Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume I Part 15

Dr. J. W. Howe (Excessive Venery, Masturbation, and Continence, London and New York, 1883, p. 62) writes of masturbation: "In savage lands it is of rare occurrence. Savages live in a state of Nature. No moral obligations exist which compel them to abstain from a natural gratification of their pa.s.sions. There is no social law which prevents them from following the dictates of their lower nature. Hence, they have no reason for adopting onanism as an outlet for pa.s.sions. The moral trammels of civilized society, and ignorance of physiological laws, give origin to the vice." Every one of these six sentences is incorrect or misleading. They are worth quoting as a statement of the popular view of savage life.

[185]

I can recall little evidence of its existence among the Australian aborigines, though there is, in the Wiradyuri language, spoken over a large part of New South Wales, a word (whether ancient or not, I do not know) meaning masturbation (Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, July-Dec., 1904, p. 303). Dr. W. Roth (Ethnological Studies Among the Northwest-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 184), who has carefully studied the blacks of his district, remarks that he has no evidence as to the practice of either masturbation or sodomy among them. More recently (1906) Roth has stated that married men in North Queensland and elsewhere m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e during their wives' absence. As regards the Maori of New Zealand, Northcote adds, there is a rare word for masturbation (as also at Rarotonga), but according to a distinguished Maori scholar there are no allusions to the practice in Maori literature, and it was probably not practiced in primitive times. The Maori and the Polynesians of the Cook Islands, Northcote remarks, consider the act unmanly, applying to it a phrase meaning "to make women of themselves." (Northcote, loc. cit., p. 232.)

[186]

Greenlees, Journal of Mental Science, July, 1895. A gentleman long resident among the Kaffirs of South Natal, told Northcote, however, that he had met with no word for masturbation, and did not believe the practice prevailed there.

[187]

Hyades and Deniker, Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn, vol. vii, p. 295.

[188]

La Criminalite en Cochin-Chine, 1887, p. 116; also Mondiere, "Monographie de la Femme Annamite," Memoires Societe d'Anthropologie, tome ii, p. 465.

[189]

Christian, article on "Onanisme," Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales; Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib; Moraglia, "Die Onanie beim normalen Weibe," Zeitschrift fur Criminal-Anthropologie, 1897; Dartigues, De la Procreation Volontaire des s.e.xes, p. 32. In the eighteenth century, the rin-no-tama was known in France, sometimes as "pommes d'amour." Thus Bachaumont, in his Journal (under date July 31, 1773), refers to "a very extraordinary instrument of amorous mystery," brought by a traveler from India; he describes this "boule erotique" as the size of a pigeon's egg, covered with soft skin, and gilded. Cf. F. S. Krauss, Geschlechtsleben in Brauch und Sitte der j.a.paner, Leipzig, 1907.

[190]

It may be worth mentioning that the Salish Indians of British Columbia have a myth of an old woman having intercourse with young women, by means of a horn worn as a p.e.n.i.s (Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, July-Dec., 1904, p. 342).

[191]

In Burchard's Penitential (cap. 142-3), penalties are a.s.signed to the woman who makes a phallus for use on herself or other women. (Wa.s.serschleben, Bussordnungen der abendlandlichen Kirche, p. 658.) The p.e.n.i.s succedaneus, the Latin phallus or fascinum, is in France called G.o.demiche; in Italy, pa.s.satempo, and also diletto, whence d.i.l.d.o, by which it is most commonly known in England. For men, the corresponding cunnus succedaneus is, in England, called merkin, which meant originally (as defined in old editions of Bailey's Dictionary) "counterfeit hair for women's privy parts."

[192]

Duhren, Der Marquis de Sade und Seine Zeit, 3d ed., pp. 130, 232; id. Geschlechtsleben in England, Bd. II, pp. 284 et seq.

[193]

Gamier, Onanisme, p. 378.

[194]

Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1899, p. 669.

[195]

The mythology of Hawaii, one may note, tells of G.o.ddesses who were impregnated by bananas they had placed beneath their garments. B. Stern mentions (Medizin in der Turkei, Bd. II, p. 24) that the women of Turkey and Egypt use the banana, as well as the cuc.u.mber, etc., for masturbation. In a poem in the Arabian Nights, also ("History of the Young Nour with the Frank"), we read: "O bananas, of soft and smooth skins, which dilate the eyes of young girls ... you, alone among fruits are endowed with a pitying heart, O consolers of widows and divorced women." In France and England they are not uncommonly used for the same purpose.

[196]

See, e.g., Winckel, Die Krankheiten der weiblichen Harnrohre und Blase, 1885, p. 211; and "Lehrbuch der Frauenkrankheiten," 1886, p. 210; also, Hyrtl, Handbuch du Topographischen Anatomie, 7th ed., Bd. II, pp. 212-214. Grunfeld (Wiener medizinische Blatter, November 26, 1896), collected 115 cases of foreign body in the bladder-68 in men, 47 in women; but while those found in men were usually the result of a surgical accident, those found in women were mostly introduced by the patients themselves. The patient usually professes profound ignorance as to how the object came there; or she explains that she accidentally sat down upon it, or that she used it to produce freer urination. The earliest surgical case of this kind I happen to have met with, was recorded by Plazzon, in Italy, in 1621 (De Partibus Generationi Inservientibus, lib. ii, Ch. XIII); it was that of a certain honorable maiden with a large c.l.i.toris, who, seeking to lull s.e.xual excitement with the aid of a bone needle, inserted it in the bladder, whence it was removed by Aquapendente.

