Brittany, the custom still prevails of lighting a large bonfire at the
time of the summer solstice; it is called Tan Heol, or Tan St. Jean. In
Ireland, the bonfires also take place on St. John's Eve, and a
correspondent, who has often witnessed them in County Waterford, writes
that "women, with garments raised, jump through these fires, and conduct
which, on ordinary occasions would be reprobated, is regarded as excusable
and harmless." Outside Europe, the Berbers of Morocco still maintain this
midsummer festival, and in the Rif they light bonfires; here the fires
seem to be now regarded as mainly purificatory, but they are associated
with eating ceremonies which are still regarded as multiplicative.
(Westermarck, "Midsummer Customs in Morocco," _Folk-Lore_, March, 1905.)
[141] Mannhardt (op. cit., p. 469) quotes a description of an Ehstonian
festival in the Island of Moon, when the girls dance in a circle round the
fire, and one of them,--to the envy of the rest, and the pride of her own
family,--is chosen by the young men, borne away so violently that her
clothes are often torn, and thrown down by a youth, who places one leg
over her body in a kind of symbolical coitus, and lies quietly by her side
till morning. The spring festivals of the young people of Ukrainia, in
which, also, there is singing, dancing, and sleeping together, are
described in "Folk-Lore de l'Ukrainie." Kryptadia, vol. v, pp. 2-6, and
vol. viii, pp. 303 et seq.
[142] M. Kowalewsky, "Marriage Among the Early Slavs," _Folk-Lore_,
December, 1890.
[143] A. Tille, however (_Yule and Christmas_, 1899), while admitting that
the general Aryan division of the year was dual, follows Tacitus in
asserting that the Germanic division of the year (like the Egyptian) was
tripartite: winter, spring, and summer.
[144] Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_ (English translation by Stallybrass),
pp. 612-630, 779, 788.
[145] Wellhausen, _Reste Arabischen Heidentums_, 1897, p. 98.
[146] See, e.g., the chapter on ritual in Gérard-Varet's interesting book,
_L'Ignorance et l'Irreflexion_, 1899, for a popular account of this and
allied primitive conceptions.
[147] Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia_, especially pp. 485, 571; regarding
the priestesses, Jastrow remarks: "Among many nations, the mysterious
aspects of woman's fertility lead to rites that, by a perversion of their
original import, appear to be obscene. The prostitutes were priestesses
attached to the Ishtar cult, and who took part in ceremonies intended to
symbolize fertility." Whether there is any significance in the fact that
the first two months of the Babylonian year (roughly corresponding to our
March and April), when we should expect births to be at a maximum, were
dedicated to Ea and Bel, who, according to varying legends, were the
creators of man, and that New Year's Day was the festival of Bau, regarded
as the mother of mankind, I cannot say, but the suggestion may be put
forward.
[148] _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 421.
[149] Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, p. 1465. In England, the November,
bonfires have become merged into the Guy Fawkes celebrations. In the East,
the great primitive autumn festivals seem to have fallen somewhat earlier.
In Babylonia, the seventh month (roughly corresponding to September) was
specially sacred, though nothing is known of its festivals, and this also
was the sacred festival month of the Hebrews, and originally of the Arabs.
In Europe, among the southern Slavs, the Reigen, or Kolo--wild dances by
girls, adorned with flowers, and with skirts girt high, followed by sexual
intercourse--take place in autumn, during the nights following harvest
time.
[150] A. Tille, _Yule and Christmas_, p. 21, etc.
[151] Long before Wargentin, however, Rabelais had shown some interest in
this question, and had found that there were most christenings in October
and November, this showing, he pointed out, that the early warmth of
spring influenced the number of conceptions (_Pantagruel_, liv. v, Ch.
XXIX). The spring maximum of conceptions is not now so early in France.
[152] Villermé, "De la Distribution par mois des conceptions," _Annales
d'Hygiène Publique_, tome v, 1831, pp. 55-155.
[153] Sormani, _Giornale di Medicina Militare_, 1870.
[154] Throughout Europe, it may be said, marriages tend to take place
either in spring or autumn (Oettinger _Moralstatistik_, p. 181, gives
details). That is to say, that there is a tendency for marriages to take
place at the season of the great public festivals, during which sexual
intercourse was prevalent in more primitive times.
[155] Hill, _Nature_, July 12, 1888.
[156] G. Mayr, _Die Gesetzmässigkeit im Gesellschaftsleben_, 1877, p. 240.
