Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume I Part 14

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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual o.r.g.a.s.m 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 s.e.x, 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 s.e.m.e.n pa.s.sed." (In reality, no doubt, not s.e.m.e.n, but urethral fluid.) This man's condition may certainly be considered somewhat morbid; he is attracted to both men and women, and the s.e.xual impulse seems to be irritable and weak; but a similar state of things exists so often in women, no doubt due to s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual images, which the theologians termed delectatio morosa, may lead to spontaneous o.r.g.a.s.m in either s.e.x, 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 o.r.g.a.s.m. 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 o.r.g.a.s.m.[222] Niceforo refers to an Italian work-girl of 14 who could obtain e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n 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 s.e.xual things.[223]

If the o.r.g.a.s.m 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 s.e.xual o.r.g.a.s.m, which would come on without any accompaniment of voluptuous thoughts. MacGillicuddy records three cases of spontaneous o.r.g.a.s.m 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 s.e.xual o.r.g.a.s.m, but whose s.e.xual emotions are, literally, continually dribbling from them. Schrenck-Notzing knows a lady who is spontaneously s.e.xually excited on hearing music or seeing pictures without anything lascivious in them; she knows nothing of s.e.xual relationships. Another lady is s.e.xually excited on seeing beautiful and natural scenes, like the sea; s.e.xual ideas are mixed up in her mind with these things, and the contemplation of a specially strong and sympathetic man brings the o.r.g.a.s.m on in about a minute. Both these ladies "m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e" 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 o.r.g.a.s.m, 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.e.xual 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, const.i.tuted by this act of complacent dallying, and has no reference to the duration of the imaginative process. Debreyne, in his Mchialogie (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 s.e.m.e.n 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 a.s.signed 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 Doc.u.ments, vol. iii, p. 426.)

The frequency of spontaneous o.r.g.a.s.m 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e their s.e.m.e.n.

There is, however, a closely allied, and, indeed, overlapping form of auto-erotism which may be considered here: I mean that a.s.sociated 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 s.e.xes, 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual congestion or even spontaneous s.e.xual o.r.g.a.s.m. 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.e.xual inverts the vision of a person of the same s.e.x, 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 circ.u.mstances, it must be considered as strictly normal, the inevitable outcome of the play of the s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual emotion; yet it is a significant indication of its really s.e.xual origin that, as I have been informed by persons of both s.e.xes, even in these apparently non-s.e.xual 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: s.e.xual o.r.g.a.s.m during sleep. That under conditions of s.e.xual 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 o.r.g.a.s.m 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 const.i.tution, 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 cla.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trated by Luther, there was something diseased, though not impure, in s.e.xual 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 G.o.d 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] Lowenfeld 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 s.e.xual excitement during sleep as a somewhat unhealthy phenomenon. Moll is a distinguished advocate of this view. s.e.xual 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 s.e.xualis, Bd. I, p. 552.) This remark is supported by the fact, to which I find that both men and women can bear witness, that s.e.xual 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 (s.e.xuale 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 s.e.x. 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 s.e.xually undeveloped at that age, and while s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual experiences (either masturbation or intercourse); in 23 per cent, there had been masturbation; in the rest, some form of s.e.xual 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 p.u.b.ertal 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 Lowenfeld (s.e.xual-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 const.i.tute 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 s.e.xual 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 p.u.b.erty, 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s often figured prominently in these dreams, the other s.e.xual 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 o.r.g.a.s.m 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 pa.s.sing 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual organs in their erotic dreams.

Moll's comparison of nocturnal emissions of s.e.m.e.n 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 fur Harnkrankheiten und s.e.xuelle 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 s.e.xual activity only begins normally at p.u.b.erty, we realize that the youth of twenty is, in the matter of s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual system, it would be fully as difficult to gain vesical control during sleep as it now is to gain s.e.xual control. Ultimately, such s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual dream, and awoke without excitement; again she fell asleep, and had another dream of s.e.xual character, but resisted the tendency to excitement, and again awoke; finally, she fell asleep and had a third s.e.xual dream, which was this time accompanied by the o.r.g.a.s.m. (This has recently been described also by Nacke, 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 fur s.e.xualwissenschaft, Aug., 1908.) The factors involved in the acquirement of vesical and s.e.xual control during sleep are the same, but the conditions are somewhat different.

There is a very intimate connection between the vesical and the s.e.xual spheres, as I have elsewhere pointed out (see e.g. in the third volume of these Studies, "a.n.a.lysis of the s.e.xual 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 Traumzustande, 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 p.u.b.erty by masturbation. In the reverse direction, Freud believes (Monatsschrift fur Psychiatrie, Bd. XVIII, p. 433) that masturbation plays a large part in causing the bed-wetting of children who have pa.s.sed the age when that usually ceases, and he even finds that children are themselves aware of the connection.

