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AUTO-EROTISM: A STUDY OF THE SPONTANEOUS MANIFESTATIONS OF
THE SEXUAL IMPULSE.
I.
Definition of Auto-erotism--Masturbation only Covers a Small
Portion of the Auto-erotic Field--The Importance of this Study,
especially To-day--Auto-erotic Phenomena in Animals--Among
Savage and Barbaric Races--The Japanese _rin-no-tama_ and
other Special Instruments for Obtaining Auto-erotic Gratification--Abuse
of the Ordinary Implements and Objects of Daily Life--The
Frequency of Hair-pin in the Bladder--The Influence of Horse-exercise
and Railway Traveling--The Sewing-machine and the Bicycle--Spontaneous
Passive Sexual Excitement--_Delectatio Morosa_--Day-dreaming--_Pollutio_--Sexual
Excitement During Sleep--Erotic Dreams--The Analogy of Nocturnal
Enuresis--Differences in the Erotic Dreams of Men and Women--The
Auto-erotic Phenomena of Sleep in the Hysterical--Their Frequently
Painful Character.
By "auto-erotism" I mean the phenomena of spontaneous
sexual emotion generated in the absence of an external stimulus
proceeding, directly or indirectly, from another person. In
a wide sense, which cannot be wholly ignored here, auto-erotism
may be said to include those transformations of repressed
sexual activity which are a factor of some morbid conditions
as well as of the normal manifestation of art and poetry,
and, indeed, more or less color the whole of life.
Such a definition excludes the normal sexual excitement aroused
by the presence of a beloved person of the opposite sex; it
also excludes the perverted sexuality associated with an attraction
to a person of the same sex; it further excludes the manifold
forms of erotic fetichism, in which the normal focus of sexual
attraction is displaced, and voluptuous emotions are only
aroused by some object--hair, shoes, garments, etc.--which,
to the ordinary lover, are of subordinate--though still, indeed,
considerable--importance.[176] The auto-erotic field remains
extensive; it ranges from occasional voluptuous day-dreams,
in which the subject is entirely passive, to the perpetual
unashamed efforts at sexual self-manipulation witnessed among
the insane. It also includes, though chiefly as curiosities,
those cases in which individuals fall in love with themselves.
Among auto-erotic phenomena, or on the borderland, we must
further include those religious sexual manifestations for
an ideal object, of which we may find evidence in the lives
of saints and ecstatics.[177] The typical form of auto-erotism
is the occurrence of the sexual orgasm during sleep.
I do not know that any apology is needful for the invention
of the term "auto-erotism."[178] There is no existing
word in current use to indicate the whole range of phenomena
I am here concerned with. We are familiar with "masturbation,"
but that, strictly speaking, only covers a special and arbitrary
subdivision of the field, although, it is true, the subdivision
with which physicians and alienists have chiefly occupied
themselves. "Self-abuse" is somewhat wider, but
by no means covers the whole ground, while for various reasons
it is an unsatisfactory term. "Onanism" is largely
used, especially in France, and some writers even include
all forms of homosexual connection under this name; it may
be convenient to do so from a physiological point of view,
but it is a confusing and antiquated mode of procedure, and
from the psychological standpoint altogether illegitimate;
"onanism" ought never to be used in this connection,
if only on the ground that Onan's device was not auto-erotic,
but was an early example of withdrawal before emission, or
_coitus interruptus_.
While the name that I have chosen may possibly not be the
best, there should be no question as to the importance of
grouping all these phenomena together. It seems to me that
this field has rarely been viewed in a scientifically sound
and morally sane light, simply because it has not been viewed
as a whole. We have made it difficult so to view it by directing
our attention on the special group of auto-erotic facts--that
group included under masturbation--which was most easy to
observe and which in an extreme form came plainly under medical
observation in insanity and allied conditions, and we have
wilfully torn this group of facts away from the larger group
to which it naturally belongs. The questions which have been
so widely, so diversely, and--it must unfortunately be added--often
so mischievously discussed, concerning the nature and evils
of masturbation are not seen in their true light and proportions
until we realize that masturbation is but a specialized form
of a tendency which in some form or in some degree normally
affects not only man, but all the higher animals. From a medical
point of view it is often convenient to regard masturbation
as an isolated fact; but in order to understand it we must
bear in mind its relationships. In this study of auto-erotism
I shall frequently have occasion to refer to the old entity
of "masturbation," because it has been more carefully
studied than any other part of the auto-erotic field; but
I hope it will always be borne in mind that the psychological
significance and even the medical diagnostic value of masturbation
cannot be appreciated unless we realize that it is an artificial
subdivision of a great group of natural facts.
The study of auto-erotism is far from being an unimportant
or merely curious study. Yet psychologists, medical and non-medical,
almost without exception, treat its manifestations--when they
refer to them at all--in a dogmatic and off-hand manner which
is far from scientific. It is not surprising, therefore, that
the most widely divergent opinions are expressed. Nor is it
surprising that ignorant and chaotic notions among the general
population should lead to results that would be ludicrous
if they were not pathetic. To mention one instance known to
me: a married lady who is a leader in social-purity movements
and an enthusiast for sexual chastity, discovered, through
reading some pamphlet against solitary vice, that she had
herself been practicing masturbation for years without knowing
it. The profound anguish and hopeless despair of this woman
in face of what she believed to be the moral ruin of her whole
life cannot well be described. It would be easy to give further
examples, though scarcely a more striking one, to show the
utter confusion into which we are thrown by leaving this matter
in the hands of blind leaders of the blind. Moreover, the
conditions of modern civilization render auto-erotism a matter
of increasing social significance. As our marriage-rate declines,
and as illicit sexual relationships continue to be openly
discouraged, it is absolutely inevitable that auto-erotic
phenomena of one kind or another, not only among women but
also among men, should increase among us both in amount and
intensity. It becomes, therefore, a matter of some importance,
both to the moralist and the physician, to investigate the
psychological nature of these phenomena and to decide precisely
what their attitude should be toward them.
I do not purpose to enter into a thorough discussion of all
the aspects of auto-erotism. That would involve a very extensive
study indeed. I wish to consider briefly certain salient points
concerning auto-erotic phenomena, especially their prevalence,
their nature, and their moral, physical, and other effects.
I base my study partly on the facts and opinions which during
the last thirty years have been scattered through the periodical
and other medical literature of Europe and America, and partly
on the experience of individuals, especially of fairly normal
individuals.
Among animals in isolation, and sometimes in freedom--though
this can less often be observed--it is well known that various
forms of spontaneous solitary sexual excitement occur. Horses
when leading a lazy life may be observed flapping the penis
until some degree of emission takes place. Welsh ponies, I
learn from a man who has had much experience with these animals,
habitually produce erections and emissions in their stalls;
they do not bring their hind quarters up during this process,
and they close their eyes, which does not take place when
they have congress with mares. The same informant observed
that bulls and goats produce emissions by using their forelegs
as a stimulus, bringing up their hind quarters, and mares
rub themselves against objects. I am informed by a gentleman
who is a recognized authority on goats, that they sometimes
take the penis into the mouth and produce actual orgasm, thus
practicing auto-fellatio. As regards ferrets, the Rev. H.
Northcote states: "I am informed by a gentleman who has
had considerable experience of ferrets, that if the bitch,
when in heat, cannot obtain a dog she pines and becomes ill.
If a smooth pebble is introduced into the hutch, she will
masturbate upon it, thus preserving her normal health for
one season. But if this artificial substitute is given to
her a second season, she will not, as formerly, be content
with it."[179]
Stags in the rutting season, when they have no partners, rub
themselves against trees to produce ejaculation. Sheep masturbate;
as also do camels, pressing themselves down against convenient
objects; and elephants compress the penis between the hind
legs to obtain emissions.[180] Blumenbach observed a bear
act somewhat similarly on seeing other bears coupling, and
hyenas, according to Ploss and Bartels, have been seen practicing
mutual masturbation by licking each other's genitals. Mammary
masturbation, remarks Fere, is found in certain female and
even male animals, like the dog and the cat.[181] Apes are
much given to masturbation, even in freedom, according to
the evidence of good observers; for while no female apes are
celibates, many of the males are obliged to lead a life of
celibacy.[182] Male monkeys use the hand in masturbation,
to rub and shake the penis.[183]
In the human species these phenomena are by no means found
in civilization alone. To whatever extent masturbation may
have been developed by the conditions of European life, which
carry to the utmost extreme the concomitant stimulation, and
repression of the sexual emotions, it is far from being, as
Mantegazza has declared it to be, one of the moral characteristics
of Europeans.[184] It is found among the people of nearly
every race of which we have any intimate knowledge, however
natural the conditions under which men and women may live.[185]
Thus, among the Nama Hottentots, among the young women at
all events, Gustav Fritsch found that masturbation is so common
that it is regarded as a custom of the country; no secret
is made of it, and in the stories and legends of the race
it is treated as one of the most ordinary facts of life. It
is so also among the Basutos, and the Kaffirs are addicted
to the same habit.[186] The Fuegians have a word for masturbation,
and a special word for masturbation by women.[187] When the
Spaniards first arrived at Vizcaya, in the Philippines, they
found that masturbation was universal, and that it was customary
for the women to use an artificial penis and other abnormal
methods of sexual gratification. Among the Balinese, according
to Jacobs (as quoted by Ploss and Bartels), masturbation is
general; in the boudoir of many a Bali beauty, he adds, and
certainly in every harem, may be found a wax penis to which
many hours of solitude are devoted. Throughout the East, as
Eram, speaking from a long medical experience, has declared,
masturbation is very prevalent, especially among young girls.
