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 aesthetic objection to such practices.  But the presence of such a repugnance, however invincible, is very far from carrying us outside the auto-erotic field.  The production of the 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