It is possible that the first sexual responses of an infant or younger preadolescent could be evoked by physical stimulation alone; but the human animal is always conditioned by its experiences, and its reactions may come to depend as much upon the previous experience as upon any immediate stimuli. The evidence accumulates that the physical is usually a minor element in evoking sexual responses among older males, and there are few of the responses of an experienced adult which would be possible without a sufficient psychologic accompaniment.
Time and again a male may fail to respond to particular physical contacts, while responding almost instantly to more minor stimulation which comes under other circumstances (Vecki 1920, Haire 1937, Lovell 1940, Weiss and English 1943). His responses in the heterosexual may be immediate, while he experiences a minimum of arousal, or none at all, when subjected to identical techniques in contact with another male. The next male’s responses, on the contrary, may be immediate in the homosexual, and completely fail in the heterosexual. Some males are impotent when they attempt extra-marital intercourse, although they may be perfectly potent with their own wives. Other males may become impotent with their wives and capable of performing only with extra-marital partners. There are a few males who are impotent when they attempt to masturbate, although they are potent enough under other circumstances. There are males who are potent and respond to the point of orgasm in petting, although they block and become incapable of performing when they attempt actual coitus. Such differential impotency emphasizes the importance of the psychic element in sexual activities.
Except for inexperienced children, most males come to erection if there is any considerable arousal, even before they have made physical contacts. The exceptions include those males who have had such an abundance of sexual activity (as among certain lower level groups) that they are psychologically satisfied or even fatigued; and among upper level groups, where psychic stimulation means most to the individual, there are some males who do not erect in anticipation of a sexual situation because they are inhibited by moral or social training. This further emphasizes the importance of the psychic factor in a sexual relation.
Three or four adult males, out of the more than 5000 in the present study, have been able to ejaculate by deliberately concentrating on sexual fantasies, without any genital manipulation. In such a case the psychic stimulation is entirely responsible for the result. Spontaneous ejaculation occurs most often among young adolescent boys. A list of situations which bring spontaneous ejaculation in the younger male has already been given (Chapter 5). Some of the climaces reached in heterosexual petting may amount to spontaneous ejaculation without genital stimulation. Orgasm from purely psychic sources may occur more often in the female.
Psychic stimulation during sleep is a more familiar phenomenon. It results in orgasm much more often than does psychic stimulation during waking hours. This is probably due to the fact that one is not so inhibited during sleep. Orgasm as the product of nocturnal dreams is well known in the male, but it is not so generally understood that similar orgasm during sleep is not uncommon in the female, especially in the older and sexually more experienced female (Ellis 1936). In the male, nocturnal emissions or wet dreams are generally accepted as a usual part of the sexual picture.
There are many nocturnal sex dreams which do not result in orgasm for the male. There are some males who may have sex dreams with considerable frequency, even every night, without ever experiencing orgasm, unless it be in their early years. On the other hand, there are some who regularly have nocturnal emissions but are unable to recall that such experiences were ever accompanied by dreams. If the absence of the dreams could be absolutely established in these cases, they would be perfect instances of orgasm from physical or physiologic stimulation alone. Most psychologists and psychiatrists, however, hesitate to believe that emissions ever result from internal forces which do not have psychosexual backgrounds. Generally such emissions are considered to be products of dreams that are forgotten by their author, and we incline to this interpretation. Proving that an emission could occur without a psychic accompaniment would, however, be of such great importance that a series of experiments should be devised for testing these unusual individuals.
Throughout the present volume, nocturnal dreams have been recorded as outlets only when they have led to actual ejaculation; but all ejaculation during sleep has been recorded, whether reported with or without dreams.
Specific data on the incidences and frequencies of nocturnal emissions, in various age groups and i a various social divisions of the population, have already been given in tables and charts, and in earlier discussions in this volume, as follows:
A high percentage of all males experience nocturnal emissions at some time in their lives. Ultimately, about 83 per cent is involved (Table 133, Figure 138). There is 17 per cent of the male population that never seems to have nocturnal emissions. Somewhat similar data have been reported by some other investigators (Achilles 1923, Peck and Wells 1923, 1925, Hughes 1926, Hamilton 1929, Willoughby 1937). The figures differ considerably for different social levels, the highest incidence being among those males who go to college and the lowest among males of the grade school level.
