The previous section of this volume has been occupied with an examination of the factors which affect human sexual behavior. Such biologic items as age and the age at onset of adolescence, and such social factors as educational level, occupational class of the subject and of the subject’s parents, the rural-urban backgrounds of the individual, and the religious backgrounds have been analyzed as factors affecting the total sexual outlet and each of the particular types of sexual outlet. The remainder of this volume will summarize the record for each source of outlet: masturbation (in the present chapter), and nocturnal emissions, pre-marital intercourse, homosexual contacts, and other sources of outlet (in the subsequent chapters). Although many of the specific data in this section will be drawn from material presented elsewhere in the book, these chapters will be especially concerned with interpretations of the data, and will summarize the nature of each type of behavior, emphasize the individual variation that occurs, discuss the correlations of each type of activity with each other source of outlet, and show something of the significance of these factors to the individual and to the society of which he is a part.
The term masturbation may be applied to any sort of self stimulation which brings erotic arousal. Since, as we have already seen (Chapter 5), all tactile responses and still others of the sensory responses are basic to sexual activity, there is considerable justice in extending the concept of masturbation to all situations in which there is tactile stimulation. Freud (1938) and many of the analysts and other clinicians (Meagher 1924, Meagher and Jelliffe 1936, Mowrer and Kluckhohn in Hunt 1944, Lorand 1944, Carmichael 1946, Landis and Bolles 1946) use the word in this way, especially in connection with the behavior of younger children. When so defined, the phenomenon of masturbation is recognizable as universal among both males and females, from the youngest child to the oldest adult; but this is not the concept of masturbation held by the public in general, nor by most clinicians who inquire about it or report it in the histories of their patients. As more usually employed, the word “masturbation” refers to any self stimulation which is deliberate and designed to effect erotic arousal. By such a definition, the accidental touching of oneself is not masturbation because it is not deliberate. As so defined, not only tactile stimulation, but all other sorts of sensory and psychic stimulation, if deliberate and designed to bring satisfaction, fall under this head. Rubbing or scratching one’s body, even one’s genitalia, is not masturbation when it serves some other function than that of effecting erotic arousal. Throughout this volume the word has not been applied to anything except deliberate self stimulation.
When so strictly defined, masturbation cannot be taken to be as universal as some of the psychiatrists and psychologists would have it. The extension of the meaning of the word has, unfortunately, distorted the interpretation of the actual data on the phenomenon; and it is to be suggested that the analysts would do better to describe a good deal of what they observe, especially among younger children, as tactile experience, which is exactly what it is, and not call it masturbation until there is evidence that the child is reaping an erotic reward for his activity, and that the behavior has been inspired by some anticipation of such a reward.
Data on the occurrence of masturbation, its incidences and frequencies in various segments of the male population, have already been detailed in this volume in the following tables and figures:
Incidences. By even the stricter definition, masturbation may be identified in the histories of a very high proportion of the human males. Ultimately about 92 per cent of the total population is involved in masturbation which leads to orgasm (Table 132, Figures 134, 135). More individuals (96%) of the college level and 95 per cent of the high school group, are ultimately included, fewer (89%) of the males who never go beyond grade school. The general opinion that all males masturbate at some time in their lives, and the easy acceptance of this opinion among many clinicians and educators, are not warranted by the actual record. There are some individuals who do not masturbate for the simple reason that they do not have sufficient sex drive to cause them to go out of their way to find any sort of outlet, and who depend on nocturnal emissions for most of their orgasms. There are some boys, particularly at lower social levels, who do not masturbate because they become involved in heterosexual coitus at such an early age that they have little need for other sources of outlet. There are some duller and slower reacting individuals who find it impossible to effect orgasm in masturbation, and who in consequence make no attempt to masturbate after their first experiments. Thus there is a group of males who definitely do not have masturbatory histories, although the percentage is as small as is indicated above.
