A Freudian View on MASTURBATION

LETTER 79[1]

... It has dawned on me that masturbation is the one major habit, the 'primal addiction' and that it is only as a substitute and replacement for it that the other addictions -- for alcohol, morphine, tobacco, etc. -- come into existence.[2] The part played by this addiction in hysteria is quite enormous; and it is perhaps there that my great, still outstanding, obstacle is to be found, wholly or in part. And here, of course, the doubt arises of whether an addiction of this kind is curable, or whether analysis and therapy are brought to a stop at this point and must content themselves with transforming a case of hysteria into one of neurasthenia.[3]

[ Sigmund Freud, Vol. I, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Extracts From the Fliess Papers), the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, 1953, p. 272. ]

In confirmation of my suspicion Dora gave me two facts from her conscious knowledge: She herself had frequently suffered from gastric pains, and she had good reason for believing that her cousin was a masturbator. It is a very common thing for patients to recognize in other people a connection which, on account of their emotional resistance, they cannot perceive in themselves. And, indeed, Dora no longer denied my supposition [of her childhood masturbation], although she still remembered nothing. Even the date she assigned to the bed-wetting, when she said that it lasted "till a short time before the appearance of the nervous asthma" [p.73], appears to me to be of clinical significance. Hysterical symptoms hardly ever appear so long as children are masturbating, but only afterwards, when a period of abstinence has set in;[1] they form a substitute for masturbatory satisfaction, the desire for which continues to persist in the unconscious until another and more normal kind of satisfaction appears -- where that is still attainable. For upon whether it is still attainable or not depends the possibility of a hysteria being cured by marriage and normal sexual intercourse. But if the satisfaction afforded in marriage is again removed -- as it may be owing to coitus interruptus, psychological estrangement, or other causes -- then the libido flows back again into its old channel and manifests itself once more in hysterical symptoms.

[ Sigmund Freud, Vol. 7, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (A Case of Hysteria), the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, 1953, pp. 78-9. ]

There is another question that I might draw your attention to, which has been dealt with too little in our discussions: that of 'unconscious' masturbation. I mean masturbation during sleep, during abnormal states, or fits. You will recall the many hysterical fits in which masturbatory acts occur in a disguised or unrecognizable way, after the subject has renounced that form of satisfaction, and the many symptoms in obsessional neurosis which seek to replace and repeat this kind of activity, which has formerly been forbidden.[1] We may also speak of a therapeutic return of masturbation. A number of you will have found on occasion, as I have, that it represents a great advance if during the treatment the patient ventures to take up masturbation once more, though he may have no intention of making a permanent stop at that infantile halting-place. In this connection I may remind you that a considerable number of precisely the most severe sufferers from neurosis have avoided all recollection of masturbation during historic times, while psycho-analysis is able to prove that that species of sexual activity had by no means been strange to them during the forgotten earliest period of their lives.
But I think the time has come to break off. For we are all agreed on one thing -- that the subject of masturbation is quite inexhaustible.[2]

[ Sigmund Freud, Vol. XII, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (A Discussion of Masturbation), the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, 1953, p. 254. ]

In the final stages of Schreber's delusion a magnificent victory was scored by the infantile sexual urge; for voluptuousness became God-fearing, and God Himself (his father) never tired of demanding it from him. His father's most dreaded threat, castration, actually provided the material for his wishful phantasy (at first resisted but later accepted) of being transformed into a woman. His allusion to an offence covered by the surrogate idea 'soul murder' could not be more transparent. The chief attendant was discovered to be identical with his neighbor von W. [p. 39f.], who, according to the voices, had falsely accused him of masturbation (108). The voices said, as though giving grounds for the threat of castration: 'For you are to be represented as being given over to voluptuous excesses.'[1] (127-8.) Finally, we come to the enforced thinking (47) to which the patient submitted himself because he supposed that God would believe he had become an idiot and would withdraw from him if he ceased thinking for a moment. [See p. 25.] This is a reaction (with which we are also familiar in other connections) to the threat or fear of losing one's reason[2] as a result of indulging in sexual practices and especially in masturbation. Considering the enormous number of delusional ideas of a hypochondriacal nature[3] which the patient developed, no great importance should perhaps be attached to the fact that some of them coincide word for word with the hypochondriacal fears of masturbators.[1]

[Sigmund Freud, Vol. XII, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Notes on a Case of Paranoia), the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, 1953, pp. 55-6. ]

Case B -- Patient was a thirty-seven-year old married man suffering from extreme anxiety and incipient paranoia.
     He reported that one evening, after he had gone to bed, he suddenly began remembering the contents of certain perverse, bisexual phantasies which he had masturbated to many years before, an activity he had discontinued upon realizing how 'unhealthy' it was. He had successfully repressed any memory of these events until this very moment.
     Now that he was suddenly confronted again on a conscious level with these long-repressed masturbatory phantasies, he experienced an extraordinary phenomenon. He stated that the very first phantasy he allowed into conscious awareness from its unconscious hiding place caused a transformation in his penis from a state of total flaccidity to full erection and spontaneous orgasmic discharge, all within the space of five seconds or less. When queried about the extremely short time interval between complete penile flaccidity and spontaneous orgasmic discharge, patient answered that the time element may have been even shorter than five seconds, for to him it had seemed like an almost instantaneous happening.
     Greatly astonished by what had taken place, patient said he was able to repeat this phenomenon several more times during the same night, naturally with an increasingly longer time-lag between conscious awareness of a particular phantasy and the ultimate spontaneous orgasm. Patient further reported that he continued this practice nightly for several months until he had exhausted his store of long-repressed phantasies and until these phantasies had lost their power to stir up any more sexual excitement.
     Patient also stated that by the end of this period of phantasy abreaction his anxiety had completely disappeared, along with his incipient paranoia, and that his overall health, both physical and mental, had greatly improved. (Anonymous case reported to compiler.)

