Auto-Eroticism

Stekel, Wilhelm Stekel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138879881
• eBook ISBN: 9781317846949
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

When this work was first published in the first hald of the last century, sexology and the unprejudiced study of sexual activity was in its infancy. In his study of human sexual behaviour, Kinsey was able to state that the majority of human beings had masturbated at one time or another but to us today this seems quite an astonishing statement to have made. The study of human sexuality was surrounded by ignorance and superstition, and the medical profession was regrettably the worst offender and the most ignored. In such a climate, Dr Stekel's book was a revelation much ahead of its time.
This edition first published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Es gibt Bücher, welche für die Seele und Gesundheit einen umgekehrten Wert haben, je nachdem die niedere Seele, die niedrigere Lebenskraft oder aber die höhere und gewaltigere sich ihrer bedienen.

NIETZSCHE

I

The Sexuality of the Child—Coitus During Childhood—Why Physicians have overlooked the Sexuality of Children—The Asexualization and Idealization of the Child—Account of Infantile Onanism—Two Types of the Practice—Masturbating Children Regarded as Epileptic—Freud’s Views Regarding Infantile Onanism—The so-called Latent Period—Prevalence of the Habit among the Talented and among the Neurotic Children—Paraphilia, Parapathy, and Paralogy—New Names for New Viewpoints—Discredited Views Regarding Masturbation—The Question of a Definition—The Various Forms of the Habit—Various Statistical Data on the Frequency of the Habit—Everybody is addicted to the Habit—Neurosis is a Consequence of Abstinence, not the Result of the Habit—Does Masturbation lead to Neurasthenia?—Analysis of a Case of so-called Neurasthenia—Analysis of Person fond of Children who protects himself against Crime through Masturbation—A Masturbating Asocial Personality—Masturbation as Social Protection against Sexual Crimes.

Auto-Erotism

I

Some books have a reverse influence on mind and healthy, depending on whether they reach the lower mind, the lower vital resources, or whether they are utilized by the higher and the more powerful inner forces.

NIETZSCHE

Our sexual life begins with the day of our birth and it ends with death. Other investigators go further and ascribe even to the foetus a certain degree of sexuality. That is something I am not disposed to deny but it is a view I cannot corroborate. On the other hand I know through my personal observations, extending over many years, that heretofore we have been wrongly instructed regarding the beginnings of sexuality. It has been always held that in the normal human being sexuality awakens first with puberty. Whenever this happened earlier, the occurrence was regarded as something exceptional and as a sign of a psychopathic constitution. I should have to fill volumes if I endeavored to quote all the modern authorities that are still of this opinion. It has always surprised me to find that physicians know so little about the sexual life of children, notwithstanding their opportunities for thorough observation besides the memories of their own early youth. I was formerly unacquainted with “spiritual scotoma,” or the will-not-to-see. The sexual sphere contains too much that is intimately personal so that not all physicians are able to approach it with an unprejudiced attitude. Thus it comes about that ridiculous prejudices have been maintained for centuries as scientific truths; and that is why, in sexual matters, to this day unprejudiced lay persons and experienced prostitutes are capable of properly instructing many a young disciple of Æsculapius.

How is it possible that all persons,—mothers, fathers, physicians, nurses,—should overlook the child’s early sexual excitations? It is utterly impossible to dismiss this fact as a mere chance occurrence. It is a social phenomenon, and it stands out perhaps as the most significant indication of civilized man’s attitude towards sexuality. For the phenomenon reveals an unwillingness-to-see. It is not an oversight,—it is a Vorübersehen, a deliberate refusal to see.

At this juncture I want to trace out a fundamental difference between my account of the disorders of the sexual functions and the previous views. Formerly the account of these disorders was purely descriptive, or individual. On my part I endeavor to examine these disorders from their aspect as social manifestations and at every step to trace the relations of the individual to the social group. The oversight of the sexuality of childhood is also a significant social manifestation which discloses that humanity is struggling against sexuality. This deliberate oversight necessarily involves also the medical profession. Physicians are not immune against social determinism any more than any other group. That is the reason why the most famous investigators of sexual problems have heretofore ignored certain facts.¹

Naturally when Freud revealed anew the sexuality of children, he encountered most bitter opposition. The will-not-to-see has partly enshrouded also the one investigator who has described over again the phenomenon which was always clear and obvious for any one to perceive who cared to see. That Freud was able to see it may be due partly to the fact that we live in an age characterized by a strong reaction against the old policy of covering up sexual matters. For, independently of Freud, many investigators began to disclose sexual facts. The time was ripe for light. In fact, I was the first—independently of Freud’s teachings—to point out, as far back as 1895, the prevalence of coitus among children.