In several of the previous studies on human male sexual behavior (Merrill 1918, Peck and Wells 1923, 1925, Hughes 1926, Hamilton 1929, Dickinson and Beam 1931, Peterson 1938, Wile 1941, Ramsey 1943, Finger 1947, Hohman and Schaffner 1947), similar incidence figures have been obtained. It is interesting to find that a number of the European studies report comparable incidences (85% to 96%) among European males (Rohleder 1902, 1921; also summary in Haire 1937). There is every reason to believe that the lower figures obtained in some of the other American studies (Brockman 1902, Exner 1915, Achilles 1923, Taylor 1933, Bromley and Britten 1938) represent failures to obtain the fact. It must be realized that masturbation is taboo and even strongly condemned among certain groups (Chapter 10); and while college men more often admit their experience, there are males in some other groups who would admit almost any other kind of sexual activity before they would give a record of masturbatory experience. On the other hand, the high incidence of masturbation in the male should not be taken as warrant for believing that there is a similarly high incidence in the female. The data on the female will be presented in a later volume.
Pre-adolescent Activity. For two-thirds (68.4%) of the boys, self masturbation provides the first ejaculation. For most of the other boys, nocturnal emissions and heterosexual coitus provide the first ejaculation. There is little variation in these data for different social levels. Masturbation is more likely to provide the first experience (72%) for the boys who become adolescent at an early age, less likely (52%) for the boys who are slowest in development (Table 68, Figure 89).
The inspiration for the first experimentation in masturbation is a matter which will need more extensive consideration in a later study on sex education. It may be stated now that nearly all boys have heard about masturbation before they attempt it themselves, and a high proportion has observed companions masturbating. This is particularly true in the grade school and high school levels of society; but some males of the college level will be surprised that there are so few boys who discover masturbation on their own initiative, because it is chiefly at that level that masturbation is independently discovered by some boys. After early adolescence, there are many males who never have an opportunity to observe another male in sexual performance, and consequently it is notable that so many boys do observe masturbation in connection with their initial experiences. The female more often discovers masturbation independently and without any previous knowledge that any other person has ever been involved in similar activity.
However extensive the incidental touching of genitalia may be, specific masturbation is quite rare among younger boys. Of course, there are cases of infants under a year of age who have learned the advantage of specific manipulation, sometimes as a result of being so manipulated by older persons; and there are some boys who masturbate quite specifically and with some frequency from the age of two or three. But most young boys, in attempting masturbation, engage in such desultory motions and so quickly cease their efforts that no satisfaction is obtained and they are, therefore, not interested in trying again. When an older person provides the more specific sort of manipulation which is usual among adults, the same child may be much aroused, and in a high proportion of the cases may be brought to actual orgasm (Chapter 5).
As far as the available data indicate it is, then, a relatively small number of the younger pre-adolescents who, in any strict sense, masturbate. Not more than 10 per cent seems to have done so before the age of nine, and 13 per cent before the age often. Most boys are ten, eleven or twelve years old before they become involved. These are minimum data, derived chiefly from the memories of adults, and adults sometimes forget their childhood experiences. Comparisons of records from children and from adults (Chapter 5) indicate that the actual figures may be somewhat higher, but not more than 20 per cent higher, i.e., instead of 13 per cent it may be as many as 16 per cent of the boys who masturbate before age ten.
There appear to be some differences between social levels in the incidences of pre-adolescent masturbation, but such differences are fewer than are ordinarily found between social levels in adolescence. Actually, few boys begin masturbation until they are near the age when regular erotic responses are recognizable, which means not more than a year or two before adolescence for most of them, even though a larger proportion would be capable of definite response at a much earlier age if sufficient contacts were had. It is, of course, quite understandable that the boy should not be interested until there is a sufficient return for his efforts.
Figure 134. Masturbation: accumulative incidence, in total U. S. population
Showing percent of total population that has ever had masturbatory experience by each of the indicated ages. All data based on total population, irrespective of marital status, and corrected for the U. S. Census distribution.
Figure 135. Masturbation: accumulative incidence in three educational levels
Showing percent of each population that has ever had masturbatory experience by each of the indicated ages. All data based on total population, irrespective of marital status.
