Men have, by this time, mostly adopted some method of sexual gratification with the opposite sex; women are to a much larger extent shut out from such gratification; moreover, while in rare cases women are sexually precocious, it more often happens that their sexual impulses only gain strength and self-consciousness after adolescence has passed.  I have been much impressed by the frequency with which masturbation is occasionally (especially about the period of menstruation) practiced by active, intelligent, and healthy women who otherwise lead a chaste life.  This experience is confirmed by others who are in a position to ascertain the facts among normal people; thus a lady, who has received the confidence of many women, told me that she believes that all women who remain unmarried masturbate, as she found so much evidence pointing in this direction.[314] This statement certainly needs some qualification, though I believe it is not far from the truth as regards young and healthy women who, after having normal sexual relationships, have been compelled for some reason or other to break them off and lead a lonely life.[315] But we have to remember that there are some women, evidently with a considerable degree of congenital sexual anaesthesia (no doubt, in some respect or another below the standard of normal health), in whom the sexual instinct has never been aroused, and who not only do not masturbate, but do not show any desire for normal gratification; while in a large proportion of other cases the impulse is gratified passively in ways I have already referred to.  The auto-erotic phenomena which take place in this way, spontaneously, by yielding to revery, with little or no active interference, certainly occur much more frequently in women than in men.  On the other hand, contrary to what one might be led to expect, the closely-related auto-erotic phenomena during sleep seem to take place more frequently in men, although in women, as we have found ground for concluding, they reverberate much more widely and impressively on the waking psychical life.

We owe to Restif de la Bretonne what is perhaps the earliest precise description of a woman masturbating.  In 1755 he knew a dark young woman, plain but well-made, and of warm temperament, educated in a convent.  She was observed one day, when gazing from her window at a young man in whom she was tenderly interested, to become much excited.  “Her movements became agitated; I approached her, and really believe that she was uttering affectionate expressions; she had become red.  Then she sighed deeply, and became motionless, stretching out her legs, which she stiffened, as if she felt pain.”  It is further hinted that her hands took part in this manoeuvre (Monsieur Nicolas, vol. vi, p. 143).

Pictorial representations of a woman masturbating also occur in eighteenth century engravings.  Thus, in France, Baudouin’s “Le Midi” (reproduced in Fuchs’s Das Erotische Element in der Karikatur,