In Egypt, according to Sonnini, it is prevalent in harems.
In India, a medical correspondent tells me, he once treated
the widow of a wealthy Mohammedan, who informed him that she
began masturbation at an early age, "just like all other
women." The same informant tells me that on the _facade_
of a large temple in Orissa are bas-reliefs, representing
both men and women, alone, masturbating, and also women masturbating
men. Among the Tamils of Ceylon masturbation is said to be
common. In Cochin China, Lorion remarks, it is practiced by
both sexes, but especially by the married women.[188] Japanese
women have probably carried the mechanical arts of auto-erotism
to the highest degree of perfection. They use two hollow balls
about the size of a pigeon's egg (sometimes one alone is used),
which, as described by Joest, Christian, and others,[189]
are made of very thin leaf of brass; one is empty, the other
(called the little man) contains a small heavy metal ball,
or else some quicksilver, and sometimes metal tongues which
vibrate when set in movement; so that if the balls are held
in the hand side by side there is a continuous movement. The
empty one is first introduced into the vagina in contact with
the uterus, then the other; the slightest movement of the
pelvis or thighs, or even spontaneous movement of the organs,
causes the metal ball (or the quicksilver) to roll, and the
resulting vibration produces a prolonged voluptuous titillation,
a gentle shock as from a weak electric inductive apparatus;
the balls are called _rin-no-tama_, and are held in the vagina
by a paper tampon. The women who use these balls delight to
swing themselves in a hammock or rocking-chair, the delicate
vibration of the balls slowly producing the highest degree
of sexual excitement. Joest mentions that this apparatus,
though well known by name to ordinary girls, is chiefly used
by the more fashionable _geishas_, as well as by prostitutes.
Its use has now spread to China, Annam, and India. Japanese
women also, it is said, frequently use an artificial penis
of paper or clay, called e.g.. Among the Atjeh, again, according
to Jacobs (as quoted by Ploss), the young of both sexes masturbate
and the elder girls use an artificial penis of wax. In China,
also, the artificial penis--made of rosin, supple and (like
the classical instrument described by Herondas) rose-colored--is
publicly sold and widely used by women.[190]
It may be noticed that among non-European races it is among
women, and especially among those who are subjected to the
excitement of a life professionally devoted to some form of
pleasure, that the use of the artificial instruments of auto-erotism
is chiefly practiced. The same is markedly true in Europe.
The use of an artificial penis in solitary sexual gratification
may be traced down from classic times, and doubtless prevailed
in the very earliest human civilization, for such an instrument
is said to be represented in old Babylonian sculptures, and
it is referred to by Ezekiel (Ch. XVI. v. 17). The Lesbian
women are said to have used such instruments, made of ivory
or gold with silken stuffs and linen. Aristophanes (_Lysistrata_,
v. 109) speaks of the manufacture by the Milesian women of
a leather artificial penis, or olisbos. In the British Museum
is a vase representing a _hetaira_ holding such instruments,
which, as found at Pompeii, may be seen in the museum at Naples.
One of the best of Herondas's mimes, "The Private Conversation,"
presents a dialogue between two ladies concerning a certain
olisbos (or nbon), which one of them vaunts as a dream of
delight. Through the Middle Ages (when from time to time the
clergy reprobated the use of such instruments[191]) they continued
to be known, and after the fifteenth century the references
to them became more precise. Thus Fortini, the Siennese novelist
of the sixteenth century, refers in his _Novelle dei Novizi_
(7th Day, Novella XXXIX) to "the glass object filled
with warm water which nuns use to calm the sting of the flesh
and to satisfy themselves as well as they can"; he adds
that widows and other women anxious to avoid pregnancy availed
themselves of it. In Elizabethan England, at the same time,
it appears to have been of similar character and Marston in
his satires tells how Lucea prefers "a glassy instrument"
to "her husband's lukewarm bed." In sixteenth century
France, also, such instruments were sometimes made of glass,
and Brantome refers to the godemiche; in eighteenth century
Germany they were called _Samthanse_, and their use, according
to Heinse, as quoted by Duehren, was common among aristocratic
women. In England by that time the dildo appears to have become
common. Archemholtz states that while in Paris they are only
sold secretly, in London a certain Mrs. Philips sold them
openly on a large scale in her shop in Leicester Square. John
Bee in 1835, stating that the name was originally dil-dol,
remarks that their use was formerly commoner than it was in
his day. In France, Madame Gourdan, the most notorious brothel-keeper
of the eighteenth century, carried on a wholesale trade in
_consolateurs_, as they were called, and "at her death
numberless letters from abbesses and simple nuns were found
among her papers, asking for a 'consolateur' to be sent."[192]
The modern French instrument is described by Gamier as of
hardened red rubber, exactly imitating the penis and capable
of holding warm milk or other fluid for injection at the moment
of orgasm; the compressible scrotum is said to have been first
added in the eighteenth century.[193]
In Islam the artificial penis has reached nearly as high a
development as in Christendom. Turkish women use it and it
is said to be openly sold in Smyrna. In the harems of Zanzibar,
according to Baumann, it is of considerable size, carved out
of ebony or ivory, and commonly bored through so that warm
water may be injected. It is here regarded as an Arab invention.[194]
Somewhat similar appliances may be traced in all centres of
civilization. But throughout they appear to be frequently
confined to the world of prostitutes and to those women who
live on the fashionable or semi-artistic verge of that world.
Ignorance and delicacy combine with a less versatile and perverted
concentration on the sexual impulse to prevent any general
recourse to such highly specialized methods of solitary gratification.
On the other hand, the use, or rather abuse, of the ordinary
objects and implements of daily life in obtaining auto-erotic
gratification, among the ordinary population in civilized
modern lands, has reached an extraordinary degree of extent
and variety we can only feebly estimate by the occasional
resulting mischances which come under the surgeon's hands,
because only a certain proportion of such instruments are
dangerous. Thus the banana seems to be widely used for masturbation
by women, and appears to be marked out for the purpose by
its size and shape[195]; it is, however, innocuous, and never
comes under the surgeon's notice; the same may probably be
said of the cucumbers and other vegetables more especially
used by country and factory girls in masturbation; a lady
living near Vichy told Pouillet that she had often heard (and
had herself been able to verify the fact) that the young peasant
women commonly used turnips, carrots, and beet-roots. In the
eighteenth century Mirabeau, in his _Erotikca Biblion_ gave
a list of the various objects used in convents (which he describes
as "vast theatres" of such practices) to obtain
solitary sexual excitement. In more recent years the following
are a few of the objects found in the vagina or bladder whence
they could only be removed by surgical interference[196]:
Pencils, sticks of sealing-wax, cotton-reels, hair-pins (and
in Italy very commonly the bone-pins used in the hair), bodkins,
knitting-needles, crochet-needles, needle-cases, compasses,
glass stoppers, candles, corks, tumblers, forks, tooth-picks,
toothbrushes, pomade-pots (in a case recorded by Schroeder
with a cockchafer inside, a makeshift substitute for the Japanese
_rin-no-tama_), while in one recent English case a full-sized
hen's egg was removed from the vagina of a middle-aged married
woman. More than nine-tenths of the foreign bodies found in
the female bladder or urethra are due to masturbation. The
age of the individuals in whom such objects have been found
is usually from 17 to 30, but in a few cases they have been
found in girls below 14, infrequently in women between 40
and 50; the large objects, naturally, are found chiefly in
the vagina, and in married women.[197]
Hair-pins have, above all, been found in the female bladder
with special frequency; this point is worth some consideration
as an illustration of the enormous frequency of this form
of auto-erotism. The female urethra is undoubtedly a normal
centre of sexual feeling, as Pouillet pointed out many years
ago; a woman medical correspondent, also, writes that in some
women the maximum of voluptuous sensation is at the vesical
sphincter or orifice, though not always so limited. E.H. Smith,
indeed, considers that "the urethra is the part in which
the orgasm occurs," and remarks that in sexual excitement
mucus always flows largely from the urethra.[198] It should
be added that when once introduced the physiological mechanism
of the bladder apparently causes the organ to tend to "swallow"
the foreign object. Yet for every case in which the hair-pin
disappears and is lost in the bladder, from carelessness or
the oblivion of the sexual spasm, there must be a vast number
of cases in which the instrument is used without any such
unfortunate result. There is thus great significance in the
frequency with which cases of hair-pin in the bladder are
strewn through the medical literature of all countries.