What I then remarked seems to me so relevant that I reproduce below the significant parts of the earlier contribution:

That coitus during early childhood is an occurrence far from rare is a fact which appears to be but little known in medical circles. Some of the local specialists whom I have interrogated told me they had no information on the subject, and met my remarks relating thereto with an incredulous shrug of the shoulder. Krafft-Ebing, in the 7th edition of his Psychopathia Sexualis, writes only about masturbation during early childhood and in the absence of a peripheral exciting cause he regards every manifestation of sexual life at that age as a sign of neuropathic heredity, a contention that, according to the present writer’s view, is by no means true of all cases. Lombroso writes only about children who masturbate at the early age of three to seven. In an interesting essay that appeared under the caption, “Anthropology in the Service of Pedagogy” (Die Zeit, 1895, No. 27), he mentions superficially the sexual life of children. Therein he states: “In children from three to four years of age we may observe also the first indications of the tendency to the secret habit, naturally in a form limited by the incomplete development of the respective parts.”

Zambuco describes a seven-year-old girl who carried on sexual deeds with boys and who was a victim of perverse sexual cravings. Fürbringer, in his recent work, Die Stæerungen der Geschlechtsfunktionen des Mannes (Disorders of Man’s Sexual Functions), traces erections to the 15th year, on the average, i.e. the onset of puberty, but, like Cursch-mann, he has observed masturbation in children of five and younger ones. No reference is made to coitus among children.

Henoch, in spite of his rich experience, mentions no case. On the other hand he refers to the rhythmic motions of the pubic region which he has repeatedly observed in very young children and which he regards as an expression of onanistic excitation. A single observation (Henoch, Kinderkrankheiten, p. 220) meets our observations. A seven-year-old boy, Karl A., since his fifth year, as the result of sleeping for a long period with a relative who roused him by playing with him in bed, suffered of sleeplessness, enuresis, drowsiness and was addicted inordinately to masturbation. Unfortunately the age of the relative is not mentioned nor is it stated whether the boy only masturbates or was led to coitus.

Personal experience, clear memory and accident have led me several years ago to investigate this problem, so important for the hygiene of childhood. If a large number of intelligent persons are questioned on this matter, if they are requested to try to recall carefully whatever they can, nearly every other person will be found able to recall certain incidents of early childhood, which were not understood before, but which upon closer scrutiny prove to be the earliest manifestations of the sexual instinct. Cases of actual coitus are rather rare. Usually we are told of mutual touching of the genitalia producing in the children an unusual measure of pleasurable feeling. Often the mere view of the genitalia, accidentally, as during play, is enough suddenly to arouse in boys (and only from them is a frank confession to be expected) a hitherto unknown sexual feeling. Childhood is the period which shows clearly that much of what human beings think they do through will and reason, is really done through instinct. Childhood is the bridge that links homo sapiens to the animal realm. Thus, Lombroso, for instance, sees in every child certain marks of the criminal, because during its earlier years the child represents the lowest type of man just as the foetus during the first months stands for a lower animal species.

Thus coitus is discovered—instinctively—during childhood, mostly by the children themselves, on the path of the sexual instinct. Cases of children mishandled by adults are well known, of course, but these are outside the range of our present theme.

Whether during rape or repeated coitus a complete immissio penis takes place is doubtful. Usually the sexual act is carried out upon the vulva. But some of my observations appear to indicate a partial immissio penis into the vagina.