Over 99 per cent of the males who go to college have nocturnal emissions at some time in their lives, but only 85 per cent of the high school males, and only 75 per cent of the males who never go beyond grade school (Table 133, Figure 139). The high incidence figures given in some of the previous studies (e.g., Peterson 1938) apply, obviously, only to the college populations on which the data were based.
Nocturnal emissions never account for any large portion of the total number of orgasms experienced by the male population (Table 52, Figures 60, 63). For instance, the single males of the college level who are in their twenties, derive about one-sixth (12% to 16%) of their total outlet from this source. For the high school level it is about 8 per cent, but at the grade school level less than 6 per cent of the outlet is so derived. Among married males, emissions account for something between 2 per cent and 6 per cent of the total outlet.
As might be expected, there is considerable variation among individuals in the frequencies with which they have nocturnal emissions (Figure 140). There are males who never ejaculate in their sleep, and more males who have only a few wet dreams in their lives. There are also some who experience orgasm practically every time they awaken from sleep, even though that may be two or three times in a single night. Sometimes emissions may accompany daytime naps. Among men who have been suddenly deprived of some drug to which they have been addicted, emissions may occur several times in each twenty-four hours, for two or three weeks or more. For most males during their earlier years, nocturnal emissions are usually monthly or bi-monthly, rarely weekly or more than weekly events.
The frequencies of nocturnal emissions are, as might have been anticipated, highest among males of the college level (Table 83, Figure 99). They occur less frequently among the males who never go beyond high school, and even less often among the males who never go beyond grade school (Chapter 10). In their younger adolescent years, the boys who will go to college have 7 times as frequent dreams as the boys who never go beyond grade school. In the later teens the differences are nearly 3 to 1 in favor of the college males. They are almost 2 to 1 among the males who are still single at 30 years of age. The frequencies of nocturnal dreams of any sort, sexual or otherwise, appear to have some correlation with the imaginative capacities of an individual. The sexual life of a male of a lower educational level is primarily dependent upon actual physical contacts. He is aroused during his waking hours by relatively few psychic stimuli, and he rarely utilizes such secondhand sources of stimulation as art, literature, nude pictures, stories, or specifically pornographic materials to accompany or substitute for overt sex acts. At night he probably does less dreaming, of any sort, than the better educated male, and his sex dreams are certainly not frequent.
At all social levels, nocturnal emissions occur most abundantly before marriage. Ultimately about 85 per cent of the unmarried males are involved. After marriage a number of the males have their nocturnal emissions reduced or altogether stopped, and the accumulative incidence figure for the married population is something under 60 per cent. At most ages in marriage the frequencies are only two-thirds as high as they are among unmarried males. Since the total outlets of married males are much higher than those of the single males, nocturnal emissions provide only a small part, 2 to 6 per cent, of the outlet after marriage (Chapter 8). Among those males who have been previously married but who have been divorced or otherwise separated from their wives, nocturnal emissions may begin again, even though they were absent during the married years; but the average frequencies in the post-marital group remain at the same low levels as among married males.
Figure 138. Nocturnal emissions: accumulative incidence in total U.S. population
Showing percent of total population that has ever experienced nocturnal emissions 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 139. Nocturnal emissions: accumulative incidence in three educational levels
Showing percent of each population that has ever had nocturnal emissions by each of the indicated ages. All data based on total population, irrespective of marital status.
In all social groups, nocturnal emissions are primarily an outlet of younger adolescent and older teen-age boys. It is interesting to find that they ordinarily do not begin with the first signs of adolescence (Chapters 5, 9). Most boys obtain their first orgasms through self stimulation or from physical contacts with other individuals, either in late pre-adolescence or immediately with the onset of adolescence. It is probable that all boys are capable of such orgasm as soon as they turn adolescent, and most of them would be capable at least a year or two before the onset of adolescence. However, the first orgasms resulting from dreams ordinarily do not come until a year or more after the onset of adolescence (Chapter 10). Even in those cases where nocturnal emissions provide the very first experiences in orgasm, they almost invariably begin a year or more after the other adolescent developments (pubic hair, voice change, growth in height, etc.) are under way.
These data provide some measure of the relative positions of the physical and the psychic in the sex life of the human animal. It is for a similar reason that fantasies often do not begin to accompany masturbation until a year or more after such self stimulation has begun. Although the psychic may play a considerable part in even the earliest sexual experiences of preadolescent males, and becomes important soon after the onset of adolescence, it ordinarily does not become very significant until there has been a certain amount of physical experience.
