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

THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN YOUTHno seriously pernicious results necessarily follow. Withregard to the general signs o masturbation, of which aconclude thatvast number have been alleged, we maythere are none which can be regarded as reliable.We may conclude finally that the opposing views on thesubject may be simply explained by the fact that thewriters on both sides have ignored or insufficiently recognizedthe influence of heredity and temperament. Theyhave done precisely what many unscientific writers oninebriety have continued to do unto the present day, whendescribing the terrible results of alcohol without pointingout that the chief factor in such cases has not been thealcohol, but the organization on which the alcohol acted.While we may thus dismiss the extravagant views widelyheld during the past century, concerning the awful resultsof masturbation, as due to ignorance and false tradition,aided by the efforts of quacks, it must be pointed out thateven in healthy or moderately healthy individuals, anyexcess in solitary self-excitement may still produce resultswhich, though slight, are yet harmful. The skin, digestion,and circulation may all be disordered; headache andneuralgia may occur; and, as in normal sexual excess orin undue frequency of sexual excitement during sleep,there is a certain general lowering of nervous tone. Probablythe most important of the comparatively frequentassociated conditions this also arising usually on a morbidsoilis "neurasthenia" with its manifold symptoms.In some cases it would seem that masturbation, whenpracticed in excess,especially if begun before the age ofpuberty, leads to inaptitude for coitus, as well as to indifferenceto it, and sometimes to undue sexual irritability,involving premature emission and practical impotence.Dickinson states that the most consistently "frigid" womenare the auto-erotic. This is, however, the exception,