They disappeared under treatment, and she thereupon became entirely frigid sexually.  But, far from being happy, she has lost all energy and interest in life, and it is her sole desire to attain the sexual feelings she has lost.  Adler considers that even when masturbation in women becomes an overmastering passion, so far as organic effects are concerned it is usually harmless, its effects being primarily psychic, and he attaches especial significance to it as a cause of sexual anaesthesia in normal coitus, being, perhaps, the most frequent cause of such anaesthesia.  He devotes an important chapter to this matter, and brings forward numerous cases in illustration (Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, pp. 93-119, also 21-23).  Adler considers that the frequency of masturbation in women is largely due to the fact that women experience greater difficulties than men in obtaining sexual satisfaction, and so are impelled by unsatisfying coitus to continue masturbation after marriage.  He adds that partly from natural shyness, partly from shame of acknowledging what is commonly accounted a sin, and partly from the fear of seeming disgusting or unworthy of sympathy in the doctor’s eyes, women are usually silent on this matter, and very great tact and patience may be necessary before a confession is obtained.

On the psychic side, no doubt, the most frequent and the most characteristic result of persistent and excessive masturbation is a morbid heightening of self-consciousness without any co-ordinated heightening of self-esteem.[340] The man or woman who is kissed by a desirable and desired person of the opposite sex feels a satisfying sense of pride and elation, which must always be absent from the manifestations of auto-erotic activity.[341] This must be so, even apart from the masturbator’s consciousness of the general social attitude toward his practices and his dread of detection, for that may also exist as regards normal coitus without any corresponding psychic effects.  The masturbator, if his practice is habitual, is thus compelled to cultivate an artificial consciousness of self-esteem, and may show a tendency to mental arrogance.  Self-righteousness and religiosity constitute, as it were, a protection against the tendency to remorse.  A morbid mental soil is, of course, required for the full development of these characteristics.  The habitual male masturbator, it must be remembered, is often a shy and solitary person; individuals of this temperament are especially predisposed to excesses in all the manifestations of auto-erotism, while the yielding to such tendencies increases the reserve and the horror of society, at the same time producing a certain suspicion of others.  In some extreme cases there is, no doubt, as Kraepelin believes, some decrease of psychic capacity, an inability to grasp and co-ordinate external impressions, weakness of memory, deadening of emotions, or else the general phenomena of increased irritability, leading on to neurasthenia.