ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

Copy 1056 of 3000. Colophon at base of frontispiece: "Of this edition three
thousand copies have been privately issued by the Anthropological branch of the
Falstaff Press for the exclusive subscription of members of the cultured
professions and mature students of Anthropology. The binding is stamped in
genuine gold. This copy is registered at the office of the publishers under the
designation 1056."
Apparently the earliest English edition of this work (reprinted 1974); originally
published in German, as Beiträge zur Aetiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis (two
volumes, Dresden, 1902-1903). I find a number of copies of this fine-press
limited edition for sale on the Internet, but often with more wear than this copy,
and as often at high prices.
Masturbation, pp. 46-48, 133-37. This is a pretentious and contrived limited
edition calculated to titillate with respectability. ("Conditions on Tahiti, too, are
peculiar. Poor men could not buy women, so they practised onanism
extensively; this made them impotent and caused perverse practises." p. 47) The
treatment of various subjects is sketchy and mixed, including deliberately
shocking examples. Among the few more serious passages, the following is
perhaps as characteristic as any . . .
The chief result of habitually practiced onanism—and only such is discussed
here—is, quite apart from its bad effect on morality, character, and mental
activity, to check and gradually destroy the desire for the normal gratification of
the sex impulse. This is true of masculine as well as feminine onanism, as
Havelock Ellis stresses. [p. 133, citing "The Evolution of Modesty."]
The writer buys into the notion of masturbation leading to homosexuality,
pp. 135-36 and elsewhere, meanwhile sprinkling in various other naughty bits
for the target audience of this "anthropological" (wink, wink) tome . . .
Very significant as to the great etiologic importance of onanism in this respect is
the fact that the mujerados are turned into pederasts chiefly by being masturbated
several times a day.
Naturally images offered by external circumstances can receive sexually perverse
elaboration in the phantasy of the onanist. An instance is the case, reported by
von Schrenck-Notzing, of a woman who, having masturbated for thirty [p. 136
ends] years and lived in the country much of the time, imagined that she was
covered by a stallion. [pp. 136-37, adding in a concluding footnote, ". . . Of a
similar nature is mental onanism with the aid of obscene pictures and lascivious
photographs."]
9 BUSH, David V[an]. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. HOW TO MAKE LOVE AND
MARRY. One in a Series of Books on the Fundamentals of Practical Psychology,
Covering the Field of Success, Health and Happiness. By David V. Bush, Editor of
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