Some of the pre-adolescents carry their masturbation through to a definite and satisfactory orgasm, although in some instances the boy may not recognize what is happening, and does not identify the experience by either name or description as something that other boys have had. Nevertheless, masturbation in the younger boy is usually a definite sort of performance which is often limited to a few minutes in time, and which ceases abruptly when, as he may report, he has had enough of it. This means either that he has reached orgasm, or that he has found at least some sort of release from the tension which initiated the activity and which may have been augmented in the course of the performance. Some adolescent boys and many adults recall specific orgasm with all of its adult characteristics occurring before they had acquired the ability to ejaculate; and there are definite records (Chapter 5) on several hundred boys who have been observed in pre-adolescent orgasm which was achieved either through self masturbation or through socio-sexual contacts. Among the older psychiatrists there are some who go so far as to state, dogmatically, that no pre-adolescent ever experienced orgasm unless he was neurotic. Such a statement smacks of something other than scientific objectivity and is, of course, unacceptable in view of the observations now at hand.
Adults are often disturbed when they discover young children masturbating, and many a clinician supports the parents’ fears and lends little comfort to the child who is taken to the doctor to be cured of his biologically normal capacities. Inasmuch as nearly all boys arrive at masturbation sooner or later, it may be asked why one should worry over pre-adolescent or even infantile masturbation. If it is a moral issue, the answer must come from someone else than the scientists, and be treated as a question of morals (as it is in Kirsch 1930, Ruland and Rattler 1934, Fleege 1945, Davis 1946 vol. 2). If it is a question of physical outcome, the issue is for the biologist; and it should be made clear that there is no evidence, among the thousands of histories now at hand, that the boy who begins masturbating at an early age suffers any more harm than the boy who delays the beginning of his experience until some time in adolescence or later. And most scientists and clinicians are now agreed that masturbation does no harm at the later ages.
If the question is one of social values, it may be stated that there is no record of early masturbation disturbing the child’s adjustments except in some of the cases where adults discovered the activity, reprimanded or punished the youngster, made a public exhibition of the offense, or upset the child’s peace of mind in some other way. Even the parents who try to avoid reprimands may cause some disturbance in the child because they, the parents themselves, are inhibited, or because they are not accustomed to observing sexual behavior of any sort. It takes no more than a show of surprise on the part of the parent, a supercilious smile, or even a, studied avoidance of the issue to make it apparent to the child that the parent is emotionally upset, and that sexual activity is in a different category from other everyday affairs. Children, even infants and very young children, are especially sensitive to the reactions of other persons. If the child is seriously disturbed over his behavior, the disturbance may color his personality throughout life, as the psychiatrist and psychologist well know.
For the parent who intends that the child, or even the older adolescent, shall not be upset over masturbation, it is a matter of accepting the behavior without allowing it to appear important (Weiss and English 1943), while still making it clear that such activity in front of other individuals may bring social difficulties. The careful adjustments which are worked out in the home may be completely upset by the violent reactions of other children or adults who become aware of the child’s masturbation. Nevertheless, there are cases of parents who have succeeded in accomplishing this delicate adjustment between things that are acceptable in the home and things that other people outside the home “just don’t understand.”
Adolescent Activity. When specific masturbation does occur in preadolescence, it is almost invariably continued into adolescence.
For most males, of every social level, masturbation provides the chief source of sexual outlet in early adolescence. It is at that period that the activity reaches its highest frequencies. For those males who subsequently turn to socio-sexual contacts for their pre-marital outlet, masturbatory frequencies will never again be so high.
Masturbation and pre-marital intercourse are the, only types of sexual activity which show something of the same range of individual variation (Table 49, Figures 136, 137) as is shown by total outlet (Chapter 6). There are males who never masturbate. There are a few males who masturbate only once or twice in their lives; and there are others who have frequencies that may average seven to fourteen or twenty or more per week for long periods of years. There are males whose high frequencies extend from preadolescence through all of the pre-marital years, and males who may maintain average frequencies of three or four a week through the marital years into old age. There are a few males who are still masturbating at seventy-five years of age, but there are no older ones in the available record whose masturbation results in orgasm. Some males may masturbate several thousand times as often as some others in the population. The statement about lack of harmful outcome still applies to these most active cases. In the present records, the highest-rating males were masturbating with average frequencies of 23 per week in early adolescence. These maximum average frequencies drop to 15 per week by twenty years of age, to 6 per week by fifty years of age, and to once in two weeks at sixty years of age. It is about then that the older males are most inclined to warn the adolescent boy that masturbation will certainly harm him if he does it to excess.