In 1862, a German surgeon found the accident so common that
he invented a special instrument for extracting hair-pins
from the female bladder, as, indeed, Italian and French surgeons
have also done. In France, Denuce, of Bordeaux, came to the
conclusion that hair-pin in the bladder is the commonest result
of masturbation as known to the surgeon. In England cases
are constantly being recorded. Lawson Tait, stating that most
cases of stone in the bladder in women are due to the introduction
of a foreign body, very often a hair-pin, adds: "I have
removed hair-pins encrusted with phosphates from ten different
female bladders, and not one of the owners of these bladders
would give any account of the incident."[199] Stokes,
again, records that during four years he had four cases of
hair-pin in the female urethra.[200] In New York one physician
met with four cases in a short experience.[201] In Switzerland
Professor Reverdin had a precisely similar experience.[202]
There is, however, another class of material objects, widely
employed for producing physical auto-erotism, which in the
nature of things never reaches the surgeon. I refer to the
effects that, naturally or unnaturally, may be produced by
many of the objects and implements of daily life that do not
normally come in direct contact with the sexual organs. Children
sometimes, even when scarcely more than infants, produce sexual
excitement by friction against the corner of a chair or other
piece of furniture, and women sometimes do the same.[203]
Guttceit, in Russia, knew women who made a large knot in their
chemises to rub against, and mentions a woman who would sit
on her naked heel and rub it against her. Girls in France,
I am informed, are fond of riding on the _chevaux-de-bois_,
or hobby-horses, because of the sexual excitement thus aroused;
and that the sexual emotions play a part in the fascination
exerted by this form of amusement everywhere is indicated
by the ecstatic faces of its devotees.[204] At the temples
in some parts of Central India, I am told, swings are hung
up in pairs, men and women swinging in these until sexually
excited; during the months when the men in these districts
have to be away from home the girls put up swings to console
themselves for the loss of their husbands.
It is interesting to observe the very wide prevalence of swinging,
often of a religious or magic character, and the evident sexual
significance underlying it, although this is not always clearly
brought out. Groos, discussing the frequency of swinging (_Die
Spiele der Menschen_, p. 114) refers, for instance, to the
custom of the Gilbert Islanders for a young man to swing a
girl from a coco palm, and then to cling on and swing with
her. In ancient Greece, women and grown-up girls were fond
of see-saws and swings. The Athenians had, indeed, a swinging
festival (Athenaeus, Bk. XIV, Ch. X). Songs of a voluptuous
character, we gather from Athenaeus, were sung by the women
at this festival. J.G. Frazer (_The Golden Bough_, vol. ii,
note A, "Swinging as a Magical Rite") discusses
the question, and brings forward instances in which men, or,
especially, women swing. "The notion seems to be,"
he states, "that the ceremony promotes fertility, whether
in the vegetable or in the animal kingdom; though why it should
be supposed to do so, I confess myself unable to explain"
(loc. cit., p. 450). The explanation seems, however, not far
to seek, in view of the facts quoted above, and Frazer himself
refers to the voluptuous character of the songs sometimes
sung.
Even apart from actual swinging of the whole body, a swinging
movement may suffice to arouse sexual excitement, and may,--at
all events, in women,--constitute an essential part of methods
of attaining solitary sexual gratification. Kiernan thus describes
the habitual auto-erotic procedure of a young American woman:
"The patient knelt before a chair, let her elbows drop
on its seat, grasping the arms with a firm grip, then commenced
a swinging, writhing motion, seeming to fix her pelvis, and
moving her trunk and limbs. The muscles were rigid, the face
took on a passionate expression; the features were contorted,
the eyes rolled, the teeth were set, and the lips compressed,
while the cheeks were purple. The condition bore a striking
resemblance to the passional stage of grand hysteria. The
reveling took only a moment to commence, but lasted a long
time. Swaying induced a pleasurable sensation, accompanied
with a feeling of suction upon the clitoris. Almost immediately
after, a sensation of bursting, caused by discharge from the
vulvo-vaginal glands, occurs, followed by a rapture prolonged
for an indefinite time." The accompanying sexual imagery
is so vivid as almost to become hallucinatory. (J.G. Kiernan,
"Sex Transformation and Psychic Impotence," _American
Journal of Dermatology_, vol. ix, No. 2.)
Somewhat similarly sensations of sexual character are sometimes
experienced by boys when climbing up a pole. It is not even
necessary that there should be direct external contact with
the sexual organs, and Howe states that gymnastic swinging
poles around which boys swing while supporting the whole weight
on the hands, may suffice to produce sexual excitement.
Several writers have pointed out that riding, especially in
women, may produce sexual excitement and orgasm.[205] It is
well-known, also, that both in men and women the vibratory
motion of a railway-train frequently produces a certain degree
of sexual excitement, especially when sitting forward. Such
excitement may remain latent and not become specifically sexual.[206]
I am not aware that this quality of railway traveling has
ever been fostered as a sexual perversion, but the sewing-machine
has attracted considerable attention on account of its influence
in exciting auto-erotic manifestations. The early type of
sewing-machine, especially, was of very heavy character and
involved much up and down movement of the legs; Langdon Down
pointed out many years ago that this frequently produced great
sexual erethism which led to masturbation.[207] According
to one French authority, it is a well-recognized fact that
to work a sewing-machine with the body in a certain position
produces sexual excitement leading to the orgasm. The occurrence
of the orgasm is indicated to the observer by the machine
being worked for a few seconds with uncontrollable rapidity.
This sound is said to be frequently heard in large French
workrooms, and it is part of the duty of the superintendents
of the rooms to make the girls sit properly.[208]
"During a visit which I once paid to a manufactory of
military clothing," Pouillet writes, "I witnessed
the following scene. In the midst of the uniform sound produced
by some thirty sewing-machines, I suddenly heard one of the
machines working with much more velocity than the others.
I looked at the person who was working it, a brunette of 18
or 20. While she was automatically occupied with the trousers
she was making on the machine, her face became animated, her
mouth opened slightly, her nostrils dilated, her feet moved
the pedals with constantly increasing rapidity. Soon I saw
a convulsive look in her eyes, her eyelids were lowered, her
face turned pale and was thrown backward; hands and legs stopped
and became extended; a suffocated cry, followed by a long
sigh, was lost in the noise of the workroom. The girl remained
motionless a few seconds, drew out her handkerchief to wipe
away the pearls of sweat from her forehead, and, after casting
a timid and ashamed glance at her companions, resumed her
work. The forewoman, who acted as my guide, having observed
the direction of my gaze, took me up to the girl, who blushed,
lowered her face, and murmured some incoherent words before
the forewoman had opened her mouth, to advise her to sit fully
on the chair, and not on its edge.
"As I was leaving, I heard another machine at another
part of the room in accelerated movement. The forewoman smiled
at me, and remarked that that was so frequent that it attracted
no notice. It was specially observed, she told me, in the
case of young work-girls, apprentices, and those who sat on
the edge of their seats, thus much facilitating friction of
the labia."
In cases where the sewing-machine does not lead to direct
self-excitement it has been held, as by Fothergill,[209] to
predispose to frequency of involuntary sexual orgasm during
sleep, from the irritation set up by the movement of the feet
in the sitting posture during the day. The essential movement
in working the sewing-machine is the flexion and extension
of the ankle, but the muscles of the thighs are used to maintain
the feet firmly on the treadle, the thighs are held together,
and there is a considerable degree of flexion or extension
of the thighs on the trunk; by a special adjustment of the
body, and sometimes perhaps merely in the presence of sexual
hyperaesthesia, it is thus possible to act upon the sexual
organs; but this is by no means a necessary result of using
the sewing-machine, and inquiry of various women, with well-developed
sexual feelings, who are accustomed to work the treadle, has
not shown the presence of any tendency in this direction.
Sexual irritation may also be produced by the bicycle in women.
Thus, Moll[210] remarks that he knows many married women,
and some unmarried, who experience sexual excitement when
cycling; in several cases he has ascertained that the excitement
is carried as far as complete orgasm. This result cannot,
however, easily happen unless the seat is too high, the peak
in contact with the organs, and a rolling movement is adopted;
in the absence of marked hyperaesthesia these results are
only effected by a bad seat or an improper attitude, the body
during cycling resting under proper conditions on the buttocks,
and the work being mainly done by the muscles of the thighs
and legs which control the ankles, flexion of the thigh on
the pelvis being very small. Most medical authorities on cycling
are of opinion that when cycling leads to sexual excitement
the fault lies more with the woman than with the machine.
This conclusion does not appear to me to be absolutely correct.
I find on inquiry that with the old-fashioned saddle, with
an elevated peak rising toward the pubes, a certain degree
of sexual excitement, not usually producing the orgasm (but,
as one lady expressed it, making one feel quite ready for
it), is fairly common among women. Lydston finds that irritation
of the genital organs may unquestionably be produced in both
males and females by cycling. The aggravation of haemorrhoids
sometimes produced by cycling indicates also the tendency
to local congestion. With the improved flat saddles, however,
constructed with more definite adjustment to the anatomical
formation of the parts, this general tendency is reduced to
a negligible minimum.
Reference may be made at this point to the influence of tight-lacing.
This has been recognized by gynaecologists as a factor of
sexual excitement and a method of masturbation.[211] Women
who have never worn corsets sometimes find that, on first
putting them on, sexual feeling is so intensified that it
is necessary to abandon their use.[212] The reason of this
(as Siebert points out in his _Buch fuer Eltern_) seems to
be that the corset both favors pelvic congestion and at the
same time exerts a pressure on the abdominal muscles which
brings them into the state produced during coitus. It is doubtless
for the same reason that, as some women have found, more distension
of the bladder is possible without corsets than with them.