[197]

A. Poulet, Traite des Corps etrangers en Chirurgie, 1879. English translation, 1881, vol. ii, pp. 209, 230. Rohleder (Die Masturbation, 1899, pp. 24-31) also gives examples of strange objects found in the s.e.xual organs.

[198]

E. H. Smith, "Signs of Masturbation in the Female," Pacific Medical Journal, February, 1903, quoted by R. W. Taylor, Practical Treatise on s.e.xual Disorders, 3d ed., p. 418.

[199]

L. Tait, Diseases of Women, 1889, vol. i, p. 100.

[200]

Obstetric Journal, vol. i, 1873, p. 558. Cf. G. J. Arnold, British, Medical Journal, January 6, 1906, p. 21.

[201]

Dudley, American Journal of Obstetrics, July, 1889, p. 758.

[202]

A. Reverdin, "Epingles a Cheveux dans la Vessie," Revue Medicale de la Suisse Romande, January 20, 1888. His cases are fully recorded, and his paper is an able and interesting contribution to this by-way of s.e.xual psychology. The first case was a school-master's wife, aged 22, who confessed in her husband's presence, without embarra.s.sment or hesitation, that the manuvre was habitual, learned from a school-companion, and continued after marriage. The second was a single woman of 42, a cure's servant, who attempted to elude confession, but on leaving the doctor's house remarked to the house-maid, "Never go to bed without taking out your hair-pins; accidents happen so easily." The third was an English girl of 17 who finally acknowledged that she had lost two hair-pins in this way. The fourth was a child of 12, driven by the pain to confess that the practice had become a habit with her.

[203]

"One of my patients," remarks Dr. R. T. Morris, of New York, (Transactions of the American a.s.sociation of Obstetricians, for 1892, Philadelphia, vol. v), "who is a devout church-member, had never allowed herself to entertain s.e.xual thoughts referring to men, but she m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed every morning, when standing before the mirror, by rubbing against a key in the bureau-drawer. A man never excited her pa.s.sions, but the sight of a key in any bureau-drawer aroused erotic desires."

[204]

Freud (Drei Abhandlungen zur s.e.xualtheorie, p. 118) refers to the s.e.xual pleasure of swinging. Swinging another person may be a source of voluptuous excitement, and one of the 600 forms of s.e.xual pleasure enumerated in De Sade's Les 120 Journees de Sodome is (according to Duhren) to propel a girl vigorously in a swing.

[205]

The fact that horse exercise may produce pollutions was well recognized by Catholic theologians, and Sanchez states that this fact need not be made a reason for traveling on foot. Rolfincius, in 1667, pointed out that horse-riding, in those unaccustomed to it, may lead to nocturnal pollutions. Rohleder (Die Masturbation, pp. 133-134) brings together evidence regarding the influence of horse exercise in producing s.e.xual excitement.

[206]

A correspondent, to whom the idea was presented for the first time, wrote: "Henceforward I shall know to what I must attribute the bliss-almost the beat.i.tude-I so often have experienced after traveling for four or five hours in a train." Penta mentions the case of a young girl who first experienced s.e.xual desire at the age of twelve, after a railway journey.

[207]

Langdon Down, British Medical Journal, January 12, 1867.

[208]

Pouillet, L'Onanisme chez la Femme, Paris, 1880; Fournier, De l'Onanisme, 1885; Rohleder, Die Masturbation, p. 132.

[209]

West-Riding Asylum Reports, 1876, vol. vi.

[210]

Das Nervose Weib, 1898, p. 193.

[211]

In the Appendix to volume iii of these Studies, I have recorded the experience of a lady who found s.e.xual gratification in this manner.

[212]

Dr. J. G. Kiernan, to whom I am indebted for a note on this point, calls my attention also to the case of a h.o.m.os.e.xual and m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic man (Medical Record, vol. xix) whose feelings were intensified by tight-lacing.

[213]

Some women are also able to produce the o.r.g.a.s.m, when in a state of s.e.xual excitement, by placing a cushion between the knees and pressing the thighs firmly together.

[214]

Lecons sur les Deformations v.u.l.v.aires, p. 64. Martineau was informed by a dressmaker that it is very frequent in workrooms and can usually be done without attracting attention. An ironer informed him that while standing at her work, she crossed her legs, slightly bending the trunk forward and supporting herself on the table by the hands; then a few movements of contraction of the adductor muscles of the thigh would suffice to produce the o.r.g.a.s.m.

[215]

C. W. Townsend, "Thigh-friction in Children under one Year," Annual Meeting of the American Pediatric Society, Montreal, 1896. Five cases are recorded by this writer, all in female infants.

[216]

Soutzo, Archives de Neurologie, February, 1903, p. 167.

[217]

Zache, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1899, p. 72. I have discussed what may be regarded as the normally s.e.xual influence of dancing, in the third volume of these Studies, "The a.n.a.lysis of the s.e.xual Impulse."