For the active population, average frequencies of masturbation in early adolescence are nearly two and a half (2.4) per week, but a goodly number (17%) of the boys at that age may average four to seven times a week, or oftener (Table 51). A much larger number of the boys reach these higher frequencies on occasion, even though they do not regularly average such rates.
From the early teens, the frequencies of masturbation drop steadily into old age. They drop more abruptly in the lower social levels, where there is the most intercourse, and less abruptly in the upper social levels, where there is less intercourse before marriage.
In all groups, masturbation after marriage occurs only with reduced frequencies (Table 82). It occurs most often among the married males of the college level, where 69 per cent is ultimately involved, and where the frequencies may average about once in two weeks in early marriage, dropping a bit in the later years. It is, however, much less frequent in the marital histories of the lower levels. Less than a third (29%) of the grade school level, and less than half (42%) of the high school level, ever masturbate after marriage, and then the frequencies do not average more than once in three weeks. In most cases, the experience after marriage is confined to those periods when the husband is away from his wife. Some married males will go for years without masturbation, but come back to it as an outlet when they are separated from their wives for some period of time, as many men were during the recent war. This was most often true of the college male. Sometimes masturbation in the marital histories is the product of the fact that the wife does not want as frequent sexual relations as the male would like to have, or that periods of pregnancy, menstruation, or illness interfere with the regular intercourse. There are, however, some males who deliberately turn to self stimulation as a source of sexual variety, and who masturbate irrespective of the amount of marital intercourse they may have.
In Various Groups. Males with the highest frequencies of masturbation are most often those who become adolescent first. These are the males who have the maximum total outlet throughout their lives (Chapter 9). During the early adolescent years these younger-maturing males masturbate about twice as frequently as the boys who became adolescent last, and between sixteen and twenty-five years of age they still masturbate with rates that are 50 to 60 per cent higher than those of the late-adolescent males (Table 73). The highest incidence (99%) of masturbation in any segment of the population is among these younger-adolescent boys. It is only 93 per cent of the late-adolescent boys who ever masturbate.
At all ages, in all religious groups and in nearly all other subdivisions of the population, the highest incidences and frequencies of masturbation are to be found among boys of the college level, and the lowest incidences and frequencies among boys of lower educational levels. The accumulative incidence figures for the two groups are not very different, but the active incidence figures for any particular age period may differ more materially (Table 82). At the college level, masturbation involves most of the males (96%) and continues to be the chief source (about 60%) of the outlet up until the time of marriage. More than two-thirds (69%) of the college-bred males have some masturbation in their histories after marriage, and this provides no small part (about 9%) of the total outlet of the group after marriage. On the other hand, masturbation in the more poorly educated groups may begin to drop out almost immediately after it is begun. There are lower level males who have masturbated only a single time or two, or a few times in their lives. Some of them may masturbate for a year or two, but then stop. By sixteen years of age 16 per cent of them has stopped masturbating, and nearly 40 per cent has stopped by the time age twenty has been passed. In these late teens masturbation supplies only about a fourth (29.2%) of the outlet for the lower level males. Most males of this level find it difficult to understand how a grown man could think of masturbating, particularly if he is married and living with his wife.
The average frequencies of masturbation differ between social levels, more than the incidences. Average frequencies (active population) for the boys of the grade school level, between adolescence and fifteen years of age, are 1.8 per week; for the corresponding high school level, 2.2 per week; for the boys who will ultimately go to college, 2.7 per week (Table 82). The differences in frequencies become greater in the later age groups, and between adolescence and marriage the males of the college level masturbate more than twice as frequently as the males of the grade school level.
At lower levels there are definite taboos against masturbation. These may be fortified with the explanation that masturbation will drive one crazy, give one pimples, make one weak, or do some other sort of physical harm. More often masturbation is simply rejected because it is considered unnatural. The entire sexual philosophy at this level is turned around the acceptance of what is natural and the rejection of activities that are unnatural. The upper level’s wider acceptance of masturbation is rationalized on the ground that scientific investigation shows that it does no physical harm. Actually, however, the acceptance of masturbation in the upper level is probably the result of the very strong taboos which that group has against pre-marital intercourse. It is not a case of liking masturbation more, so much as it is a case of liking non-marital heterosexual relations less.
