CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XVI
Wide diffusion of auto-erotic phenomena — Their significance in relation to civilization — Physiological and pathological relations — Their diffusion among animals and among primitive peoples — The auto-erotic instrumentarium — Causes of auto-erotism and of masturbation — New views regarding the masturbation of sucklings — The sexual tension of puberty — Sexual toxins — Mechanical stimuli in sexual tension — Sedative and anodyne effects of masturbation — Seduction as the cause of masturbation — Group-masturbation in schools, etc. — Diseases as causes of masturbation — Inheritance of the tendency to masturbation — Masturbation in the female sex — Its frequency — Psychical onanism — Sexual day-dreams — Erotic correspondence — Consequences of masturbation — Exaggerated views of former times — Analysis of the harmfulness of masturbation — Changes of the psyche and of the will — Explanation of certain phenomena of our time as due to masturbation — Physical consequences of masturbation — Local changes in the genital organs — Abnormalities in the libido sexualis — Treatment and cure of masturbation — Clothing — Trousers and masturbation — Doctor Bernhard Faust’s book — Various medical methods employed in the treatment of masturbation.
Sexual neurasthenia — Its connexion with masturbation — Relative independence of its symptoms — Abnormal increase of the sexual impulse (sexual hyperæsthesia) — Causes — Peculiar form of nocturnal increase of the sexual impulse — Satyriasis and priapism — Nymphomania — Causes of Nymphomania — Examples — Treatment of sexual hyperæsthesia — Abnormal diminution of the sexual impulse (sexual anæsthesia) — Causes — Frequency of sexual frigidity in women — Causes — Vaginismus — Treatment of frigidity in women — Frigidity and prostitution — Frigidity and marriage — Erotomania — Seminal emissions — Lallemand’s distinction between normal and abnormal pollutions — Morbid pollutions — Diurnal pollutions — Abnormalities of the genital organs and of the sensation during pollutions — Spermatorrhœa and prostatorrhœa — Pollutions in women — Older and more recent observations — Medical treatment of pollutions.
Impotence — Its principal forms — Malformations of the genital organs — Castration — Gonorrhœal diseases — Azoospermia — Smallness and injuries of the penis — Incomplete erections — Central and peripheral causes of erection — Functional impotence — General disorders — Deleterious influence of alcohol and tobacco — Nervous impotence — The psychical impotence of the wedding night — Examples — Mental work and potency — The effect of sudden mental impressions — Reflective impotence — Rousseau’s Venetian adventure — Neurasthenic impotence — Its forms and symptoms — Impotence due to abstinence — Senile impotence — Treatment of impotence.
Other phenomena of sexual neurasthenia (gastric disorders, etc.) — Sexual hypochondria — The treatment of sexual neurasthenia.
CHAPTER XVI
Almost as widely diffused as venereal diseases are the abnormal sexual manifestations to be considered in this chapter under the general title of “States of Sexual Irritability and Sexual Weakness.” They arise in part out of the very nature of mankind; in part they are the external manifestations of a natural impulse, of an instinctive excitement, in which form we see them also in other animals; in part they are connected with man’s spiritual nature, with civilization. We may, indeed, say that the duplex nature of man, his bodily-spiritual dualism, is most clearly reflected in this phenomenon of his sexuality. In this respect he is wholly human.
It is a great service performed by Havelock Ellis[396] that he was the first to direct attention to the “involuntary” manifestations of the sexual impulse peculiar to mankind, occurring without relation to the other sex. He gives them the distinctive name of “auto-erotism,” by which he means “the phenomenon of spontaneous sexual excitement manifesting itself without any stimulus, direct or indirect, supplied by any other person.” For the most part, therefore, the normal manifestations of art and poetry belong also to the province of auto-erotism, in so far as they are the result of erotic perception; and the same is true of all those manifestations which I have termed “sexual equivalents,” all transformations of sexual energy, such as religio-sexual phenomena, the transformation of individual love into the general love of mankind, the stimuli of fashion, and every powerful activity by means of which sexual tension finds a mode of discharge, even though this sexual relationship is usually of an unconscious nature, as in the dance, in society games, and other enjoyments.
In my essay on “The Perverse,” pp. 14, 15 (Berlin, 1905), I have shown that there is no doubt that these sexual equivalents, taken in their entirety, have played an extremely important part in the course of the evolution of mankind; that they represent the natural outlets for feelings of tension and excessive forces of sexual origin; and that they should not be unnecessarily suppressed, unless we wish to evoke much worse and far more dangerous variations of their activity—as, for example, in the political sphere.