The highest incidence and frequency figures of nocturnal emissions (for the population taken as a whole) come in the late teens, during which period fully 70 per cent of the males experience orgasm in sleep (Table 52). The frequencies then average about once in four weeks. If the experienced males alone are used in the calculations, the highest frequencies of nocturnal emissions occur between adolescence and fifteen, at rates of about once in three weeks. From that point, both the incidence and frequency figures go down, and the dreams become few after age thirty and are largely out of the picture after age forty. Beyond fifty years of age nocturnal emissions rarely occur more often than four or five times a year, if they occur at all. There are, however, a few cases of nocturnal emissions occurring among still older males, even between the ages of seventy-six and eighty.
Among boys of the high school and college levels, the emissions between adolescence and age fifteen occur most frequently among those who became adolescent before eleven or twelve. On the other hand, they provide a higher percentage of the total outlet for those boys who reach adolescence last, and some of these males depend largely or exclusively on nocturnal emissions for their total sexual outlet. The early-adolescent boys more frequently depend on masturbation, heterosexual coitus, and the homosexual.
In younger generations of the social level that goes to college, the number of males having nocturnal emissions is almost identical with the number involved (in the corresponding social level) twenty-two years ago (Chapter 11). On the other hand, in the grade school groups, the younger generations appear to have emissions at an earlier age, and more of them are ultimately involved than was true in older generations. At all levels, however, the frequencies today are almost precisely what they were twenty-two years ago. These data are important to note, even if their explanation is not immediately apparent.
Nocturnal emissions occur with about the same incidences and frequencies among rural and urban males (Chapter 12).
The incidences and frequencies of nocturnal emissions are almost exactly the same among the active and inactive members of each religious group (Chapter 13).
Among the several sources of sexual outlet, there is none that is less significant than nocturnal emissions, unless it be intercourse with animals of other species. Intercourse with prostitutes and the homosexual both contribute more to the total sexual picture. There are some males who draw the whole of their sexual outlet from nocturnal emissions, and this is true of 8 per cent of the younger, adolescent boys, but it is not true of more than 5 per cent of the males at any later age. It is, in consequence, interesting to find so much attention given to the significance of nocturnal emissions in certain literature. This undoubtedly reflects a wish that involuntary emissions were a more important part of the pre-marital outlet.
On the whole, the males who are most dependent upon nocturnal emissions are those who are slow in developing physically, those who are slow in their nervous reactions or unresponsive to the usual sexual stimuli, or those who are timid and awkward in making social contacts. They are the males who are most often restrained for moral reasons. There are some outstanding exceptions to this, proving that a multiplicity of factors may be involved in determining the frequencies of nocturnal emissions; but, by and large, emissions are most often depended upon by the male who has not made what the psychiatrist would call a good socio-sexual adjustment.
Considering the importance which Freud (1938, 1945) and others have attached to the interpretation of dreams, and considering the considerable literature which has in consequence developed on this subject (e.g., Moll 1899, Ellis 1936, Weiss and English 1943, Meyer in Lorand 1944), we will attempt to add nothing at this time except certain factual data that have been accumulated in the course of the present investigation.
The parallel between the content of the nocturnal dream and one’s overt daytime experience has been recognized by all peoples, primitive and civilized, since the dawn of history. The present study confirms the usual interpretations, although it has nothing to contribute on the question of symbolism in dreams. The dream is usually a reflection of the individual’s overt experience or of his desire for experience. It often involves other persons, usually persons who are obscure and unidentifiable. Sometimes the actors are engaged in non-sexual daytime activities, more often they are about to make sexual contacts, or to engage in actual coitus or other relations. Sometimes the dreamer is a participant in the activities, and sometimes the dreamer does not participate but merely observes. The dream situations are most often heterosexual when the overt experience or daytime reactions of the individual are heterosexual, and the dreams are most often homosexual when the overt experience of the individual is homosexual. Persons who have both things in their histories have dreams that are sometimes homosexual, sometimes heterosexual, and sometimes both homosexual and heterosexual in the same event. In such cases, the predominance of heterosexual or homosexual dreams may reflect the individual’s preference for one or the other sort of experience, but this is not always so.
