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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXespecially if the practice has not been begun until afterpuberty. In women an important occasional result ofmasturbation in early life is an aversion for normal coitusin later life. In such cases some peripheralirritation orabnormal mental stimulus trains the physical orgasm torespond to an appeal which has nothing whatever to dowith the fascination normally exerted by the opposite sex.At puberty, however, the claim of passion and the realcharm of sex begin to be felt, but, owing to the physicalsexual feelings having been trained into an abnormalchannel, these new and more normal sex associationsremain of a purely ideal and emotional character, withoutthe strong sensual impulses with which under healthyconditions they tend to be more and more associated aspuberty passeson into adolescence or mature adult life.In this way in some women, often highly intellectualwomen, a precociousexcess in masturbation has been amain cause, not necessarily the sole efficient cause, in producinga divorce in later life between the physicalsensuous impulses and the ideal emotions. When earlymasturbation is a factor in developing sexual inversion itusually operates in this manner, the repulsion for normalcoitus helping to furnish a soil on which the inverted impulsemay develop unimpeded.It isimportant to realizethat the possible evil results are exceptional. Dr. KatharineDavis in her extensive investigation,which is the mostof masturbation in womenelaborate and valuable studywe possess,found when comparing the group of happilymarried women with the group of the unhappily unmarried,that the number in each group of those who beforemarriage had engaged in masturbation or other similarsex play (not including sexual intercourse) was almostidentical.