In a further class of cases no external object whatever is
used to procure the sexual orgasm, but the more or less voluntary
pressure of the thighs alone is brought to bear upon the sexual
regions. It is done either when sitting or standing, the thighs
being placed together and firmly crossed, and the pelvis rocked
so that the sexual organs are pressed against the inner and
posterior parts of the thighs.[213] This is sometimes done
by men, and is fairly common among women, especially, according
to Martineau,[214] among those who sit much, such as dressmakers
and milliners, those who use the sewing-machine, and those
who ride. Vedeler remarks that in his experience in Scandinavia,
thigh-friction is the commonest form of masturbation in women.
The practice is widespread, and a medical correspondent in
India tells me of a Brahmin widow who confessed to this form
of masturbation. I am told that in London Board Schools, at
the present time, thigh-rubbing is not infrequent among the
girl scholars; the proportion mentioned in one school was
about ten per cent, of the girls over eleven; the thigh-rubbing
is done more or less openly and is interpreted by the uninitiated
as due merely to a desire to relieve the bladder. It is found
in female infants. Thus, Townsend records the case of an infant,
8 months old, who would cross her right thigh over the left,
close her eyes and clench her fists; after a minute or two
there would be complete relaxation, with sweating and redness
of face; this would occur about once a week or oftener; the
child was quite healthy, with no abnormal condition of the
genital organs.[215] The frequency of thigh-friction among
women as a form of masturbation is due to the fact that it
is usually acquired innocently and it involves no indecorum.
Thus Soutzo reports the case of a girl of 12 who at school,
when having to wait her turn at the water-closet, for fear
of wetting herself would put her clothes between her legs
and press her thighs together, moving them backwards and forwards
in the effort to control the bladder; she discovered that
a pleasurable sensation was thus produced and acquired the
habit of practicing the manoeuvre for its own sake; at the
age of 17 she began to vary it in different ways; thus she
would hang from a tree with her legs swinging and her chemise
pressed between her thighs which she would rub together.[216]
Thigh-friction in some of its forms is so comparatively decorous
a form of masturbation that it may even be performed in public
places; thus, a few years ago, while waiting for a train at
a station on the outskirts of a provincial town, I became
aware of the presence of a young woman, sitting alone on a
seat at a little distance, whom I could observe unnoticed.
She was leaning back with legs crossed, swinging the crossed
foot vigorously and continuously; this continued without interruption
for some ten minutes after I first observed her; then the
swinging movement reached a climax; she leant still further
back, thus bringing the sexual region still more closely in
contact with the edge of the bench and straightened and stiffened
her body and legs in what appeared to be a momentary spasm;
there could be little doubt as to what had taken place. A
few moments later she slowly walked from her solitary seat
into the waiting-room and sat down among the other waiting
passengers, quite still now and with uncrossed legs, a pale
quiet young woman, possibly a farmer's daughter, serenely
unconscious that her manoeuvre had been detected, and very
possibly herself ignorant of its true nature.
There are many other forms in which the impulse of auto-erotism
presents itself. Dancing is often a powerful method of sexual
excitement, not only among civilized but among savage peoples,
and Zache describes the erotic dances of Swaheli women as
having a masturbatory object.[217] Stimulation of the nates
is a potent adjuvant to the production of self-excitement,
and self-flagellation with rods, etc., is practiced by some
individuals, especially young women.[218] Urtication is another
form of this stimulation; Reverdin knew a young woman who
obtained sexual gratification by flogging herself with chestnut
burrs, and it is stated that in some parts of France (departments
of the Ain and Cote d'Or) it is not uncommon for young girls
to masturbate by rubbing the leaves of the _Linaria cymbalaria_
(here called "pinton" or "timbarde") on
to the sexual parts, thus producing a burning sensation.[219]
Stimulation of the mamma, normally an erogenous centre in
women, may occasionally serve as a method for obtaining auto-erotic
satisfaction, including the orgasm, in both sexes. I have
been told of a case in a man, and a medical correspondent
in India informs me that he knows a Eurasian woman, addicted
to masturbation, who can only obtain the orgasm by rubbing
the genitals with one hand while with the other she rubs and
finally squeezes her breasts. The tactile stimulation even
of regions of the body which are not normally erogenous zones
in either sex may sometimes lead on to sexual excitement;
Hirschsprung, as well as Freud, believes that this is often
the case as regards finger-sucking and toe-sucking in infancy.
Even stroking the chin, remarks Debreyne, may produce a pollution.[220]
Taylor refers to the case of a young woman of 22, who was
liable to attacks of choreic movements of the hands which
would terminate in alternately pressing the middle finger
on the tip of the nose and the tragus of the ear, when a "far-away,
pleased expression" would appear on her face; she thus
produced sexual excitement and satisfaction. She had no idea
of wrong-doing and was surprised and ashamed when she realized
the nature of her act.[221]
Most of the foregoing examples of auto-erotism, are commonly
included, by no means correctly, under the heading of "masturbation."
There are, however, a vast number of people, possessing strong
sexual emotions and living a solitary life, who experience,
sometimes by instinct and sometimes on moral grounds, a strong
repugnance for these manifestations of auto-erotism. As one
highly intelligent lady writes: "I have sometimes wondered
whether I could produce it (complete sexual excitement) mechanically,
but I have a curious unreasonable repugnance to trying the
experiment. It would materialize it too much." The same
repugnance may be traced in the tendency to avoid, so far
as possible, the use of the hands. It is quite common to find
this instinctive unreasoning repugnance among women, a healthy
repugnance, not founded on any moral ground. In men the same
repugnance exists, more often combined with, or replaced by,
a very strong moral and aesthetic objection to such practices.
But the presence of such a repugnance, however invincible,
is very far from carrying us outside the auto-erotic field.
The production of the sexual orgasm is not necessarily dependent
on any external contact or voluntary mechanical cause.
As an example, though not of specifically auto-erotic manifestations,
I may mention the case of a man of 57, a somewhat eccentric
preacher, etc., who writes: "My whole nature goes out
so to some persons, and they thrill and stir me so that I
have an emission while sitting by them with no thought of
sex, only the gladness of soul found its way out thus, and
a glow of health suffused the whole body. There was no spasmodic
conclusion, but a pleasing gentle sensation as the few drops
of semen passed." (In reality, no doubt, not semen, but
urethral fluid.) This man's condition may certainly be considered
somewhat morbid; he is attracted to both men and women, and
the sexual impulse seems to be irritable and weak; but a similar
state of things exists so often in women, no doubt due to
sexual repression, and in individuals who are in a general
state of normal and good health, that in these it can scarcely
be called morbid. Brooding on sexual images, which the theologians
termed _delectatio morosa_, may lead to spontaneous orgasm
in either sex, even in perfectly normal persons. Hammond described
as a not uncommon form of "psychic coitus," a condition
in which the simple act of imagination alone, in the presence
of the desired object, suffices to produce orgasm. In some
public conveyance, theatre, or elsewhere, the man sees a desirable
woman and by concentrating his attention on her person and
imagining all the stages of intimacy he quickly succeeds in
producing orgasm.[222] Niceforo refers to an Italian work-girl
of 14 who could obtain ejaculation of mucus four times a day,
in the workroom in the presence of the other girls, without
touching herself or moving her body, by simply thinking of
sexual things.[223]
If the orgasm occurs spontaneously, without the aid of mental
impressions, or any manipulations _ad hoc_, though under such
conditions it ceases to be sinful from the theological standpoint,
it certainly ceases also to be normal. Serieux records the
case of a somewhat neurotic woman of 50, who had been separated
from her husband for ten years, and since lived a chaste life;
at this age, however, she became subject to violent crises
of sexual orgasm, which would come on without any accompaniment
of voluptuous thoughts. MacGillicuddy records three cases
of spontaneous orgasm in women coming under his notice.[224]
Such crises are frequently found in both men and women, who,
from moral reasons, ignorance, or on other grounds are restrained
from attaining the complete sexual orgasm, but whose sexual
emotions are, literally, continually dribbling from them.
Schrenck-Notzing knows a lady who is spontaneously sexually
excited on hearing music or seeing pictures without anything
lascivious in them; she knows nothing of sexual relationships.
Another lady is sexually excited on seeing beautiful and natural
scenes, like the sea; sexual ideas are mixed up in her mind
with these things, and the contemplation of a specially strong
and sympathetic man brings the orgasm on in about a minute.
Both these ladies "masturbate" in the streets, restaurants,
railways, theatres, without anyone perceiving it.[225] A Brahmin
woman informed a medical correspondent in India that she had
distinct though feeble orgasm, with copious outflow of mucus,
if she stayed long near a man whose face she liked, and this
is not uncommon among European women. Evidently under such
conditions there is a state of hyperaesthetic weakness. Here,
however, we are passing the frontiers of strictly auto-erotic
phenomena.
_Delectatio morosa_, as understood by the theologians, is
distinct from desire, and also distinct from the definite
intention of effecting the sexual act, although it may lead
to those things. It is the voluntary and complacent dallying
in imagination with voluptuous thoughts, when no effort is
made to repel them. It is, as Aquinas and others point out,
constituted by this act of complacent dallying, and has no
reference to the duration of the imaginative process. Debreyne,
in his _Moechialogie_ (pp. 149-163), deals fully with this
question, and quotes the opinions of theologians. I may add
that in the early Penitentials, before the elaboration of
Catholic theology, the voluntary emission of semen through
the influence of evil thoughts, was recognized as a sin, though
usually only if it occurred in church. In Egbert's Penitential
of the eighth or ninth century (cap. IX, 12), the penance
assigned for this offence in the case of a deacon, is 25 days;
in the case of a monk, 30 days; a priest, 40 days; a bishop,
50. (Haddon and Stubbs, _Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents_,
vol. iii, p. 426.)
