“When I was about twenty-six years of age, a female friend informed me that she had masturbated already for several years, and was so much enslaved by the habit that she suffered seriously from its ill-effects. I listened to her account with sympathy and interest, but felt rather sceptical, and I resolved to make the attempt on myself, with the intention of understanding the matter better, so that I might be able to help my friend. With a little trouble I succeeded in awakening what had hitherto slumbered in me unknown. I intentionally allowed the habit to become stronger, and one night—for I usually did it just before going to sleep, never in the morning—I really experienced an extremely agreeable sensation. But the next morning my conscience was aroused, and I felt pains also in the back of the head and along the spine. For a time I discontinued the habit, but later began it again, masturbating with considerable regularity once a month, a few days after each menstruation.... The habit overcame me with alarming rapidity, and I soon became more or less its slave.... In conclusion, I must say that masturbation has proved to me one of the blind chances in my life’s history, out of which I have derived many valuable experiences.”
Frequently local morbid changes in or near the genital organs lead to the practice of masturbation, such as skin troubles, intestinal worms, phimosis, inflammatory states of the penis or near the entrance of the vagina, prurigo and other itching affections of the penis, constipation, urinary anomalies, etc. Further, mental disorders, epilepsy, and degenerative nerve troubles, are frequent causes of masturbation. Masturbation has been observed after epileptic paroxysms in patients who at other times never masturbate. There is no doubt that neurasthenia powerfully predisposes to masturbation. Excessive masturbation is almost always the consequence, not the cause, of associated neurasthenia; it is “the manifestation of a disease in course of development or of a permanently existing degenerative predisposition.”[407] To these cases of invincible, habitual, excessive masturbation Oppenheim’s view applies—that the disposition to onanism is often inherited. A characteristic instance of this is offered by an observation of Block’s (Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 240) in the case of a little girl, who began to masturbate at the early age of two years, and had probably inherited this tendency from her mother and grandmother, for they had both masturbated throughout life, whilst the grandmother had actually died in an asylum of “masturbatory insanity.” In the majority of cases in which masturbation makes its first appearance in sucklings we have to do with such an inheritance. In many cases the peculiar oscillatory movements of sucklings may merely be the expression of the sense of general comfort, as Fürbringer believes, and may have nothing to do with actual masturbation; but, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that veritable masturbation may be observed in the first and second years of life. Havelock Ellis, J. P. West, and Louis Mayer have reported such cases. In children somewhat older than this—from three years upwards—seduction and suggestion certainly play a great part. The author of “Splitter” was told by a professor that, when visiting an institution for small children in St. G[allen], he saw a girl about three years of age who was making suspicious movements. The matron, whose attention was called to the matter, said that almost all babies were already infected when they first came to the institution (“Splitter,” p. 375).
Another disputed question relates to the diffusion of masturbation in the female sex. Is the practice commoner or less common among women than among men? Metchnikoff[408] is of opinion that in girls it is much less common than in boys, because sexual excitability generally develops much later in the female sex. Female monkeys masturbate only in exceptional cases, whereas in male monkeys masturbation is very common. The circumstance which Metchnikoff adduces in further support of his view of the rarity of masturbation in women—that, namely, most girls are enlightened regarding sexual sensibility only after marriage—proves very little, because the sensations aroused in woman by masturbation are of a very different nature from those produced by coitus, and coitus often first makes them acquainted with entirely new sensations. Tissot regards masturbation as commoner in women than in men; Deslandes believed that there was no difference between the sexes. Lawson Tait, Spitzka, and Dana, inclined rather to Metchnikoff’s view as to the greater rarity of the practice among women. Albert Eulenburg considers masturbation “not quite so common among young women as among young men,” but still “far more common than parents, teachers, and the laity of both sexes as a rule imagine.”[409] Havelock Ellis considers that after puberty masturbation is commoner in women because men can then much more readily obtain gratification in a normal manner by means of intercourse with the other sex. Otto Adler estimates the frequency of masturbation to be very great, because he regards it as the principal cause of deficient sexual sensibility in women, which latter condition he also believes to be extremely common, although he does not go so far as to accept Rohleder’s enormous proportion of 95 masturbators in every 100 women (!).[410] L. Löwenfeld, who characterizes Rohleder’s and Berger’s (99 %) estimates as exaggerations, considers that the frequency of masturbation in women is not so great as in men.[411] In reality, masturbation, given similar circumstances and causes, is probably diffused to an approximately equal extent among both sexes.