The extreme importance of this case lies in the insight it sheds on the toxic effects of undischarged libido upon the organism. The fact that the patient's penis could be transformed from its flaccid state to full erection and orgasmic discharge in a matter of seconds vividly illustrates the enormity of the force which can be built up by the sexual impulse when it has been denied access to normal orgasmic discharge through the process of repression. Furthermore, it is precisely this undischarged homosexual libido which provides the energy which fuels the myriad symptoms of mental illness, among the most serious of which are delusions and hallucinations. (It was Dr. Maurits Katan who first made this observation in one of his papers dealing with schizophrenia.)
In this particular case, it is very clear that the patient's incipient paranoia was directly attributable to the toxic effect of his undischarged homosexual libido, and that if he had been unable to discharge it in the manner in which he did, he soon would have developed a full-fledged case of paranoid schizophrenia, replete with all its classic, malignant features.

[ Schizophrenia - The Bearded Lady Disease, by J. Michael Mahoney, AuthorHouse, Bloomington, IN, 2003, Quotation/Comment # 528. ]

From then on my wife's visits ceased; when after a long time I did see her again at the window of a room opposite mine, such important changes had meanwhile occurred in my environment and in myself that I no longer considered her a living being, but only thought I saw in her a human form produced by miracle in the manner of the "fleeting-improvised-men". Decisive for my mental collapse was one particular night; during that night I had a quite unusual number of pollutions (perhaps half a dozen).
From then on appeared the first signs of communication with supernatural powers, particularly that of nerve-contact which Professor Flechsig kept up with me in such a way that he spoke to my nerves without being present in person. From then on I also gained the impression that Professor Flechsig had secret designs against me; this seemed confirmed when I once asked him during a personal visit whether he really honestly believed that I could be cured, and he held out certain hopes, but could no longer -- at least so it seemed to me -- look me straight in the eye.

[ Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, by Daniel Paul Schreber, (Translated, Edited, with Introduction, Notes and Discussion by Ida Macalpine, M.D. and Richard A. Hunter, M.D., M.R.C.P., D.P.M.), Wm. Dawson & Sons Ltd., London, 1955, p. 68. ]

     At a later stage in this paper I intend to return to a discussion of some further objections; but in the meantime I shall consider myself justified in maintaining the view that the basis of Schreber's illness was the outburst of a homosexual impulse. This hypothesis harmonizes with a noteworthy detail of the case history, which remains otherwise inexplicable. The patient had a fresh 'nervous collapse', which exercised a decisive effect upon the course of his illness, at a time when his wife was taking a short holiday on account of her own health. Up till then she had spent several hours with him every day and had taken her mid-day meal with him. But when she returned after an absence of four days, she found him most sadly altered: so much so, indeed, that he himself no longer wished to see her. 'What especially determined my mental break-down was a particular night, during which I had a quite extraordinary number of emissions -- quite half a dozen, all in that one night.'[44] It is easy to understand that the mere presence of his wife must have acted as a protection against the attractive power of the men around him; and if we are prepared to admit that an emission cannot occur in an adult without some mental concomitant, we shall be able to supplement the patient's emissions that night by assuming that they were accompanied by homosexual phantasies which remained unconscious.
     The question of why this outburst of homosexual libido overtook the patient at precisely this period (that is, between the dates of his appointment and of his move to Dresden) cannot be answered in the absence of more precise knowledge of the story of his life. Generally speaking, every human being oscillates all through his life between heterosexual and homosexual feelings, and any frustration or disappointment in the one direction is apt to drive him over into the other. We know nothing of these factors in Schreber's case, but we must not omit to draw attention to a somatic factor which may very well have been relevant. At the time of this illness, Dr. Schreber was fifty-one years old, and he had therefore reached an age which is of critical importance in sexual life. It is a period at which in women the sexual function, after a phase of intensified activity, enters upon a process of far-reaching involution; nor do men appear to be exempt from its influence, for men as well as women are subject to a 'climacteric' and to the susceptibilities to disease which go along with it.[1] [......]
     We shall therefore, I think, raise no further objection to the hypothesis that the exciting cause of the illness was the appearance in him of a feminine (that is, a passive homosexual) wishful phantasy, which took as its object the figure of his doctor. An intense resistance to this phantasy arose on the part of Schreber's personality, and the ensuing defensive struggle, which might perhaps just as well have assumed some other shape, took on, for reasons unknown to us, that of a delusion of persecution. The person he longed for now became his persecutor, and the content of his wishful phantasy became the content of his persecution. It may be presumed that the same schematic outline will turn out to be applicable to other cases of delusions of persecution. What distinguishes Schreber's case from others, however, is its further development and the transformation [Schreber's delusional self-transformation into a female] it underwent in the course of it.

[ Notes on a Case of Paranoia, in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-13), the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, 1958, pp. 45-8. ]