The frequency of spontaneous orgasm in women seems to have
been recognized in the seventeenth century. Thus, Schurig
(_Syllepsilogia_, p. 4), apparently quoting Riolan, states
that some women are so wanton that the sight of a handsome
man, or of their lover, or speech with such a one, will cause
them to ejaculate their semen.
There is, however, a closely allied, and, indeed, overlapping
form of auto-erotism which may be considered here: I mean
that associated with revery, or day-dreaming. Although this
is a very common and important form of auto-erotism, besides
being in a large proportion of cases the early stage of masturbation,
it appears to have attracted little attention.[226] The day-dream
has, indeed, been studied in its chief form, in the "continued
story," by Mabel Learoyd, of Wellesley College. The continued
story is an imagined narrative, more or less peculiar to the
individual, by whom it is cherished with fondness, and regarded
as an especially sacred mental possession, to be shared only,
if at all, with very sympathizing friends. It is commoner
among girls and young women than among boys and young men;
among 352 persons of both sexes, 47 per cent. among the women
and only 14 per cent. among the men, have any continued story.
The starting-point is an incident from a book, or, more usually,
some actual experience, which the subject develops; the subject
is nearly always the hero or the heroine of the story. The
growth of the story is favored by solitude, and lying in bed
before going to sleep is the time specially sacred to its
cultivation.[227] No distinct reference, perhaps naturally
enough, is made by Miss Learoyd to the element of sexual emotion
with which these stories are often strongly tinged, and which
is frequently their real motive. Though by no means easy to
detect, these elaborate and more or less erotic day-dreams
are not uncommon in young men and especially in young women.
Each individual has his own particular dream, which is always
varying or developing, but, except in very imaginative persons,
to no great extent. Such a day-dream is often founded on a
basis of pleasurable personal experience, and develops on
that basis. It may involve an element of perversity, even
though that element finds no expression in real life. It is,
of course, fostered by sexual abstinence; hence its frequency
in young women. Most usually there is little attempt to realize
it. It does not necessarily lead to masturbation, though it
often causes some sexual congestion or even spontaneous sexual
orgasm. The day-dream is a strictly private and intimate experience,
not only from its very nature, but also because it occurs
in images which the subject finds great difficulty in translating
into language, even when willing to do so. In other cases
it is elaborately dramatic or romantic in character, the hero
or heroine passing through many experiences before attaining
the erotic climax of the story. This climax tends to develop
in harmony with the subject's growing knowledge or experience;
at first, merely a kiss, it may develop into any refinement
of voluptuous gratification. The day-dream may occur either
in normal or abnormal persons. Rousseau, in his _Confessions_,
describes such dreams, in his case combined with masochism
and masturbation. A distinguished American novelist, Hamlin
Garland, has admirably described in _Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_
the part played in the erotic day-dreams of a healthy normal
girl at adolescence by a circus-rider, seen on the first visit
to a circus, and becoming a majestic ideal to dominate the
girl's thoughts for many years.[228] Raffalovich[229] describes
the process by which in sexual inverts the vision of a person
of the same sex, perhaps seen in the streets or the theatre,
is evoked in solitary reveries, producing a kind of "psychic
onanism," whether or not it leads on to physical manifestations.
Although day-dreaming of this kind has at present been very
little studied, since it loves solitude and secrecy, and has
never been counted of sufficient interest for scientific inquisition,
it is really a process of considerable importance, and occupies
a large part of the auto-erotic field. It is frequently cultivated
by refined and imaginative young men and women who lead a
chaste life and would often be repelled by masturbation. In
such persons, under such circumstances, it must be considered
as strictly normal, the inevitable outcome of the play of
the sexual impulse. No doubt it may often become morbid, and
is never a healthy process when indulged in to excess, as
it is liable to be by refined young people with artistic impulses,
to whom it is in the highest degree seductive and insidious.[230]
As we have seen, however, day-dreaming is far from always
colored by sexual emotion; yet it is a significant indication
of its really sexual origin that, as I have been informed
by persons of both sexes, even in these apparently non-sexual
cases it frequently ceases altogether on marriage.
Even when we have eliminated all these forms of auto-erotic
activity, however refined, in which the subject takes a voluntary
part, we have still left unexplored an important portion of
the auto-erotic field, a portion which many people are alone
inclined to consider normal: sexual orgasm during sleep. That
under conditions of sexual abstinence in healthy individuals
there must inevitably be some auto-erotic manifestations during
waking life, a careful study of the facts compels us to believe.
There can be no doubt, also, that, under the same conditions,
the occurrence of the complete orgasm during sleep with, in
men, seminal emissions, is altogether normal. Even Zeus himself,
as Pausanias has recorded, was liable to such accidents: a
statement which, at all events, shows that to the Greek mind
there was nothing derogatory in such an occurrence.[231] The
Jews, however, regarded it as an impurity,[232] and the same
idea was transmitted to the Christian church and embodied
in the word _pollutio_, by which the phenomenon was designated
in ecclesiastical phraseology.[233] According to Billuart
and other theologians, pollution in sleep is not sin, unless
voluntarily caused; if, however, it begins in sleep, and is
completed in the half-waking state, with a sense of pleasure,
it is a venial sin. But it seems allowable to permit a nocturnal
pollution to complete itself on awaking, if it occurs without
intention; and St. Thomas even says "_Si pollutio placeat
ut naturae exoneratio vel alleviatio peccatum non creditur_."
Notwithstanding the fair and logical position of the more
distinguished Latin theologians, there has certainly been
a widely prevalent belief in Catholic countries that pollution
during sleep is a sin. In the "Parson's Tale," Chaucer
makes the parson say: "Another sin appertaineth to lechery
that cometh in sleeping; and the sin cometh oft to them that
be maidens, and eke to them that be corrupt; and this sin
men clepe pollution, that cometh in four manners;" these
four manners being (1) languishing of
body from rank and abundant humors, (2) infirmity, (3) surfeit
of meat and drink, and (4) villainous thoughts. Four hundred
years later, Madame Roland, in her _Memoires Particulieres_,
presented a vivid picture of the anguish produced in an innocent
girl's mind by the notion of the sinfulness of erotic dreams.
She menstruated first at the age of 14. "Before this,"
she writes, "I had sometimes been awakened from the deepest
sleep in a surprising manner. Imagination played no part;
I exercised it on too many serious subjects, and my timorous
conscience preserved it from amusement with other subjects,
so that it could not represent what I would not allow it to
seek to understand. But an extraordinary effervescence aroused
my senses in the heat of repose, and, by virtue of my excellent
constitution, operated by itself a purification which was
as strange to me as its cause. The first feeling which resulted
was, I know not why, a sort of fear. I had observed in my
_Philotee_, that we are not allowed to obtain any pleasure
from our bodies except in lawful marriage. What I had experienced
could be called a pleasure. I was then guilty, and in a class
of offences which caused me the most shame and sorrow, since
it was that which was most displeasing to the Spotless Lamb.
There was great agitation in my poor heart, prayers and mortifications.
How could I avoid it? For, indeed, I had not foreseen it,
but at the instant when I experienced it, I had not taken
the trouble to prevent it. My watchfulness became extreme.
I scrupulously avoided positions which I found specially exposed
me to the accident. My restlessness became so great that,
at last I was able to awake before the catastrophe. When I
was not in time to prevent it, I would jump out of bed, with
naked feet on to the polished floor, and with crossed arms
pray to the Saviour to preserve me from the wiles of the devil.
I would then impose some penance on myself, and I have carried
out to the letter what the prophet King probably only transmitted
to us as a figure of Oriental speech, mixing ashes with my
bread and watering it with my tears."
To the early Protestant mind, as illustrated by Luther, there
was something diseased, though not impure, in sexual excitement
during sleep; thus, in his _Table Talk_ Luther remarks that
girls who have such dreams should be married at once, "taking
the medicine which God has given." It is only of comparatively
recent years that medical science has obtained currency for
the belief that this auto-erotic process is entirely normal.
Blumenbach stated that nocturnal emissions are normal.[234]
Sir James Paget declared that he had never known celibate
men who had not such emissions from once or twice a week to
twice every three months, both extremes being within the limits
of good health, while Sir Lauder Brunton considers once a
fortnight or once a month about the usual frequency, at these
periods the emissions often following two nights in succession.
Rohleder believes that they may normally follow for several
nights in succession. Hammond considers that they occur about
once a fortnight.[235] Ribbing regards ten to fourteen days
as the normal interval.[236] Loewenfeld puts the normal frequency
at about once a week;[237] this seems to be nearer the truth
as regards most fairly healthy young men. In proof of this
it is only necessary to refer to the exact records of healthy
young adults summarized in the study of periodicity in the
present volume. It occasionally happens, however, that nocturnal
emissions are entirely absent. I am acquainted with some cases.
In other fairly healthy young men they seldom occur except
at times of intellectual activity or of anxiety and worry.