The masturbatory records of older and younger generations of males from the college level are practically identical, both as to the percentage of persons involved and the frequencies of the activity (Tables 98, 104). The present-day masturbatory pattern of the college level male goes back at least twenty-two years; but there is a more conscious, more generally verbalized acceptance of the reality among college-bred males today. Moreover, the upper level attitude and its scientific acceptance of masturbation seems to have extended to at least some of the more poorly educated males in the population. For the younger generation of the grade school level, for instance, masturbation begins earlier, includes more persons, and is had nearly twice as frequently as it was had in the older generation.
Boys in rural areas masturbate less often than boys raised in cities or towns, especially during adolescence (Table 117). But since the farm boy has a somewhat lower total outlet than the city boy, and since the farm boy has definitely lower rates of socio-sexual contacts, masturbation provides a higher percentage of his total outlet than it does for the city boy.
Masturbation occurs with the lowest incidences and frequencies among Jewish males who are Orthodox and among devout Catholics, and it occurs with the highest frequencies among religiously inactive Protestants (Table 126). The religious codes, both Jewish and Christian, have been the prime source of the taboos on masturbation (Chapter 13).
In the human male, masturbatory techniques are largely manual. They usually constitute a deliberate attempt to provide genital stimulation which will result in the satisfaction of orgasm. There are very few males who deliberately avoid orgasm as the conclusion of the activity, although a few of them may deliberately prolong the act into a matter of several minutes or more—sometimes to half an hour or an hour or more, in order to extend the sensory satisfaction. Most males carry the activity through to climax as rapidly as is possible, which means it does not ordinarily continue for more than a minute or two. Some males, indeed, are able to achieve orgasm quite regularly in a half minute or so, sometimes in ten or twenty seconds.
There are some boys who attempt to masturbate by moving the penis against a bed or against some other object; but for most males this technique is rare and confined to an incidental experience or two. Surprisingly enough, this method seems to be common only among the males of a particular group; but the specific data are insufficient to present at this time, and it has been impossible to get any clue as to the origin or significance of this pattern. Many of the persons who depend upon this mode of masturbation think of the act as a substitute for heterosexual coitus, and there are some clinicians who specifically recommend such a technique, in conjunction with fantasy, on the ground that it may provide some carry-over into later heterosexual activity. But however good the theory may appear to be, it finds no substantiation in the specific record, for the great majority of the boys use simpler manual techniques in masturbation, and make perfectly satisfactory heterosexual adjustments anyway. It is also to be noted that males have been known to masturbate against a bed while fantasying frictation or anal relations in the homosexual.
Self fellation is an anatomic impossibility for most human males, but it is a common means of masturbation among rhesus monkeys, the macaque, mandrille, chimpanzees and other primates (Carpenter 1942, National Research Council Conference on Mammalian Sex Behavior, 1943), and occurs quite widely among mammals of many other groups (Beach 1947). Throughout vertebrate sexual behavior there is such a close tie-up between oral eroticism and genital stimulation that oral activity of any sort must be accepted by the scientist as a biologically normal aspect of sexuality. Its tremendous suppression in the human animal must be taken to be the outcome of cultural developments. Consequently, it is not surprising to find that the human male, with his animal background, does sometimes attempt self fellation. It has taken special interviewing techniques (Chapter 2) to get adults to admit such experience, but a considerable portion of the population does record attempts at self fellation, at least in early adolescence. Only two or three males in a thousand are able to achieve the objective, but there are three or four histories of males who had depended upon self fellation as a masturbatory technique for some appreciable period of time—in the case of one thirty-year old male, for most of his life. In his psychic drive, the human animal is more mammalian than even his anatomy allows him to be.
Only a limited number of individuals extend their masturbatory techniques to involve any variety of other procedures. Such experimentation is most often found among better educated individuals who have well developed imaginative capacities and who are, of course, the ones most likely to have a minimum of overt socio-sexual contacts. The manual techniques of genital manipulation are elaborated by a few individuals. The use of literature and erotic pictures for stimulation during masturbation is not really common, and it is largely confined to better educated individuals. Urethral insertions and other masochistic techniques, and anal stimulation and anal insertions occur only very occasionally. Sometimes devices which simulate the female genitalia may be used for masturbation, but they are rarely employed. Most males restrict themselves to a limited series of particular techniques to which they have been erotically conditioned.
