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.