Lately there has been some tendency for medical opinion to
revert to the view of Luther, and to regard sexual excitement
during sleep as a somewhat unhealthy phenomenon. Moll is a
distinguished advocate of this view. Sexual excitement during
sleep is the normal result of celibacy, but it is another
thing to say that it is, on that account, satisfactory. We
might, then, Moll remarks, maintain that nocturnal incontinence
of urine is satisfactory, since the bladder is thus emptied.
Yet, we take every precaution against this by insisting that
the bladder shall be emptied before going to sleep. (_Libido
Sexualis_, Bd. I, p. 552.) This remark is supported by the
fact, to which I find that both men and women can bear witness,
that sexual excitement during sleep is more fatiguing than
in the waking state, though this is not an invariable rule,
and it is sometimes found to be refreshing. In a similar way,
Eulenburg (_Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 55) states that nocturnal
emissions are no more normal than coughing or vomiting.
Nocturnal emissions are usually, though not invariably, accompanied
by dreams of a voluptuous character in which the dreamer becomes
conscious in a more or less fantastic manner of the more or
less intimate presence or contact of a person of the opposite
sex. It would seem, as a general rule, that the more vivid
and voluptuous the dream, the greater is the physical excitement
and the greater also the relief experienced on awakening.
Sometimes the erotic dream occurs without any emission, and
not infrequently the emission takes place after the dreamer
has awakened.
The widest and most comprehensive investigation of erotic
dreams is that carried out by Gualino, in northern Italy,
and based on inquiries among 100 normal men--doctors, teachers,
lawyers, etc.--who had all had experience of the phenomenon.
(L. Gualino, "Il Sogno Erotico nell' Uomo Normale,"
_Rivista di Psicologia_, Jan.-Feb., 1907.) Gualino shows that
erotic dreams, with emissions (whether or not seminal), began
somewhat earlier than the period of physical development as
ascertained by Marro for youths of the same part of northern
Italy. Gualino found that all his cases had had erotic dreams
at the age of seventeen; Marro found 8 per cent, of youths
still sexually undeveloped at that age, and while sexual development
began at thirteen years, erotic dreams began at twelve. Their
appearance was preceded, in most cases for some months, by
erections. In 37 per cent, of the cases there had been no
actual sexual experiences (either masturbation or intercourse);
in 23 per cent, there had been masturbation; in the rest,
some form of sexual contact. The dreams are mainly visual,
tactual elements coming second, and the _dramatis persona_
is either an unknown woman (27 per cent, cases), or only known
by sight (56 per cent.), and in the majority is, at all events
in the beginning, an ugly or fantastic figure, becoming more
attractive later in life, but never identical with the woman
loved during waking life. This, as Gualino points out, accords
with the general tendency for the emotions of the day to be
latent in sleep. Masturbation only formed the subject of the
dream in four cases. The emotional state in the pubertal stage,
apart from pleasure, was anxiety (37 per cent.), desire (17
per cent.), fear (14 per cent.). In the adult stage, anxiety
and fear receded to 7 per cent, and 6 per cent., respectively.
Thirty-three of the subjects, as a result of sexual or general
disturbances, had had nocturnal emissions without dreams;
these were always found exhausting. Normally (in more than
90 per cent.) erotic dreams are the most vivid of all dreams.
In no case was there knowledge of any monthly or other cyclic
periodicity in the occurrence of the manifestations. In 34
per cent, of cases, they tended to occur very soon after sexual
intercourse. In numerous cases they were peculiarly frequent
(even three in one night) during courtship, when the young
man was in the habit of kissing and caressing his betrothed,
but ceased after marriage. It was not noted that position
in bed or a full bladder exerted any marked influence in the
occurrence of erotic dreams; repletion of the seminal vesicles
is regarded as the main factor.
In Germany erotic dreams have been discussed by Volkelt (_Die
Traum-Phantasie_, 1875, pp. 78-82), and especially by Loewenfeld
(_Sexual-Probleme_, Oct., 1908), while in America, Stanley
Hall thus summarizes the general characteristics of erotic
dreams in men: "In by far the most cases, consciousness,
even when the act causes full awakening from sleep, finds
only scattered images, single words, gestures, and acts, many
of which would perhaps normally constitute no provocation.
Many times the mental activity seems to be remote and incidental,
and the mind retains in the morning nothing except, perhaps,
a peculiar dress pattern, the shape of a finger-nail, the
back of a neck, the toss of a head, the movement of a foot,
or the dressing of the hair. In such cases, these images stand
out for a time with the distinctness of a cameo, and suggest
that the origin of erotic fetichisms is largely to be found
in sexual dreams. Very rarely is there any imagery of the
organs themselves, but the tendency to irradiation is so strong
as to re-enforce the suggestion of so many other phenomena
in this field, that nature designs this experience to be long
circuited, and that it may give a peculiar ictus to almost
any experience. When waking occurs just afterward, it seems
at least possible that there may be much imagery that existed,
but failed to be recalled to memory, possibly because the
flow of psychic impressions was over very familiar fields,
and this, therefore, was forgotten, while any eruption into
new or unwonted channels, stood out with distinctness. All
these psychic phenomena, although very characteristic of man
in his prime, are not so of the dreams of dawning puberty,
which are far more vivid." (G. Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_,
vol. i, p. 455.)
I may, further, quote the experience of an anonymous contributor--a
healthy and chaste man between 30 and 38 years of age--to
the _American Journal of Psychology_ ("Nocturnal Emissions,"
Jan., 1904): "Legs and breasts often figured prominently
in these dreams, the other sexual parts, however, very seldom,
and then they turned out to be male organs in most cases.
There were but two instances of copulation dreamt. Girls and
young women were the, usual _dramatis personae_, and, curiously
enough, often the aggressors. Sometimes the face or faces
were well known; sometimes, only once seen; sometimes, entirely
unknown. The orgasm occurs at the most erotic part of the
dream, the physical and psychical running parallel. This most
erotic or suggestive part of the dream was very often quite
an innocent looking incident enough. As, for example: while
passing a strange young woman, overtaken on the street, she
calls after me some question. At first, I pay no heed, but
when she calls again, I hesitate whether to turn back and
answer or not--emission. Again, walking beside a young woman,
she said, 'Shall I take your arm?' I offered it, and she took
it, entwining her arm around it, and raising it high--emission.
I could feel stronger erection as she asked the question.
Sometimes, a word was enough; sometimes, a gesture. Once emission
took place on my noticing the young woman's diminished finger-nails.
Another example of fetichism was my being curiously attracted
in a dream by the pretty embroidered figure on a little girl's
dress. As an illustration of the strange metamorphoses that
occur in dreams, I one night, in my dream (I had been observing
partridges in the summer) fell in love with a partridge, which
changed under my caresses to a beautiful girl, who yet retained
an indescribable wild-bird innocence, grace, and charm--a
sort of Undina!"
These experiences may be regarded as fairly typical of the
erotic dreams of healthy and chaste young men. The bird, for
instance, that changes into a woman while retaining some elements
of the bird, has been encountered in erotic dreams by other
young men. It is indeed remarkable that, as De Gubernatis
observes, "the bird is a well-known phallic symbol,"
while Maeder finds ("Interpretations de Quelques Reves,"
_Archives de Psychologie_, April, 1907) that birds have a
sexual significance both in life and in dreams. The appearance
of male organs in the dream-woman is doubtless due to the
dreamer's greater familiarity with those organs; but, though
it occurs occasionally, it can scarcely be said to be the
rule in erotic dreams. Even men who have never had connection
with a woman, are quite commonly aware of the presence of
a woman's sexual organs in their erotic dreams.
Moll's comparison of nocturnal emissions of semen with nocturnal
incontinence of urine suggests an interesting resemblance,
and at the same time seeming contrast. In both cases we are
concerned with viscera which, when overfilled or unduly irritable,
spasmodically eject their contents during sleep. There is
a further resemblance which usually becomes clear when, as
occasionally happens, nocturnal incontinence of urine persists
on to late childhood or adolescence: both phenomena are frequently
accompanied by vivid dreams of appropriate character. (See
e.g. Ries, "Ueber Enuresis Nocturna," _Monatsschrift
fuer Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1904; A.P. Buchan,
nearly a century ago, pointed out the psychic element in the
experiences of young persons who wetted the bed, _Venus sine
Concubitu_, 1816, p. 47.) Thus, in one case known to me, a
child of seven, who occasionally wetted the bed, usually dreamed
at the same time that she wanted to make water, and was out
of doors, running to find a suitable spot, which she at last
found, and, on awaking, discovered that she had wetted the
bed; fifteen years later she still sometimes had similar dreams,
which caused her much alarm until, when thoroughly awake,
she realized that no accident had happened; these later dreams
were not the result of any actual strong desire to urinate.
In another case with which I am acquainted, a little girl
of eight, after mental excitement or indigestible meals, occasionally
wetted the bed, dreaming that she was frightened by some one
running after her, and wetted herself in consequence, after
the manner of the Ganymede in the eagle's clutch, as depicted
by Rembrandt. These two cases, it may be noted, belong to
two quite different types. In the first case, the full bladder
suggests to imagination the appropriate actions for relief,
and the bladder actually accepts the imaginative solution
offered; it is, according to Fiorani's phrase, "somnambulism
of the bladder." In the other case, there is no such
somnambulism, but a psychic and nervous disturbance, not arising
in the bladder at all, irradiates convulsively, and whether
or not the bladder is overfull, attacks a vesical nervous
system which is not yet sufficiently well-balanced to withstand
the inflow of excitement. In children of somewhat nervous
temperament, manifestations of this kind may occur as an occasional
accident, up to about the age of seven or eight; and thereafter,
the nervous control of the bladder having become firmly established,
they cease to happen, the nervous energy required to affect
the bladder sufficing to awake the dreamer. In very rare cases,
however, the phenomenon may still occasionally happen, even
in adolescence or later, in individuals who are otherwise
quite free from it. This is most apt to occur in young women
even in waking life. In men it is probably extremely rare.