[157] Edward Smith (_Health and Disease_), who attributes this to the
lessened vitality of offspring at that season. Beukemann also states that
children born in September have most vitality.
[158] Westermarck has even suggested that the December maximum of
conceptions may be due to better chance of survival for September
offspring (_Human Marriage_, Chapter II). It may be noted that though the
maximum of conceptions is in May, relatively the smallest proportion of
boys is conceived at that time. (Rauber, _Der Ueberschuss an
Knabengeburten_, p. 39.)
[159] Krieger found that the great majority of German women investigated
by him menstruated for the first time in September, October, or November.
In America, Bowditch states that the first menstruation of country girls
more often occurs in spring than at any other season.
[160] _Women's Medical Journal_, 1894.
[161] It is, perhaps, worth while noting that the wisdom of the mediæval
Church found an outlet for this "spring fever" in pilgrimages to remote
shrines. As Chaucer wrote, in the _Canterbury Tales_:--
"Whané that Aprille with his showers sote
The droughts of March hath piercèd to the root,
Thaen longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seeken strangé stronds."
[162] L.W. Kline, "The Migratory Impulse," _American Journal of
Psychology_, 1898, vol. x, especially pp. 21-24.
[163] Mania comes to a crisis in spring, said the old physician, Aretæus
(Bk. 1, Ch. V).
[164] This is, at all events, the case in France, Prussia, and Italy. See,
for instance, Durkheim's discussion of the cosmic factors of suicide, _Le
Suicide_, 1897, Chapter III. In Spain, as Bernaldo de Quirós shows
(_Criminologia_, p. 69), there is a slight irregular rise in December, but
otherwise the curve is perfectly regular, with maximum in June, and
minimum in January.
[165] This holds good of a south European country, taken separately. A
chart of the annual incidence of suicide by hanging, in Roumania,
presented by Minovici (_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1905, p.
587), shows climaxes of equal height in May and September.
[166] Morselli, _Suicide_, pp. 55-72.
[167] Ogle himself was inclined to think that these breaks were
accidental, being unaware of the allied phenomena with which they may be
brought into line. It is true that (as Gaedeken objects to me) the
autumnal break is very slight, but it is probably real when we are dealing
with so large a mass of data.
[168] _Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891, p. 298. For a very full summary
and bibliography of investigations regarding growth, see F. Burk, "Growth
of Children in Height and Weight," _American Journal of Psychology_,
April, 1898.
[169] _L'Année Psychologique_, 1898.
[170] _Lancet_, June 6, 1891. Edward Smith had pointed out many years
earlier that scarlet fever is most fatal in periods of increasing
vitality.
[171] Havelock Ellis, "The Bladder as a Dynamometer," _American Journal of
Dermatology_, May, 1902.
[172] See, e.g., summary in _Internationales Centrablatt für
Anthropologie_, 1902, Heft 4, p. 207.
[173] Summarized in _Zeitschrift für Psychologie der Sinnesorgane_, 1903,
p. 135.
[174] Camerer found that from September to November is the period of
greatest metabolic activity.
[175] Haig, _Uric Acid_, 6th edition, 1903, p. 33.
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 Féré, 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 _façade_ 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 nbôn), 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 Brantôme refers to the godemiche; in eighteenth century Germany
they were called _Samthanse_, and their use, according to Heinse, as
quoted by Dühren, 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, Denucé, 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 (Athenæus, Bk. XIV, Ch. X). Songs of a voluptuous
character, we gather from Athenæus, 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 hyperæsthesia, 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 hyperæsthesia 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 hæmorrhoids 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 gynæcologists 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 für 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 Côte 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 æsthetic 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. Sérieux 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 hyperæsthetic 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 naturæ 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 _Mémoires Particulières_,
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 _Philotée_, 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]
Löwenfeld 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 Löwenfeld
(_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 personæ_, 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
("Interprétations de Quelques Rêves," _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 für
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 Näcke, 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 für 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 Traumzustände_, 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 für
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 Konträre Sexualempfindung_,
Ch. IX; Näcke, "Der Traum als feinstes Reagens für die Art des
sexuellen Empfindens," _Monatsschrift für 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.
(Näcke also brings forward inverted dreams by normal persons; see
e.g. his "Beiträge zu den sexuellen Träumen," _Archiv für
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 Médicale_, 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.
(Löwenfeld 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 Rohé 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]