The diagnostic value of s.e.xual dreams, as an indication of the s.e.xual nature of the subject when awake, has been emphasized by various writers. (E.g., Moll, Die Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, Ch. IX; Nacke, "Der Traum als feinstes Reagens fur die Art des s.e.xuellen Empfindens," Monatsschrift fur Kriminalpsychologie, 1905, p. 500.) s.e.xual dreams tend to reproduce, and even to accentuate, those characteristics which make the strongest s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual matters, and never having seen a woman naked, who, in his s.e.xual dreams, always sees the woman with male organs, though he has never had any s.e.xual inclinations for men, and is much in love with a lady. The confusions and a.s.sociations of dream imagery, leading to abnormal combinations, may be ill.u.s.trated 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, however, but from a p.e.n.i.s with which she was furnished. Again, by another kind of confusion, a man dreams s.e.xually 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 pa.s.sive, 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. (Nacke also brings forward inverted dreams by normal persons; see e.g. his "Beitrage zu den s.e.xuellen Traumen," Archiv fur 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 p.u.b.erty continues at intervals of varying duration during s.e.xual 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 circ.u.mstances: 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 p.u.b.erty or adolescence.[238] Auto-erotic phenomena during sleep in women who have never experienced the o.r.g.a.s.m when awake are usually of a very vague kind; while it is the rule in a chaste youth for the o.r.g.a.s.m thus to manifest itself, it is the exception in a chaste girl. It is not, as a rule, until the o.r.g.a.s.m 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 s.e.xual woman living a repressed life it is often comparatively infrequent.[239] Thus, a young medical woman who endeavors to deal strenuously with her physical s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual feeling. This is probably an experience common to all." Another lady (with a restrained psycho-s.e.xual tendency to be attracted to both s.e.xes), states that her first s.e.xual sensations with o.r.g.a.s.m 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 o.r.g.a.s.m began to occur occasionally when awake, and after this, o.r.g.a.s.m took place regularly once or twice a week in sleep, but still without erotic dreams; she merely dreamt that the o.r.g.a.s.m was occurring and awoke as it took place.

It is possible that to the comparative rarity in chaste women of complete o.r.g.a.s.m during sleep, we may in part attribute the violence with which repressed s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual impulse in chaste women.

In women, who have become accustomed to s.e.xual intercourse, erotic dreams of fully developed character occur, with complete o.r.g.a.s.m 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 s.e.xual 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 p.u.b.erty, 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual phenomena and felt no interest, and the memory may subsequently be aroused in sleep, under the stimulation of new-born s.e.xual sensations.

It is a curious proof of the ignorance which has prevailed in recent times concerning the psychic s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual impulse in women. Eulenburg (s.e.xuale Neuropathie, 1895, pp. 31, 79) appears to regard the appearances of s.e.xual phenomena during sleep, in women, as the result of masturbation. Adler, in what is in many respects an extremely careful study of s.e.xual 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 m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed 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. (Lowenfeld quotes a pa.s.sage to this effect from the Oupnek'hat, s.e.xualleben 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 ch.o.r.ea, after having dreamed of an a.s.sault, accused the princ.i.p.al of a school of a.s.sault, 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. Derc.u.m, H. C. Wood, and Rohe had not personally met with such cases; Burr believed that there was strong evidence "that a s.e.xual dream may be so vivid as to make the subject believe she has had s.e.xual 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 pa.s.sional 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 pa.s.sed. The influence, I was a.s.sured, 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 cla.s.ses of people, remarks on the frequently s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual character of the hallucinations of the hysterical, "for these erotic hallucinations to be accompanied by agreeable voluptuous sensations. In most cases the illusion of s.e.xual 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 v.a.g.i.n.a." (It seems probable, I may remark, that the witches' representations, both of the devil and of s.e.xual 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 a.s.sume, from the prevalence of nocturnal auto-erotic phenomena in hysterical women, that such women are necessarily s.e.xual and libidinous in excess; the disorder is in them psychic, he points out, and not physical, and they usually receive s.e.xual approaches with indifference and repugnance, because their s.e.xual centres are anaesthetic or hyperaesthetic. "During the period of s.e.xual 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 h.e.l.ls on earth. The s.e.xual 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 a.s.sert itself in spite of the emotional and intellectual abhorrence of the subject. It is thus but an extreme form of the disgust which all s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual emotions and organs when these are exhausted by exercise. In the detailed history which Moll presents, of the s.e.xual experiences of a sister in an American nursing guild,-a most instructive history of a woman fairly normal except for the results of repressed s.e.xual emotion, and with strong moral tendencies,-various episodes are narrated well ill.u.s.trating the way in which s.e.xual 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.e.xual emotions and as such was unscientifically dismissed without any careful investigation. I agree with Breuer and Freud that the s.e.xual 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 women, auto-erotic phenomena, and s.e.xual phenomena generally, are highly pleasurable, though such persons may be quite innocent of any knowledge of the erotic character of the experience. I have come across interesting and extreme examples of this in the published experiences of the women followers of the American religious leader, T. L. Harris, founder of the "Brotherhood of the New Life." Thus, in a pamphlet ent.i.tled "Internal Respiration," by Respiro, a letter is quoted from a lady physician, who writes: "One morning I awoke with a strange new feeling in the womb, which lasted for a day or two; I was so very happy, but the joy was in my womb, not in my heart."[249] "At last," writes a lady quoted in the same pamphlet, "I fell into a slumber, lying on my back with arms and feet folded, a position I almost always find myself in when I awake, no matter in which position I may go to sleep. Very soon I awoke from this slumber with a most delightful sensation, every fibre tingling with an exquisite glow of warmth. I was lying on my left side (something I am never able to do), and was folded in the arms of my counterpart. Unless you have seen it, I cannot give you an idea of the beauty of his flesh, and with what joy I beheld and felt it. Think of it, luminous flesh; and Oh! such tints, you never could imagine without seeing. He folded me so closely in his arms," etc. In such cases there is no conflict between the physical and the psychic, and therefore the resulting excitement is pleasurable and not painful.