The erotic dream seems to differ flagrantly from the vesical
dream, in that it occurs in adult life, and is with difficulty
brought under control. The contrast is, however, very superficial.
When we remember that sexual activity only begins normally
at puberty, we realize that the youth of twenty is, in the
matter of sexual control, scarcely much older than in the
matter of vesical control he was at the age of six. Moreover,
if we were habitually, from our earliest years, to go to bed
with a full bladder, as the chaste man goes to bed with unrelieved
sexual system, it would be fully as difficult to gain vesical
control during sleep as it now is to gain sexual control.
Ultimately, such sexual control is attained; after the age
of forty, it seems that erotic dreams with emission become
more and more rare; either the dream occurs without actual
emission, exactly as dreams of urination occur in adults with
full bladder, or else the organic stress, with or without
dreams, serves to awaken the sleeper before any emission has
occurred. But this stage is not easily or completely attained.
St. Augustine, even at the period when he wrote his _Confessions_,
mentions, as a matter of course, that sexual dreams "not
merely arouse pleasure, but gain the consent of the will."
(X. 41.) Not infrequently there is a struggle in sleep, just
as the hypnotic subject may resist suggestions; thus, a lady
of thirty-five dreamed a sexual dream, and awoke without excitement;
again she fell asleep, and had another dream of sexual character,
but resisted the tendency to excitement, and again awoke;
finally, she fell asleep and had a third sexual dream, which
was this time accompanied by the orgasm. (This has recently
been described also by Naecke, who terms it _pollutio interrupta,
Neurologisches Centralblatt_, Oct. 16, 1909; the corresponding
voluntary process in the waking state is described by Rohleder
and termed _masturbatio interrupta, Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft_,
Aug., 1908.) The factors involved in the acquirement of vesical
and sexual control during sleep are the same, but the conditions
are somewhat different.
There is a very intimate connection between the vesical and
the sexual spheres, as I have elsewhere pointed out (see e.g.
in the third volume of these _Studies_, "Analysis of
the Sexual Impulse"). This connection is psychic as well
as organic. Both in men and women, a full bladder tends to
develop erotic dreams. (See e.g. K.A. Scherner, _Das Leben
des Traums_, 1861, pp. 187 et seq.; Spitta also points out
the connection between vesical and erotic dreams, _Die Schlaf
und Traumzustaende_, 2d ed., 1882, pp. 250 et seq.) Raymond
and Janet state (_Les Obscessions_, vol. ii, p. 135) that
nocturnal incontinence of urine, accompanied by dreams of
urination, may be replaced at puberty by masturbation. In
the reverse direction, Freud believes (_Monatsschrift fuer
Psychiatrie_, Bd. XVIII, p. 433) that masturbation plays a
large part in causing the bed-wetting of children who have
passed the age when that usually ceases, and he even finds
that children are themselves aware of the connection.
The diagnostic value of sexual dreams, as an indication of
the sexual nature of the subject when awake, has been emphasized
by various writers. (E.g., Moll, _Die Kontraere Sexualempfindung_,
Ch. IX; Naecke, "Der Traum als feinstes Reagens fuer
die Art des sexuellen Empfindens," _Monatsschrift fuer
Kriminalpsychologie_, 1905, p. 500.) Sexual dreams tend to
reproduce, and even to accentuate, those characteristics which
make the strongest sexual appeal to the subject when awake.
At the same time, this general statement has to be qualified,
more especially as regards inverted dreams. In the first place,
a young man, however normal, who is not familiar with the
feminine body when awake, is not likely to see it when asleep,
even in dreams of women; in the second place, the confusions
and combinations of dream imagery often tend to obliterate
sexual distinctions, however free from perversions the subjects
may be. Thus, a correspondent tells me of a healthy man, of
very pure character, totally inexperienced in sexual matters,
and never having seen a woman naked, who, in his sexual dreams,
always sees the woman with male organs, though he has never
had any sexual inclinations for men, and is much in love with
a lady. The confusions and associations of dream imagery,
leading to abnormal combinations, may be illustrated by a
dream which once occurred to me after reading Joest's account
of how a young negress, whose tattoo-marks he was sketching,
having become bored, suddenly pressed her hands to her breasts,
spirting two streams of lukewarm milk into his face, and ran
away laughing; I dreamed of a woman performing a similar action,
not from her breasts, however, but from a penis with which
she was furnished. Again, by another kind of confusion, a
man dreams sexually that he is with a man, although the figure
of the partner revealed in the dream is a woman. The following
dream, in a normal man who had never been, or wished to be,
in the position shown by the dream, may be quoted: "I
dreamed that I was a big boy, and that a younger boy lay close
beside me, and that we (or, certainly, he) had seminal emissions;
I was complacently passive, and had a feeling of shame when
the boy was discovered. On awaking I found I had had no emission,
but was lying very close to my wife. The day before, I had
seen boys in a swimming-match." This was, it seems to
me, an example of dream confusion, and not an erotic inverted
dream. (Naecke also brings forward inverted dreams by normal
persons; see e.g. his "Beitraege zu den sexuellen Traeumen,"
_Archiv fuer Kriminal-Anthropologie_, Bd. XX, 1908, p. 366.)
So far as I have been able to ascertain, there seem to be,
generally speaking, certain differences in the manifestations
of auto-erotism during sleep in men and women which I believe
to be not without psychological significance. In men the phenomenon
is fairly simple; it usually appears about puberty continues
at intervals of varying duration during sexual life provided
the individual is living chastely, and is generally, though
not always, accompanied by erotic dreams which lead up to
the climax, its occurrence being, to some extent, influenced
by a variety of circumstances: physical, mental, or emotional
excitement, alcohol taken before retiring, position in bed
(as lying on the back), the state of the bladder, sometimes
the mere fact of being in a strange bed, and to some extent
apparently by the existence of monthly and yearly rhythms.
On the whole, it is a fairly definite and regular phenomenon
which usually leaves little conscious trace on awaking, beyond
probably some sense of fatigue and, occasionally, a headache.
In women, however, the phenomena of auto-erotism during sleep
seem to be much more irregular, varied, and diffused. So far
as I have been able to make inquiries, it is the exception
rather than the rule for girls to experience definitely erotic
dreams about the period of puberty or adolescence.[238] Auto-erotic
phenomena during sleep in women who have never experienced
the orgasm when awake are usually of a very vague kind; while
it is the rule in a chaste youth for the orgasm thus to manifest
itself, it is the exception in a chaste girl. It is not, as
a rule, until the orgasm has been definitely produced in the
waking state--under whatever conditions it may have been produced--that
it begins to occur during sleep, and even in a strongly sexual
woman living a repressed life it is often comparatively infrequent.[239]
Thus, a young medical woman who endeavors to deal strenuously
with her physical sexual emotions writes: "I sleep soundly,
and do not dream at all. Occasionally, but very rarely, I
have had sensations which awakened me suddenly. They can scarcely
be called dreams, for they are mere impulses, nothing connected
or coherent, yet prompted, I know, by sexual feeling. This
is probably an experience common to all." Another lady
(with a restrained psycho-sexual tendency to be attracted
to both sexes), states that her first sexual sensations with
orgasm were felt in dreams at the age of 16, but these dreams,
which she has now forgotten, were not agreeable and not erotic;
two or three years later spontaneous orgasm began to occur
occasionally when awake, and after this, orgasm took place
regularly once or twice a week in sleep, but still without
erotic dreams; she merely dreamt that the orgasm was occurring
and awoke as it took place.
It is possible that to the comparative rarity in chaste women
of complete orgasm during sleep, we may in part attribute
the violence with which repressed sexual emotion in women
often manifests itself.[240] There is thus a difference here
between men and women which is of some significance when we
are considering the natural satisfaction of the sexual impulse
in chaste women.
In women, who have become accustomed to sexual intercourse,
erotic dreams of fully developed character occur, with complete
orgasm and accompanying relief--as may occasionally be the
case in women who are not acquainted with actual intercourse;[241]
some women, however, even when familiar with actual coitus,
find that sexual dreams, though accompanied by emissions,
are only the symptoms of desire and do not produce actual
relief.
Some interest attaches to cases in which young women, even
girls at puberty, experience dreams of erotic character, or
at all events dream concerning coitus or men in erection,
although they profess, and almost certainly with truth, to
be quite ignorant of sexual phenomena. Several such dreams
of remarkable character have been communicated to me. One
can imagine that the psychologists of some schools would see
in these dreams the spontaneous eruption of the experiences
of the race. I am inclined to regard them as forgotten memories,
such as we know to occur sometimes in sleep. The child has
somehow seen or heard of sexual phenomena and felt no interest,
and the memory may subsequently be aroused in sleep, under
the stimulation of new-born sexual sensations.
