Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN YOUTHunder the influence of exciting spectacles or seductivethoughts. This, we see, ishardly distinguishable fromwhat may happen, in a normal manner, between twolovers.In boys who have had no earlier spontaneous impulsesof sexual activity and no initiation from companions, thefirst orgasm usually occurs at puberty during sleep, withor without dreams, sometimes causing the boy muchanxiety or shame, until in the course of years he learnsto accept it as the almost inevitable accompaniment ofadult life when it isbeing lived continently. In girls, however,it is not inevitable under similar conditions. It israre (asI have frequently pointed out though the statementhas not always been accepted) for girls to have theirfirst experience of sexual excitement (with or withoutorgasm) in sleep, and the supposition that they commonlydo isdue to ignorance. The boy awakes sexually in sleep,spontaneously. The girl must be actively awakened, byothers or herself, though after that, even if itmay notoccur until long after she has reached adult age, she willbe liable to experience the most vivid erotic dreams. Weprobably have here an interesting psychic sexual difference,the greater sexual activity of the male, the greatersexual quiescence of the female, which does not, however,mean superior sexuality of the male, or inferior sexualneeds of the female; itmay be indeed the reason why thegirl is more liable to hysterical and other nervous symptoms,if we regard these as manifestations of latent sexualenergy.Robie, in America, among a large number of personsof both sexes found few or none who had not had experienceof masturbation or other form of auto-erotic activityat some period of their lives and often before the age ofeight. His observations were not always very precise. Dr.[99]