Nearly, but not quite, all males experience sexual fantasies during masturbation. The female fantasies much less often while masturbating. Masturbatory fantasies accord with the general psychiatric and psychologic understanding of the matter. The fantasies are heterosexual when the primary interests of the individual are heterosexual, homosexual when the individual’s overt experience or psychic reactions are homosexual. They may be alternately heterosexual and homosexual in the case of the individual who reacts definitely in both directions. The fantasies may include animal contacts for boys who have had such animal experience as some farm boys have. There are occasional sadistic or masochistic fantasies. Just as with nocturnal dreams (Chapter 15), there may be some striking disparities between the nature of the fantasies accompanying masturbation and the overt experience of the male, and one cannot discover the history of an individual merely by finding out what he thinks about when he masturbates.
Where the masturbatory techniques are manual, many individuals find some additional stimulation in observing their own genitalia; and this may have some homosexual significance, although most persons with such histories may deny any other homosexual interests. A considerable portion of the pre-eminently homosexual males whose homosexual activities involve mutual masturbation or oral techniques do observe their own genitalia during self masturbation; but not even all of them do so. Some of the most vigorously heterosexual males, however, carefully avoid any observation of their genitalia during masturbation, and their performances depend primarily upon involved heterosexual fantasies. Many of these persons masturbate in the dark, in order to concentrate the better upon the imagery. It is an important question whether masturbation should be interpreted as a narcissistic performance or a socio-sexual activity, and one is not warranted in considering that all masturbation is a matter of self interest. There are some individuals for whom masturbation is a distinctly heterosexual or a distinctly homosexual experience, depending upon the strength of the fantasy and the abundance of the associations which complement the activity.
It has not been possible to make precise correlations between the frequencies of the various types of sexual outlet for the present study; and at this time the relations between masturbation and the other outlets may only be suggested in the most general terms.
There may be some correlation between the frequencies of masturbation and the frequencies of nocturnal dreams. In general, the males who have the highest frequencies of nocturnal emissions may have somewhat lower rates of masturbation. Some of these males credit the frequent emissions to the fact that they do not masturbate; but it is just as likely that the reverse relationship is true, namely, that they do not masturbate because they have frequent emissions.
On the other hand, there is little evidence that high frequencies of masturbation reduce the frequencies of nocturnal emissions (Chapter 15). Even where there are high masturbatory frequencies and low frequencies of nocturnal emissions, the possibility should not be overlooked that those particular males never would have had frequent emissions, even if they had stopped masturbating.
There may be some relationship between masturbation and pre-marital petting with females. Both of these activities are most frequent at upper levels, but it is probable that both are the products of the upper level sexual philosophy, rather than the products of each other. Nevertheless, the genital manipulations which are employed in masturbation may provide some introduction to the techniques of heterosexual petting.
Masturbation sometimes shows a complementary relationship with premarital coitus. Where the one is high, the other is likely to be lower. Where there is sufficient coitus, it may be that there is not much need for masturbation. On the other hand, it remains to be demonstrated that a sufficiency of masturbation reduces the incentive to find a socio-sexual outlet. There are those who believe so, and recommend masturbation as a means of controlling what they consider the more immoral pre-marital activity. There are also those, including not a few psychiatrists, who feel that it would be unfortunate if pre-marital masturbation reduced the urge to make a heterosexual adjustment. It will take a carefully objective study to show what the real relationships may be.
Any relation which may exist between masturbation and the homosexual similarly needs to be studied in detail (Taylor 1933). It has already been suggested that an interest in one’s own genitalia may be transferred to an interest in the genitalia of another individual of the same sex. Certainly there are some records of the sort in the histories now at hand; but the number of clear-cut cases is not large. Careful analyses of a considerable series of individual histories should be made before any conclusion is reached on these matters.
