[126] Byron's espousal (note, by the way, the implications underlying the use of such an expression in this connection) of the cause of Greek independence may be cited as a classical example of this form of sublimation.
[127] Cp. below, Ch. XII.
[128] Cp. Otto Rank, "Die Lohengrinsage." 87. ff., Ernest Jones "Papers on Psycho-Analysis," 233.
[129] "Beiträge zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens." Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, 1910, II, 389.
[130] Indeed it frequently happens that a boy will call up the image of some girl whom he sincerely loves in order that he may the better resist the temptation to practise masturbation.
[131] For an interesting and suggestive study of the influence of a high degree of this dissociation upon married life and upon the general attitude towards questions of sex and of morality, the reader is referred to J. D. Beresford's novel "God's Counterpoint".
[132] If this is so (and indeed perhaps in any case), it is evident that the difference in question must be taken into consideration in dealing with such questions as those affecting the pre-marital chastity or unchastity of men, the "double moral standard" in sexual matters etc.
[133] Among the causes of the greater condemnation of masturbation in men one of great importance consists in the fear of castration which—as result of threats by parents and nurses and otherwise—frequently becomes intimately associated with the onanistic act. Closely connected with this is the fact that the significance and consequences of masturbation are more obvious in the male than in the female—the emission of semen and the lassitude that follows this being very liable to produce a sense of loss and injury, thus easily arousing or reinforcing the fears connected with the ideas of castration. Perhaps a further factor of a more general nature is played by the greater freedom of narcissistic impulses in women (Cp. Freud, "Zur Einführung des Narzißmus," Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse, VI. I.). The relatively greater persistence of infantile self-love shows itself clearly in the greater freedom of the milder manifestations of homosexuality in women (the homosexual partner being a projection of the lover's self; Cp. above p. 103) and may very well also be the cause of women's more natural attitude to masturbation as a form of auto-erotic gratification.
[134] Cp. Ernest Jones, "Papers on Psycho-Analysis" 558, the whole chapter being important in this connection.
[135] Since there is a very general tendency for physical superiority in men to arouse sexual feelings in the woman, whereas inferiority in men as regards size, strength, health, etc., is apt to arouse a sympathetic, motherly affection in the woman.