It is a curious proof of the ignorance which has prevailed
in recent times concerning the psychic sexual nature of women
that, although in earlier ages the fact that women are normally
liable to erotic dreams was fully recognized, in recent times
it has been denied, even by writers who have made a special
study of the sexual impulse in women. Eulenburg (_Sexuale
Neuropathie_, 1895, pp. 31, 79) appears to regard the appearances
of sexual phenomena during sleep, in women, as the result
of masturbation. Adler, in what is in many respects an extremely
careful study of sexual phenomena in women (_Die Mangelhafte
Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes_, 1904, p. 130), boldly states
that they do not have erotic dreams. In 1847, E. Guibout ("Des
Pollutions Involontaires chez la Femme," _Union Medicale_,
p. 260) presented the case of a married lady who masturbated
from the age of ten, and continued the practice, even after
her marriage at twenty-four, and at twenty-nine began to have
erotic dreams with emissions every few nights, and later sometimes
even several times a night, though they ceased to be voluptuous;
he believed the case to be the first ever reported of such
a condition in a woman. Yet, thousands of years ago, the Indian
of Vedic days recognized erotic dreams in women as an ordinary
and normal occurrence. (Loewenfeld quotes a passage to this
effect from the Oupnek'hat, _Sexualleben und Nervenleiden_,
2d ed., p. 114.) Even savages recognize the occurrence of
erotic dreams in women as normal, for the Papuans, for instance,
believe that a young girl's first menstruation is due to intercourse
with the moon in the shape of a man, the girl dreaming that
a man is embracing her. (_Reports Cambridge Expedition to
Torres Straits_, vol. v., p. 206.) In the seventeenth century,
Rolfincius, in a well-informed study (_De Pollutione Nocturna_,
a Jena Inaugural Dissertation, 1667), concluded that women
experience such manifestations, and quotes Aristotle, Galen,
and Fernelius, in the same sense. Sir Thomas Overbury, in
his _Characters_, written in the early part of the same century,
describing the ideal milkmaid, says that "her dreams
are so chaste that she dare tell them," clearly implying
that It was not so with most women. The notion that women
are not subject to erotic dreams thus appears to be of comparatively
recent origin.
One of the most interesting and important characters by which
the erotic dreams of women--and, indeed, their dreams generally--differ
from those of men is in the tendency to evoke a repercussion
on the waking life, a tendency more rarely noted in men's
erotic dreams, and then only to a minor extent. This is very
common, even in healthy and normal women, and is exaggerated
to a high degree in neurotic subjects, by whom the dream may
even be interpreted as a reality, and so declared on oath,
a fact of practical importance.
Hersman--having met with a case in which a school-girl with
chorea, after having dreamed of an assault, accused the principal
of a school of assault, securing his conviction--obtained
the opinions of various American alienists as to the frequency
with which such dreams in unstable mental subjects lead to
delusions and criminal accusations. Dercum, H.C. Wood, and
Rohe had not personally met with such cases; Burr believed
that there was strong evidence "that a sexual dream may
be so vivid as to make the subject believe she has had sexual
congress"; Kiernan knew of such cases; C.H. Hughes, in
persons with every appearance of sanity, had known the erotic
dreams of the night to become the erotic delusions of the
day, the patient protesting violently the truth of her story;
while Hersman reports the case[242] of a young lady in an
asylum who had nightly delusions that a medical officer visited
her every night, and had to do with her, coming up the hot-air
flue. I am acquainted with a similar case in a clever, but
highly neurotic, young woman, who writes: "For years
I have been trying to stamp out my passional nature, and was
beginning to succeed when a strange thing happened to me last
autumn. One night, as I lay in bed, I felt an influence so
powerful that a man seemed present with me. I crimsoned with
shame and wonder. I remember that I lay upon my back, and
marveled when the spell had passed. The influence, I was assured,
came from a priest whom I believed in and admired above everyone
in the world. I had never dreamed of love in connection with
him, because I always thought him so far above me. The influence
has been upon me ever since--sometimes by day and nearly always
by night; from it I generally go into a deep sleep, which
lasts until morning. I am always much refreshed when I awake.
This influence has the best effect upon my life that anything
has ever had as regards health and mind. It is the knowledge
that I am loved _fittingly_ that makes me so indifferent to
my future. What worries me is that I sometimes wonder if I
suffer from a nervous disorder merely." The subject thus
seemed to regard these occurrences as objectively caused,
but was sufficiently sane to wonder whether her experiences
were not due to mental disorder.[243]
The tendency of the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep to be manifested
with such energy as to flow over into the waking life and
influence conscious emotion and action, while very well marked
in normal and healthy women, is seen to an exaggerated extent
in hysterical women, in whom it has, therefore, chiefly been
studied. Sante de Sanctis, who has investigated the dreams
of many classes of people, remarks on the frequently sexual
character of the dreams of hysterical women, and the repercussion
of such dreams on the waking life of the following day; he
gives a typical case of hysterical erotic dreaming in an uneducated
servant-girl of 23, in whom such dreams occur usually a few
days before the menstrual period; her dreams, especially if
erotic, make an enormous impression on her; in the morning
she is bad-tempered if they were unpleasant, while she feels
lascivious and gives herself up to masturbation if she has
had erotic dreams of men; she then has a feeling of pleasure
throughout the day, and her sexual organs are bathed with
moisture.[244] Pitres and Gilles de la Tourette, two of Charcot's
most distinguished pupils, in their elaborate works on hysteria,
both consider that dreams generally have a great influence
on the waking life of the hysterical, and they deal with the
special influence of erotic dreams, to which, doubtless, we
must refer those conceptions of _incubi_ and _succubi_ which
played so vast and so important a part in the demonology of
the Middle Ages, and while not unknown in men were most frequent
in women. Such erotic dreams--as these observers, confirming
the experience of old writers, have found among the hysterical
to-day--are by no means always, or even usually, of a pleasurable
character. "It is very rare," Pitres remarks, when
insisting on the sexual character of the hallucinations of
the hysterical, "for these erotic hallucinations to be
accompanied by agreeable voluptuous sensations. In most cases
the illusion of sexual intercourse even provokes acute pain.
The witches of old times nearly all affirmed that in their
relations with the devil they suffered greatly.[245] They
said that his organ was long and rough and pointed, with scales
which lifted on withdrawal and tore the vagina." (It
seems probable, I may remark, that the witches' representations,
both of the devil and of sexual intercourse, were largely
influenced by familiarity with the coupling of animals). As
Gilles de la Tourette is careful to warn his readers, we must
not too hastily assume, from the prevalence of nocturnal auto-erotic
phenomena in hysterical women, that such women are necessarily
sexual and libidinous in excess; the disorder is in them psychic,
he points out, and not physical, and they usually receive
sexual approaches with indifference and repugnance, because
their sexual centres are anaesthetic or hyperaesthetic. "During
the period of sexual activity they seek much more the care
and delicate attention of men than the genital act, which
they often only tolerate. Many households, begun under the
happiest auspices--the bride all the more apt to believe that
she loves her betrothed in virtue of her suggestibility, easily
exalted, perhaps at the expense of the senses--become hells
on earth. The sexual act has for the hysterical woman more
than one disillusion; she cannot understand it; it inspires
her with insurmountable repugnance."[246] I refer to
these hysterical phenomena because they present to us, in
an extreme form, facts which are common among women whom,
under the artificial conditions of civilized life, we are
compelled to regard as ordinarily healthy and normal. The
frequent painfulness of auto-erotic phenomena is by no means
an exclusively hysterical phenomenon, although often seen
in a heightened form in hysterical conditions. It is probably
to some extent simply the result of a conflict in consciousness
with a merely physical impulse which is strong enough to assert
itself in spite of the emotional and intellectual abhorrence
of the subject. It is thus but an extreme form of the disgust
which all sexual physical manifestations tend to inspire in
a person who is not inclined to respond to them. Somewhat
similar psychic disgust and physical pain are produced in
the attempts to stimulate the sexual emotions and organs when
these are exhausted by exercise. In the detailed history which
Moll presents, of the sexual experiences of a sister in an
American nursing guild,--a most instructive history of a woman
fairly normal except for the results of repressed sexual emotion,
and with strong moral tendencies,--various episodes are narrated
well illustrating the way in which sexual excitement becomes
unpleasant or even painful when it takes place as a physical
reflex which the emotions and intellect are all the time struggling
against.[247] It is quite probable, however, that there is
a physiological, as well as a psychic, factor in this phenomenon,
and Sollier, in his elaborate study of the nature and genesis
of hysteria, by insisting on the capital importance of the
disturbance of sensibility in hysteria, and the definite character
of the phenomena produced in the passage between anaesthesia
and normal sensation, has greatly helped to reveal the mechanism
of this feature of auto-erotic excitement in the hysterical.
No doubt there has been a tendency to exaggerate the unpleasant
character of the auto-erotic phenomena of hysteria. That tendency
was an inevitable reaction against an earlier view, according
to which hysteria was little more than an unconscious expression
of the sexual emotions and as such was unscientifically dismissed
without any careful investigation. I agree with Breuer and
Freud that the sexual needs of the hysterical are just as
individual and various as those of normal women, but that
they suffer from them more, largely through a moral struggle
with their own instincts, and the attempt to put them into
the background of consciousness.[248] In many hysterical and
psychically abnormal wo | |