Even some of the animal contacts which the farm boy has may have been inspired by his own masturbatory experience, for the masturbation of farm animals and of household pets is about as frequent as coitus or oral relations with the animals. In a considerable number of cases the boy’s relation is had with a male animal which he masturbates. If the boy is erotically aroused in such a case, the relationship may involve some homosexual element, as well as the zoöphilia
There are no other sexual activities which involve anywhere near so many individuals as are involved in heterosexual coitus and masturbation; and there are no other activities which provide so large a proportion of the total orgasms which the average male experiences in his lifetime. For most males, coitus is primary, masturbation secondary in importance; but for males of the college level masturbation is, as we have seen, the chief source of outlet up to the time of marriage. It is a question whether activities which are as important as these can be altogether ignored, easily regulated, or completely ruled out of the lives of any large number of people. Unmarried youths who had neither masturbation nor coitus (nor the homosexual) in their histories would be left with essentially no outlet except nocturnal emissions. That would nearly amount to abstinence, for such emissions do not ordinarily account for more than 10 or 12 per cent of the orgasms of any group of males, and there is no evidence that the frequencies of such emissions can be materially increased by avoiding other sexual activities (Chapter 15). The moral desirability of eliminating masturbation is, of course, an issue whose merits scientists are not qualified to judge. Whether such a program is psychologically or socially desirable or physically possible for any large number of males is a question that can be submitted to scientific examination (Chapter 6).
Throughout history, both the Jewish and Christian churches have condemned masturbation as either immoral or unnatural (Chapter 13). In more recent years, with an increase in public respect for science, the moral arguments have been supported with statements concerning the physical and mental harm supposed to come from the continuance of such a habit. The older males who have contributed to the present study were adolescent in a day in which there was widespread teaching against the sin of self-abuse (e.g., Vecki 1901, 1920, G. S. Hall 1904, W. S. Hall 1907, 1909, 1920, Boy Scout Manual, all editions 1911-1945, Jefferis and Nichols 1912, Wulffen 1913, Lieber 1920, U. S. Public Health Service 1921, 1934, Coppens and Spalding 1921, Forel 1922, Meyer 1927, 1929a, 1929b, Weatherhead 1932, Bloch 1933, Crisp 1939, T. V. Moore 1945). Every conceivable ill from pimples to insanity, including stooped shoulders, loss of weight, fatigue, insomnia, general weakness, neurasthenia, loss of manly vigor, weak eyes, digestive upsets, stomach ulcers, impotence, feeblemindedness, genital cancer, and the rest, was ascribed to masturbation. Feeble-minded and insane individuals in the neighborhood were held up as horrid examples of the result of masturbation, and the authorities in mental institutions maintained separate wards for those whose insanity was supposed to have originated from such practices. Patients in such institutions were observed to engage in frequent masturbation, and this seemed sufficient proof that the insanity was a product of the sexual behavior. Since the lives of university scholars were not so easily observed, it was not so generally known that masturbation occurred quite as frequently among them. Thousands of patients in mental institutions were put into strait jackets or other restraints, on the assumption that they had no chance of recovery unless the masturbation was controlled and cured. There are mental institutions which are operated on the same theory today. In many penal institutions inmates may still be punished severely if found masturbating, and in some homes for children and in some other institutions the older attitudes are still enforced. The United States Naval Academy at Annapolis rules that a candidate “shall be rejected by the examining surgeon for . . . evidence of . . . masturbation” (U. S. Navy Dpt. 1940).
Millions of boys have lived in continual mental conflict over this problem. For that matter, many a boy still does. Many boys pass through a periodic succession of attempts to stop the habit, inevitable failures in those attempts, consequent periods of remorse, the making of new resolutions—and a new start on the whole cycle. It is difficult to imagine anything better calculated to do permanent damage to the personality of an individual.
For several decades now, educators, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, and some of the general medical practitioners have come to agree that the physical effects of masturbation are not fundamentally different from the physical effects of any other sexual activity, and that any mental harm resulting from masturbation is an outcome of the conflicts introduced by the condemnation of the boy’s activity (e.g., Tenenbaum in Robinson 1936, Willoughby 1937, Haire 1937, Butterfield 1939, Himes 1940, Kirkendall 1940, Allen 1940, Weiss and English 1943, Sadler and Sadler 1944, English and Pearson 1945, Frank 1946, Seward 1946).
