“A young girl,” says Hammer ("Ueber die Sinnlichkeit gesunder Jungfrauen,” Die Neue Generation, Aug., 1911), “who has not previously adopted any method of self-gratification experiences at the beginning of puberty, about the time of the first menstruation and the sprouting of the pubic hair, in the absence of all stimulation by a man, spontaneous sexual tendencies of both local and psychic nature.  On the psychic side there is a feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction, a need of subjection and of serving, and, if the opportunity has so far been absent, the craving to see masculine nudity and to learn the facts of procreation.  Side by side with these wishes, there are at the same time inhibitory desires, such as the wish to keep herself pure, either for a man whom she represents to herself as the ‘ideal,’ or for her parents, who must not be worried, or as a member of a chosen people in whose spirit she must live and die, or out of love to Jesus or to some saint.  On the physical side, there is the feeling of fresh power and energy, of enterprise; the agreeable tension of the genital regions, which easily become moist.  Then there is the feeling of overirritability and excess of tension, and the need of relieving the tension through pinches, blows, tight lacing, and so forth.  If the girl remains innocent of sex satisfaction, there takes place during sleep, at regular intervals of about three days, more or less the relief and emission of the tense glands, not corresponding to the menstrual period, but to intercourse, and serving better than sexual instruction to represent to her the phenomena of intercourse.  If at this period actual intercourse takes place, it is, as a rule, free from pain, as also is the introduction of the speculum.  Without any seduction from without, the chaste girl now frequently finds a way to relieve the excessive tension without the aid of a man.  It is self-abuse that leads gradually to the production of pain in defloration.  The menstrual phenomena correspond to birth; self-gratification or relief during sleep to intercourse.”  This statement of the matter is somewhat too absolute and unqualified.  Under the artificial conditions of civilization the inhibitory influences of training speedily work powerfully, and more or less successfully, in banishing sexual phenomena into the subconscious, sometimes to work all the mischief there which Freud attributes to them.  It must also be said (as I have pointed out in the discussion of Auto-erotism in another volume) that sexual dreams seem to be the exception rather than the rule in innocent girls.  It remains true that sexual phenomena in girls at puberty must not be regarded as morbid or unnatural.  There is also very good reason for believing (even apart from the testimony of so experienced a gynecologist as Hammer) that on the physical side sexual processes tend to be accomplished with a facility that is often lost in later years with prolonged chastity.