At this point our study of auto-erotism brings us into the sphere of mysticism. Leuba, in a penetrating and suggestive essay on Christian mysticism, after quoting the present Study, refers to the famous pa.s.sages in which St. Theresa describes how a beautiful little angel inserted a flame-tipped dart into her heart until it descended into her bowels and left her inflamed with divine love. "What physiological difference," he asks, "is there between this voluptuous sensation and that enjoyed by the disciple of the Brotherhood of New Life? St. Theresa says 'bowels,' the woman doctor says 'womb,' that is all."[250]

The extreme form of auto-erotism is the tendency for the s.e.xual emotion to be absorbed and often entirely lost in self-admiration. This Narcissus-like tendency, of which the normal germ in women is symbolized by the mirror, is found in a minor degree in some men, and is sometimes well marked in women, usually in a.s.sociation with an attraction for other persons, to which attraction it is, of course, normally subservient. "The mirror," remarks Bloch (Beitrage 1, p. 201), "plays an important part in the genesis of s.e.xual aberration.... It cannot be doubted that many a boy and girl have first experienced s.e.xual excitement at the sight of their own bodies in a mirror."

Valera, the Spanish novelist, very well described this impulse in his Genio y Figura. Rafaela, the heroine of this novel, says that, after her bath: "I fall into a puerility which may be innocent or vicious, I cannot decide. I only know that it is a purely contemplative act, a disinterested admiration of beauty. It is not coa.r.s.e sensuality, but aesthetic platonism. I imitate Narcissus; and I apply my lips to the cold surface of the mirror and kiss my image. It is the love of beauty, the expression of tenderness and affection for what G.o.d has made manifest, in an ingenuous kiss imprinted on the empty and incorporeal reflection." In the same spirit the real heroine of the Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (p. 114), at the point when she was about to become a prost.i.tute, wrote: "I am pretty. It gives me pleasure to throw off my clothes, one by one, before the mirror, and to look at myself, just as I am, white as snow and straight as a fir, with my long, fine, hair, like a cloak of black silk. When I spread abroad the black stream of it, with both hands, I am like a white swan with black wings."

A typical case known to me is that of a lady of 28, brought up on a farm. She is a handsome woman, of very large and fine proportions, active and healthy and intelligent, with, however, no marked s.e.xual attraction to the opposite s.e.x; at the same time she is not inverted, though she would like to be a man, and has a considerable degree of contempt for women. She has an intense admiration for her own person, especially her limbs; she is never so happy as when alone and naked in her own bedroom, and, so far as possible, she cultivates nakedness. She knows by heart the various measurements of her body, is proud of the fact that they are strictly in accordance with the canons of proportion, and she laughs proudly at the thought that her thigh is larger than many a woman's waist. She is frank and a.s.sured in her manners, without s.e.xual shyness, and, while willing to receive the attention and admiration of others, she makes no attempt to gain it, and seems never to have experienced any emotions stronger than her own pleasure in herself. I should add that I have had no opportunity of detailed examination, and cannot speak positively as to the absence of masturbation.