A number of males dream of females who have male genitalia, and this is particularly interesting in the light of the fact that most of these males have not heard of the classic Greek concept of the hermaphrodite (Licht 1925–1928), nor are they acquainted with the psychoanalytic treatments of such combinations of male and female characters. Sometimes dreams of hermaphrodites occur among males who have had neither heterosexual nor homosexual experience, and we are inclined to interpret them as primarily heterosexual (as also in Näcke 1908, Ellis 1936). The maleness of the genitalia in the dream may depend upon the fact that an individual who has not actually seen female genitalia may have some difficulty in imagining an anatomy or a genital performance which is different from that which he has experienced in his own person.
There are a few males who dream of masturbation, but this is not common. Boys who have had animal contacts, or thought about having them, quite regularly dream of such experiences: There are occasional sadistic or masochistic dreams which may reflect some phase of the thinking of the individual, or of his actual experience.
Finally, it must be emphasized that there are some dreams which simply do not correlate with any overt experience. Such dreams are not frequent, but they do seem to occur, for they are sometimes reported under circumstances which make one feel that the record is thoroughly reliable. For instance, a male who reports an extensive homosexual history would appear to have little reason for distorting the fact when he says that all of his dreams are heterosexual. He may emphasize that he wishes they were not so, because he has no use for the heterosexual, and would enjoy the experience of having homosexual dreams. Explanations of such contradictory dreams should be based on more detail than anyone seems yet to have obtained. It is difficult to believe that suppressed desires are always involved. It is not at all impossible that familiarity with the experiences of other persons would be sufficient to generate a dream, even though it included events which were totally distasteful to the individual and in which he had no desire to participate.
Often the actual experience of orgasm is not realized in a dream. Even when the subject wakes to find himself ejaculating, he may not have reached the fulfillment of his activity in the dream itself. Most individuals wake up when there is an orgasm, but there are some who continue to sleep through it. Even in those cases, however, the dream may not include any realization of the activity which produced the orgasm.
By nearly all moral philosophies, nocturnal emissions provide the one form of sexual outlet for which the individual is least responsible. Masturbation, heterosexual petting or coitus, and homosexual and animal contacts may all be penalized as the product of the individual’s deliberate intent and conscious performance. There is some contention that one should control the frequencies of his emissions by controlling his thoughts before going to sleep (e.g., W. S. Hall 1920, Lieber 1920, Amer. Soc. Hyg. Assoc. 1930, Kirsch 1930. See Ellis 1936, Vol. 1 (1):188 ff. for a history of the Church’s attitudes). It is suggested that dreams may be controlled by regulating the position in which one sleeps, or by choosing one’s night clothing (e.g., W. S. Hall 1907, Jefferis and Nichols 1921, Exner 1932, Kirkendall 1940). But the condemnation of nocturnal emissions has not been great. They have been looked upon as involuntary and spontaneous releases of pressure, and as a means of avoiding other sexual activities. Since there are several biologic problems involved in these interpretations, a scientist is justified in asking for objective data on the physiology of the several processes concerned, and on the relation between nocturnal emissions and the frequencies of other sexual outlets.
On the physiologic origin of these emissions, the information is exceedingly scant, and investigations are much needed. Certainly no interpretation is tenable which depends upon the idea that the testes are the sources of the semen, and that they or other glands become so engorged with accumulating secretions that involuntary ejaculation is the result. The semen is chiefly composed of secretions from the seminal vesicles and the prostate gland, and the testes contribute nothing but sperm which, of course, constitute only the most minute part of the semen (e.g., Hotchkiss 1944). There is no evidence that the testes have any part in effecting erotic arousal or ejaculation, except indirectly as they supply hormones which influence the male metabolism. If there are any pressures involved, they must arise in the seminal vesicles or in the prostate gland; but data on this point are lacking. It is more tenable to think of nervous tensions which are built up until, periodically, they precipitate an orgasm; but again the physiology is not understood. We are, in consequence, almost completely in the dark as to the possibility of a biologic mechanism which could force nocturnal emissions when other sexual outlets were insufficient.
Neither are there objective data on the mechanical factors that may effect nocturnal emissions. It has been known for some time that the nerve centers that control ejaculation are in the lower spinal cord, and this has lent some substantiation to the theory that sleeping on one’s back, especially if there are pressures on the lower spine, may increase the frequencies of emissions; but there seem to be no sound data to substantiate this. Genital stimulation from tight clothing, more general stimulation from too warm a bed, or still other conditions may have some effect; but such relationships are not yet scientifically established.
