There is, therefore, no valid proof of the harmfulness of total abstinence in a healthy individual without a hereditary taint. If total abstinence ever harmed anybody, the patient was either a congenial weakling or has acquired his lack of resistance through indulgence in early eroticism. A perfectly healthy man is never injured by abstinence. At least there is no sufficient proof that it ever did. But there are unmistakable proofs that total abstinence does not harm the individual. The best proof is furnished by many chaste and healthy women. Few women seem to suffer from total abstinence. The rejoinder that woman’s sexual desires are very feeble, that the female sex has no sexual needs, that it is more or less frigid, are mere masculine assertions without objective proofs. Women writers, who ought to know best the feelings of their own sex, claim just the opposite. Johanna Elberskirchen (in Sexualempfindung bei Weib und Mann) has well satirized the masculine impertinence which tries to teach woman what her emotions are or are not. The fact that many a young woman runs the risk, in the present state of sex-morality, of ruining her entire future by the indulgence in extra-marital sexuality, under conditions where pecuniary or other considerations are entirely out of the question, would tend to show that the sexual impulse is by no means so weak in women, as many would lead us to believe. It is simply incomprehensible that the female sexual needs should be less urgent than those of the male sex. Woman has by far the greater part of labor in the sex-performance. With the ejaculation the man’s biological part is at an end. He may leave now the scene of his activity, while the woman’s part just begins and is continued through nine months of pregnancy and about a year of nursing of the new being. Dr. M. Glasgow, as a woman perfectly competent to judge, says (Review of Reviews, 1912, p. 319): “The strong sexuality displayed by a sex whose contribution to the germ of the race is discharged in a brief moment of enjoyment must be greatly less than exhibited by the other party, whose contribution is made through long months of patient endurance.” The prominent part woman takes in the propagation of the race forces to the logical conclusion that her erotic needs are of necessity stronger, although, as Ellen Key puts it, they may be calmer than that of man’s. Woman is able in a quite extraordinary way to produce the impression that she herself is really non-sexual and that her sexuality is only a concession to man. But the seeming reluctance of the female is intended to increase the sexual activity in both mates. The passivity of the female throughout nature is only apparent, it is the passivity of the magnet. As a matter of fact, women experience during the orgasm an ecstasy of feeling greater than in men, involving the whole system in an ecstatic nervous erethism.
Still the normal woman can stand absolute continued continence without any injury to her body and mind (e. g. nuns). Hence there is no reason why the human male, if left to himself, and nothing comes to disturb the natural course of his sexual development, should be harmed by abstinence. Until the impulse of permanent mating enters into play, and this comes relatively late in life, abstinence will harm neither men nor women, if they live in an atmosphere free from the influence of artificial stimulation.
If the animal kingdom could be taken as proof for or against total abstinence in man, we find that pet animals, as canary birds or dogs, who rarely have the opportunity to exercise their sexual powers, are generally as healthy and live as long as those living in freedom.
Hence the claim that abstinence is the cause of impotence has absolutely no ground to stand upon. If the young man kept his thoughts pure and avoided exciting amusements which create emotional disturbances, impotence would be an unusual occurrence. If the young woman would avoid puttering over her genitalia, pelvic obsession with its accompanied hysterical conditions of hyperesthetic or paresthetic erethism would be rarely met with.
The only cause for impotence remains sexual excesses. They are very seldom the immediate cause of the impotence. But they leave such weakness in the genital organs and in the nervous system that it requires only the least disturbance to provoke total impotence. Such disturbances, as remorse over the formerly committed irregularities, or distrust in one’s powers, or the mental attitude of the woman to whom sexual approaches are a matter of real or assumed indifference, are sufficient to render the weakened neurotic man total impotent.
Next to excesses, gonorrhoea, in a great many cases, leaves the genitals in a similar weakened condition. Gonorrhoea often causes acute inflammation of the prostatic urethra, and the mucous membrane not seldom undergoes the changes characteristic of chronic catarrh. The sensory nerves reflexly keep the centres for erection and ejaculation in a condition of hyperesthesia. This condition finally leads to the paralysis of the centres and nerves, and reflex-erection cannot be produced.
Psychic causes of impotence are mental fatigue, overwork, preoccupation with mathematical or financial problems, fear,[AU] anger, grief, and disgusting sights or odors. Prolonged excitement before attempting coition may also lead to temporary impotence.
The other causes of impotence are the symptomatic ones. Impotence is met with in tabes dorsalis, diabetes, nephritis, obesitas, oxalic diathesis, haemorrhoids, fissures of the anus, seat worms, etc. Excesses in the consumption of certain drugs may also lead to impotence. Such drugs are alcohol,[AV] morphine, cocaine, tobacco and the bromides.
Etiology of impotence in women.—The same causes, at work in producing impotence in men, are also affecting impotence in women. The only modification lies in the fact that impotence of copulation, which is the impotence par excellence in men, is of a negligible quantity in women. The main mode of impotence found in women is that of experiencing libido. This impotence may be either idiopathic or also caused by excesses as the impotence of copulation in men. Idiopathic impotence of libido is oftener met with in women than in men. Still even in women this insensibility is much rarer than is generally believed. The explanation for the greater frequency of impotence of libido in women than in men has first been given by Freud (Sig. Drei Abhandlungen über Sexualtheorie).
The autoerotic activity of the erogenous zones in children is the same in both sexes. It may be asserted, says Freud, that the sexuality of the little girl has entirely a male character. The chief erogenous zone in the female child is the clitoris which is homologous to the male penis. The frequent spontaneous discharges of sexual excitement in little girls manifest themselves in twitching and erections of the clitoris. But while in the male the erogenous zone remains the same after puberty as before, namely in the penis, puberty is distinguished in the girl by a wave of repression of the clitoris-sexuality and in the change of the erogenous zones. The rôle of the clitoris is henceforth to conduct the excitation to the adjacent parts. It often takes some time to affect this transference. During this time the young woman remains anaesthetic to stimulations of the internal organs as vagina or cervix. This anaesthesia may become permanent if the clitoris zone refuses to transfer its excitability. This anaesthesia in women is often only apparent and local. They are anaesthetic at the vagina and cervix, but not at all unexcitable through the clitoris or even through other erogenous zones, such as the lips or the nipples. The women are impotent of experiencing libido in coition but potent when the clitoris is excited by any other stimuli.