Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 479 pages of information about Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1.

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 479 pages of information about Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1.
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.

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Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.