It has frequently been said that persons who are celibate, or at least abstinent before marriage, will find an increased outlet through involuntary emissions, and that the emissions will provide a sufficient release to keep an individual physically and mentally balanced (e.g., W. S. Hall 1907,1909, Eddy 1928a, 1928b, Elliott and Bone 1929, Ruland and Rattler 1934, Frank 1946). It would, in consequence, be of exceeding scientific importance to have histories from a sufficient sample of highly restrained individuals, particularly of those who are celibate. Without such data it is, of course, impossible to depend upon general statements which have been made on this point, especially when they come from persons who are interested in defending moral or social philosophies.
It can, however, be noted again that the frequencies of emissions among the religiously more devout males are neither higher nor lower than the frequencies among the non-church-going males in the population (Chapter 13). The rates of masturbation, pre-marital intercourse, and the homosexual are much reduced in the devout group and, in consequence, the total sexual outlets are reduced; but this merely increases the percentage of the total outlet which is derived from nocturnal emissions. Among these histories of the religiously devout, the absolute frequencies of such emissions are not altered by the abstinence.
Lacking a sufficient series of histories of celibates, the best data now available on persons largely deprived of other outlets come from men who have been confined to penal institutions and who are cut off from their outside sexual activities. Among such men there is a slightly higher frequency of nocturnal emissions, but the increases are not great (Plättner 1930). Even though there are some men who have their first emissions after entering an institution, their subsequent experiences rarely occur more often than a few times a year or, at most, once in a month or two.
While it is commonly believed that males in a prison find an abundant release through the homosexual, and while it is in actuality a fact that a high percentage of them do become involved in such activity after they have been in a penal institution for some length of time, neither the homosexual nor masturbation ever provides any frequent outlet for more than a small proportion of a prison population. Many males do not begin their homosexual activity for some years after entering an institution. Perhaps half of the men in a short-time institution never do arrive at such activity during the period of their stay. Consequently for a fair number of the inmates either nocturnal emissions provide the total outlet, or these men have none at all. Considering that most prison inmates come from social levels where the frequencies of marital intercourse often average six or seven times a week, nocturnal emissions at the rate of three to six per year do not provide much compensation.
There are some records of persons who report an increase in the frequencies of nocturnal emissions when there has been a minimum of other activity; but there are some who never have emissions unless they have engaged in heterosexual petting or unless they have experienced orgasm in heterosexual coitus or in homosexual relations during the preceding evening. In the latter instance, it would appear that the psychic stimulation resulting from the overt contacts had been carried over into sleep. If there are, in some cases, physiologic mechanisms which produce emissions when there is an insufficiency of other outlets, there may be psychologic mechanisms which work in exactly the opposite way. In some individuals the physiologic factors may predominate; in others, the psychologic factors may be more significant. It is quite probable that in still other cases, still other factors are involved.
There are individuals who have high rates of total outlet and who have infrequent nocturnal emissions, or none at all; and there are individuals with low rates of total outlet who similarly have infrequent emissions. On the other hand, there are individuals of both high and low rates who have an abundance of nocturnal emissions. The situation cannot be simply summarized. When precise correlations are run they must not only relate the emissions with the several other sources of outlet, but must also take into account the nature of the socio-sexual contacts which each individual is making, the significance of his personality, and those psychic capacities which might influence his daytime imaginations and his nighttime dreaming.
Most boys have learned from current opinion and from printed literature that nocturnal emissions are usual and normal sources of sexual outlet (as in G. S. Hall 1904, Bigelow 1916, Liederman 1926, Exner 1932, Weatherhead 1932, Rice 1933, Dickerson 1933, Ellis 1936, Bruckner 1937, U. S. Public Health Service 1937, Crisp 1939, Klemer 1939, Gruenberg and Kaukonen 1940, Lovell 1940, Corner and Landis 1941, Kelly 1941, Sadler and Sadler 1944, Boys Club Amer. 1946). Males of an older generation more often worried over the emissions, and an occasional boy may still become disturbed over the question of the frequency of his experience. Writers who advise one who has “frequent” emissions to consult his physician or his confessor, do not help in allaying the boy’s fears. Authorities in some schools, especially in some religious schools and in some penal institutions, may reprimand the individual who “allows” emissions to occur, and there are records of at least two disciplinary schools where the boys were punished for having nocturnal emissions.
There are some individuals who report some feeling of lassitude after experiencing a nocturnal emission, but this is a possible outcome of any type of sexual activity. It is the more usual experience that such emissions do not have even this after-effect. As a matter of fact, nocturnal emissions are accepted by most of the boys of the present generation as a usual part of male experience.
