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.
also, Forel and Loewenfeld, as at an earlier period, Trousseau.[329] It is true that Marro, in his admirable and detailed study of the normal and abnormal aspects of puberty, accepts a form of masturbatory insanity; but the only illustrative case he brings forward is a young man possessing various stigmata of degeneracy and the son of an alcoholic father; such a case tells us nothing regarding the results of simple masturbation.[330] Even Spitzka, who maintained several years ago the traditional views as to the terrible results of masturbation, and recognized a special “insanity of masturbation,” stated his conclusions with a caution that undermined his position:  “Self-abuse,” he concluded, “to become a sole cause of insanity, must be begun early and carried very far.  In persons of sound antecedents it rarely, under these circumstances, suffices to produce an actual vesania."[331] When we remember that there is no convincing evidence to show that masturbation is “begun early and carried very far” by “persons of sound antecedents,” the significance of Spitzka’s “typical psychosis of masturbation” is somewhat annulled.  It is evident that these distinguished investigators, Marro and Spitzka, have been induced by tradition to take up a position which their own scientific consciences have compelled them practically to evacuate.

Recent authorities are almost unanimous in rejecting masturbation as a cause of insanity.  Thus, Rohleder, in his comprehensive monograph (Die Masturbation, 1899, pp. 185-92), although taking a very serious view of the evil results of masturbation, points out the unanimity which is now tending to prevail on this point, and lays it down that “masturbation is never the direct cause of insanity.”  Sexual excesses of any kind, he adds (following Curschmann), can, at the most, merely give an impetus to a latent form of insanity.  On the whole, he concludes, the best authorities are unanimous in agreeing that masturbation may certainly injure mental capacity, by weakening memory and depressing intellectual energy; that, further, in hereditarily neurotic subjects, it may produce slight psychoses like folie du doute, hypochondria, hysteria; that, finally, under no circumstances can it produce severe psychoses like paranoia or general paralysis.  “If it caused insanity, as often as some claim,” as Kellogg remarks, “the whole race would long since have passed into masturbatic degeneracy of mind....  It is especially injurious in the very young, and in all who have weak nervous systems,” but “the physical traits attributed to the habit are common to thousands of neurasthenic and neurotic individuals.”  (Kellogg, A Text-book of Mental Diseases, 1897, pp. 94-95.) Again, at the outset of the article on “Masturbation,” in Tuke’s Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, Yellowlees states that, on account of the mischief formerly done by reckless statements, it is necessary to state plainly that “unless the practice has
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Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.