In the present study we have examined the histories of 5300 males, of which about 5100 record experience in masturbation. It would be difficult to show that the masturbatory activities have done measurable damage to any of these individuals, with the very rare exception of the psychotic who is compulsive in his behavior. On the other hand, the record does include thousands of cases of boys living in continual conflict, fearful of social disgrace, oftentimes disturbed over the effect of such behavior on their ultimate sexual capacities, occasionally attempting suicide—as a result of the teachings concerning masturbation. For the boys who have not been too disturbed psychically, masturbation has, however, provided a regular sexual outlet which has alleviated nervous tensions; and the record is clear in many cases that these boys have on the whole lived more balanced lives than the boys who have been more restrained in their sexual activities (Chapter 6). The resolution adopted at an American Medical Association convention in 1917 asserting that there is no evidence that abstinence from sex activity is “inconsistent with the highest physical, mental and moral efficiency” would be questioned by most clinical psychologists and psychiatrists today, and is definitely contrary to the findings in the present study (Chapter 6).
The scientific judgments are, however, not fully accepted by the persons who have been most interested in sex education (Bigelow 1916, Eddy 1928a, 1928b, Elliott and Bone 1929, Amer. Soc. Hyg. Assoc. 1930, Dickerson 1930, 1933, Rice 1933, Strain 1934, Ellis 1936, Snow 1937, Henry 1938, Rosanoff 1938, Stone and Stone 1937, Laton and Bailey 1940, Lovell 1940, Gruenberg and Kaukonen 1940, Corner and Landis 1941, Boys Club Amer. 1946, Hyman 1946, Landis and Bolles 1946, Thornton 1946, Popenoe 1946).
In this literature it has become customary to admit that the earlier teachings greatly exaggerated the possible harms of masturbation; but the conclusion is nevertheless reached that no manly youth will want to accept such a habit as part of his lifelong pattern. The boy is advised that a limited amount of masturbation may do him no harm, but that in excess it is something which needs the attention of a physician. Since the point at which excess begins is never defined, the conscientious boy is left uncertain whether his own rate is going to harm him; and psychiatrists will quickly recognize that such subtle and indirect condemnation can do as much damage to the boy’s personality as the more extreme teaching of the older day. One needs to be reminded again (as in Chapter 6) that there is tremendous individual variation in the human male’s capacity to engage in sexual activity without undue fatigue or other physical harm. Some individuals reach their limits when they experience orgasm once in a week or two. The average adolescent boy is quite capable of three or four ejaculations per week, and there are boys who are capable of seven to fourteen or more per week without incurring any greater disturbance than that which accompanies the infrequent activities of less capable males. Like many other physiologic functions, erotic response depends upon a remarkably foolproof mechanism. When one reaches the limit of physiologic endurance he no longer responds erotically. He is no longer capable of erection and finds little incentive to force the situation. Once or twice in a lifetime a few of the males may try to establish a record of repeated orgasms, and extreme fatigue and even some local pain may result; but, except by a few psychotics, this type of performance is not likely to be repeated.
Many of the persons who are responsible for the compromised attitudes found in the sex literature cited above are physicians. Even psychiatrists are divided on this question. In general, those who were raised in Europe, as were many of the psychiatrists who are now in this country, consider masturbation an infantile substitute for heterosexual coitus, which latter activity they take to be synonymous with a good sexual adjustment. Often these clinicians are amazed to find masturbation persisting into the adult lives of American males, and look upon masturbation in the history of the married male as nothing short of pathologic. This is, of course, merely a rationalization of their own European mores. American psychiatrists, on the contrary, with their American backgrounds, are much more acceptant of the same activity.
Although masturbation may do no physical harm, and although it may do no mental harm unless psychic conflicts are involved, it still remains to be determined what relations there may be between masturbation and socio-sexual adjustments (Henry 1938). It is now clear that masturbation is relied upon by the upper level primarily because it has an insufficient outlet through heterosexual coitus. This is, to a degree, an escape from reality, and the effect upon the ultimate personality of the individual is something that needs consideration. It is to be noted again (Chapter 11) that at age fifty-five the college-bred males derive only 62 per cent of their total outlet from marital intercourse, and that 19 per cent of the outlet at that age is derived from the dream world which accompanies masturbation or nocturnal emissions. Any final assay of the significance of masturbation should take these and still other specific data into account.
