nude and of their genitals and of couples in actione coeundi.
The voluptuous day-dreamers, not needing material manipulation, may busy themselves with their favorite thoughts while seemingly conversing with their friends or on the most solemn occasions, as when listening to a sermon, etc. These erogenous thoughts, these libidinous images, these constant broodings on sex-matters create a habit which secures such a hold upon the individual that he cannot overcome it. The habit becomes so rooted in some instances that it is impossible for the patients to free their thoughts from fancies and pictures of lustful situations, while alone. Not even with the greatest efforts are they able to rid themselves from imagining erotic scenes of various kinds. Their minds are constantly preoccupied with a single engrossing subject to the exclusion of all other topics and are perpetually turned on sexual subjects, so that they are unable to concentrate their attention upon any other matters.
These perennial broodings on sex subjects keep the genital organs in a permanent state of sexual excitation and erethism. While in masturbation the material congestion of the generative organs is removed with each ejaculation, in mental erethism relief by ejaculation is missing. In the first stage of the vicious habit, the morbid mental lubricity and the lascivious unlicensed thoughts may occasionally provoke an ejaculation. But later on, when the genitals have undergone a certain weakness, ejaculation is not brought on any longer by these images, and the genital organs remain in a continual state of material congestion and nervous tension. In this way not only the colliculus and prostratic urethra, as in excesses of copulation and masturbation, but all the genital organs are in a state of chronic inflammation, which in time becomes the cause of impotence.
Tactile eroticism.—Worse than mental erethism is tactile eroticism. By tactile eroticism is understood, keeping the genital organs constantly irritated by dalliance with individuals of the other sex, stopping short of the act of copulation. On a walk through the city parks, any summer evening, or on a trip on the Sunday excursion boats, young men and women may be observed lying in each other’s arms in a continual caress, kissing, hugging, and fondling each other for hours, scarcely confining themselves within the limit of decency. These couples are actually exercising the sexual act, although they do not obtain sexual congress. These tremors and ecstasies, these amorous ardors and intoxications, these sensual joys which stimulate with rapture the higher centres and infuse the mind with sexual gratification, are all a part of the chain of the sexual act. The interruption of this chain of impulses short of copulation may satisfy the moral conscience of the young people, but it does not make such excesses less injurious. On the contrary, the generative organs are deprived of the relief which ejaculation lends to these organs. The genital tube remains surcharged with blood, and the hyperaemia subsides but slowly. The normal outlet of the sex-activity has been cut off by a special process of repression. If these frustrate stimulations are frequently repeated, they perpetuate the genital congestion, and through the retention of the secretions, a catarrh of the genital organs ensues, just as inflammations often originate in the mammary glands through the accumulation of the milk after weaning the child.
These perennial congestions are the cause of prostatic inflammations not seldom met with in young men who never were infected by gonorrhoea. The ulcerations of the cervix so often found in young girls and young mothers of one child may often be attributed to no other cause than to frustrate eroticism in the young girls and to onanism[AT] in the young mothers. The cervix is damaged in the same way as the soil, burned by the sun, in the absence of a beneficent rain, cracks and slits.
The frequently repeated engorgements of the blood vessels which do not receive the normal physiological relief by ejaculation provoke in both parties an exaggerated sex-sense and produce the emotions, known as satyriasis in men and as nymphomania in women. The exaggeration is followed later on by exhaustion of the libidinous impulses, and the men become hypochondriacs and impotent and women neurotic and shallow.
The continual congestion in the genitals causes also a continued feeling of heaviness and discomfort in the lower abdomen. Urination becomes frequent in both sexes, and in women menstruation is irregular. The patients complain of profuse pains in the back, legs, sides, and of weakness, nervousness and sleeplessness. These troubles cause general debility and a complete breakdown of the nervous system.