[332]. “Now everything in the world which is damp, he created from sperma, but this is the soma.” Bṛihadâraṇyaka-Upaniṣhad, 1–4.
[333]. The question is whether this significance was a secondary development. Kuhn seems to assume this. He says (“Herabkunft des Feuers,” p. 18): “However, together with the meaning of the root manth already evolved, there has also developed in the Vedas the conception of ‘tearing off’ due naturally to the mode of procedure.”
[334]. Examples in Frobenius: “Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes.”
[335]. See in this connection Stekel: “Die sexuelle Wurzel der Kleptomanie,” Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 1908.
[336]. Even in the Roman Catholic church at various places the custom prevailed for the priest to produce once a year the ceremonial fire.
[337]. I must remark that the designation of onanism as a “great discovery” is not merely a play with words on my part. I owe it to two young patients who pretended that they were in possession of a terrible secret; that they had discovered something horrible, which no one had ever known before, because had it been known great misery would have overtaken mankind. Their discovery was onanism.
[338]. One must in fairness, however, consider that the demands of life, rendered still more severe by our moral code, are so heavy that it simply is impossible for many people to attain that goal which can be begrudged to no one, namely the possibility of love. Under the cruel compulsion of domestication, what is left but onanism, for those people possessed of an active sexuality? It is well known that the most useful and best men owe their ability to a powerful libido. This energetic libido longs for something more than merely a Christian love for the neighbor.
[339]. I am fully conscious that onanism is only an intermediate phenomenon. There always remains the problem of the original division of the libido.
[340]. In connection with my terminology mentioned in the previous chapter, I give the name of autoerotic to this stage following the incestuous love. Here I emphasize the erotic as a regressive phenomenon; the libido blocked by the incest barrier regressively takes possession of an older way of functioning anterior to the incestuous object of love. This may be comprehended by Bleuler’s terminology, Autismus, that is, the function of pure self-preservation, which is especially distinguished by the function of nutrition. However, the terminology “autismus” cannot very well be longer applied to the presexual material, because it is already used in reference to the mental state of dementia praecox where it has to include autoerotism plus introverted desexualized libido. Autismus designates first of all a pathological phenomenon of regressive character, the presexual material, however, of a normal functioning, the chrysalis stage.