In the extreme form in which alone the name of Narcissus may properly be invoked, there is comparative indifference to s.e.xual intercourse or even the admiration of the opposite s.e.x. Such a condition seems to be rare, except, perhaps, in insanity. Since I called attention to this form of auto-erotism (Alienist and Neurologist, April, 1898), several writers have discussed the condition, especially Nacke, who, following out the suggestion, terms the condition Narcissism. Among 1,500 insane persons, Nacke has found it in four men and one woman (Psychiatrische en Neurologische Bladen, No. 2, 1899), Dr. C. H. Hughes writes (in a private letter) that he is acquainted with such cases, in which men have been absorbed in admiration of their own manly forms, and of their s.e.xual organs, and women, likewise, absorbed in admiration of their own mammae and physical proportions, especially of limbs. "The whole subject," he adds, "is a singular phase of psychology, and it is not all morbid psychology, either. It is closely allied to that aesthetic sense which admires the nude in art."

Fere (L'Instinct s.e.xuel, 2d ed., p. 271) mentions a woman who experienced s.e.xual excitement in kissing her own hand. Nacke knew a woman in an asylum who, during periodical fits of excitement, would kiss her own arms and hands, at the same time looking like a person in love. He also knew a young man with dementia praec.o.x? who would kiss his own image ("Der Kuss bei Geisteskranken," Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie, Bd. LXIII, p. 127). Moll refers to a young h.o.m.os.e.xual lawyer, who experienced great pleasure in gazing at himself in a mirror (Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, 3d ed., p. 228), and mentions another inverted man, an admirer of the nates of men, who, chancing to observe his own nates in a mirror, when changing his shirt, was struck by their beauty, and subsequently found pleasure in admiring them (Libido s.e.xualis, Bd. I, Theil I, p. 60). Krafft-Ebing knew a man who m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed before a mirror, imagining, at the same time, how much better a real lover would be.

The best-observed cases of Narcissism have, however, been recorded by Rohleder, who confers upon this condition the ponderous name of automonos.e.xualism, and believes that it has not been previously observed (H. Rohleder, Der Automonos.e.xualismus, being Heft 225 of Berliner Klinik, March, 1907). In the two cases investigated by Rohleder, both men, there was s.e.xual excitement in the contemplation of the individual's own body, actually or in a mirror, with little or no s.e.xual attraction to other persons. Rohleder is inclined to regard the condition as due to a congenital defect in the "s.e.xual centre" of the brain.

[176]

All the above groups of phenomena are dealt with in other volumes of these Studies: the manifestations of normal s.e.xual excitement, in vols. iii, iv, and v; h.o.m.os.e.xuality, in vol. ii, and erotic fetichism, in vol. v.

[177]

See Appendix C.

[178]

Letamendi, of Madrid, has suggested "auto-erastia" to cover what is probably much the same field. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, Hufeland, in his Makrobiotic, invented the term "geistige Onanie," to express the filling and heating of the imagination with voluptuous images, without unchast.i.ty of body; and in 1844, Kaan, in his Psychopathia s.e.xualis, used, but did not invent, the term "onania psychica." Gustav Jaeger, in his Entdeckung der Seele, proposed "monos.e.xual idiosyncrasy," to indicate the most animal forms of masturbation taking place without any correlative imaginative element, a condition ill.u.s.trated by cases given in Moll's Untersuchungen uber die Libido s.e.xualis, Bd. I, pp. 13 et seq. Dr. Laupts (a pseudonym for the accomplished psychologist, Dr. Saint-Paul) uses the term autophilie, for solitary vice. (Perversion et Perversite s.e.xuelles, 1896, p. 337.) But all these terms only cover a portion of the field.

[179]

H. Northcote, Christianity and s.e.x Problems, p. 231.

[180]

Rosse observed two elephants procuring erection by entwining their proboscides, the act being completed by one elephant opening his mouth and allowing the other to tickle the roof of it. (I. Rosse, Virginia Medical Monthly, October, 1892.)

[181]

Fere, "Perversions s.e.xuelles chez les animaux," Revue Philosophique, May, 1897.

[182]

Tillier, L'Instinct s.e.xuel, 1889, p. 270.

[183]

Moll, Libido s.e.xualis, Bd. I, p. 76. The same author mentions (ibid., p. 373) that parrots living in solitary confinement m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e by rubbing the posterior part of the body against some object until e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n occurs. Edmund Selous ("Habits of the Peewit," Zoologist, April, 1902) suggests that the peewit, when rolling on the ground, and exerting pressure on the a.n.a.l region, is moved by a s.e.xual impulse to satisfy desire; he adds that actual o.r.g.a.s.m appears eventually to take place, a spasm of energy pa.s.sing through the bird.

[184]