But this relates only to peripheral-mechanical masturbation; from this “psychical onanism” has rightly been separated—that form of masturbation in which, simply by ideas, without the assistance of manual stimulation of the genital organs, sexual excitement is caused and the orgasm is induced. Psychical onanism, of which Eduard Reich[412] remarked that our own time nourishes it to the fullest possible extent, develops in the majority of cases out of masturbation proper. In this form the imagination is tasked with representing all the factors of normal sexual gratification. The simple physical act suffices only in the first beginnings of this vice. Every practised onanist understands that he must soon call his imagination to his aid in order to produce sexual gratification, and that ultimately ideas alone dominate the entire libido, and the orgasm often enough terminates an act which in every respect has throughout remained purely ideal.
“So great is the power of imagination,” remarks the experienced Rouband, “that quite alone, without the assistance of physical stimulation, it can produce the venereal orgasm, with ejaculation of the semen, as happened to one of my fellow-students every time he thought of his beloved.”[413]
Hammond even knew an actual sect of such “onanists by means of simple ideal unchastity,” who formed a sort of club or society, and who were known to one another by certain signs.[414] A patient related to him that in his thoughts of women whom he met, or those who were sitting opposite to him in the railway-carriage, he was accustomed to undress them in imagination; he then would represent to himself very plainly their genital organs, and during this representation he experienced very active voluptuous sensations, culminating in ejaculation. Löwenfeld has also observed several such cases. Eulenburg speaks of an “ideal cohabitation.” The ideas are usually of a lascivious nature, but this is not always the case. Von Schrenck-Notzing reports the case of a lady twenty years of age in whom the simple idea of men, but also agreeable sensory perceptions, such as theatrical scenes, or musical impressions, or beautiful pictures, gave rise to the sexual orgasm.[415]
Allied with psychical onanism is the brooding over sexual ideas—the delectatio morosa of the theologians—and erotic excitement associated with dream-imaginations, or “sexual day-dreams” (Havelock Ellis). This is the spinning out of a continuous erotic history with any hero or any heroine, which is carried on from day to day. Most commonly this occurs in bed before going to sleep. Sexual activities form the material of these histories. We often find carefully worked out and more or less erotic day-dreams in young men, and especially in young women, frequently containing perverse elements. This dreaming, according to Havelock Ellis, does not necessarily lead to masturbation, although it often induces seminal discharges. It occurs both in healthy and in abnormal persons, especially in imaginative individuals. Rousseau experienced such erotic day-dreams. The American author Garland, in his novel, “Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly,” has admirably described the part played by a circus-rider in the erotic day-dreams of a normal healthy girl during the period of puberty.[416]
In close relationship with these psychical-onanistic day-dreams there stands another phenomenon, to which, as far as I know, I was the first to refer, which I have denoted by the term erotographomania.[417] There are numerous men and women who induce their lovers—male or female, as the case may be—prostitutes, masseuses, etc., to write to them letters with a sexually stimulating content; or also, as very frequently occurs, they themselves write such letters, containing numerous obscenities. Such correspondence, filled with ardent erotism, seems recently to have made its appearance as a peculiar refinement of sexuality; this also has the effect of a kind of psychical onanism. The interchange of obscene letters of this character recently played a part in the trial of two homosexual individuals in East Prussia. There exists, also, a comparatively blameless, more or less physiological, erotographomania of the time of puberty, in which most passionate letters are written to imaginary lovers, and the still obscure sexual impulse finds a satisfaction in these erotic imaginations.
After this brief account of the various forms and varieties of masturbation, we now turn to consider the consequences of the practice. In the course of time there has been a remarkable change of views in respect of this matter. The true founder of the scientific literature of masturbation, Tissot, in his celebrated monograph (“Masturbation; or, the Treatment of the Diseases that result from Self-Abuse”; St. Petersburg, 1774), regarded masturbation as the evil of all evils, and deduced from it all possible severe troubles. His book bears as motto the verse by Von Canitz:
“Wenn schnöde Wollust dich erfüllt,
So werde durch ein Schreckensbild
Verdorrter Totenknochen
Der Kitzel unterbrochen.”