The possibility of this is not to be denied a priori. The child’s erect penis by no means lacks the requisite stiffness. The hymen may be in a rudimentary state of development, or it may be of a so-called annular form. I have never been able to verify the presence of an actual hymeneal rupture and know of no positive histories of local pain, hemorrhage, etc. In certain villages—so a student informed me—coitus among children is a very common occurrence. He has frequently observed children who, left to themselves, carried out coitus in the fields at a very early age and considers certain vaginitides traceable to this cause. Hoffmann (Gerichtliche Medizin, p. 115) points out that in most cases of rape involving children the hymen is found intact. May it not be so richly endowed with elastic fibers as to oppose no great resistance to the penetration of the slim penis of a child? According to Hyrtl (Topographische Anatomie) the strength of the hymen grows with age and in old maids it grows stiff and leathery.

The children, who instinctively discover coitus, seem also in some remarkable manner to realize that they must keep this discovery secret from their parents. Therefore but few cases come to the attention of the practitioner, who, unacquainted with these facts, often fails to warn the parents in time or to point out to them certain precautionary measures. Often coitus, or the awakened sexuality, is the cause of an early start in the masturbation habit.

Coitus in itself appears to cause no particular damage to the children’s health. A number of my cases of this category relate to healthy and strong as well as to neuropathic subjects.

Here I interrupt the reproduction of this little study. I may mention only that a number of observations are introduced to prove that the practice in question involved perfectly healthy persons and that it is a common occurrence which the physicians heretofore have uniformly overlooked.

The first case which I recorded in the study mentioned above, a boy who at four years of age carried out coitus with a girl companion, seemed to most physicians nothing less than a monstrosity. But since that little study of mine was published, over twenty years ago, I have become more thoroughly familiar with the status of the matter. I have queried numberless normal persons regarding their early sexual reminiscences and all my earlier professional observations have been richly corroborated. I know some cases in which the first attempt was made between the second and third year. These children grew up to be highly intelligent, cultured, noble minded persons. …

Notwithstanding all that, other physicians have failed to acknowledge the presence of sexuality during childhood. What may be the reasons for that?

In the first place there stands forth the fact that all persons endeavor to forget their own sexual past, insofar as it reaches back to the period of childhood. We are latently striving for innocence. We feel an urge to diminish the sense of personal guilt. We emphasize readily the educational errors, the sins of youth, of which we were the victims, in order that we may shift the responsibility away from us. We do not care to dwell upon that period of our youth during which all the primeval instincts of mankind struggled for supremacy within us. These manifestations we do not recognize in children, because if we did they would remind us of our own early life.

The repression of our own infantile sexuality leads also to the oversight of sexuality in our children,—in all children. In that respect we behave like the surprised country visitor who stands before a rhinoceros at the zoological garden and finally exclaims : “Nonsense! There ain’t no sich animal !”

No! Most physicians are unacquainted with infantile sexuality for the reason that they cannot bear such knowledge. What is to become of all the current notions about the “purity” of childhood and about the “innocence” that well brought up children are supposed to preserve? Shall we always be reminded how clearcut our relations are to nature, to the animal world, and to the criminal?

Another reason for this phenomenal oversight may be seen in man’s attitude towards the problem of personal responsibility. The establishment of social relations became possible only when the individual’s self-consciousness was enlarged in favor of the social group. Religion made the strong weak by burdening him with the sense of guilt. Sexuality stands forth as the symbol of guilt, the emblem of sinfulness as a whole. In paradise man lived asexually, until the snake seduced Adam and the latter tasted of the tree of knowledge. Thereupon divinity drove him promptly out of paradise lest he should taste of the tree of life. Otherwise man would become immortal and a god. That means, he would become capable of enjoying sexual pleasure without the sense of sinfulness. … All discipline of cultural man rests on this feeling of guilt and on the fear of punishment. Man feels himself a weak sinner. …

We want the child to outgrow us in development. We want the child to attain the heights we were unable to reach, because our strength failed us. The child must fulfill the vision of our great historic mission, he must quench our thirst for glory. If we ourselves cannot be gods, we want our children to be god-like. The child must preserve the purity which was denied us. The child must uplift and sanctify us. Sinful parents often dedicated their children to the priesthood. This is the primitive expression of a wish we share alike, viz. the wish to make the child holy. Thus it comes about that the parents’ belief in the purity of their children assumes ridiculous proportions. I have known of mothers physically assaulting the physician who informed them of the unexpected pregnancy of an unmarried daughter; I have known intelligent mothers to swear that their grown-up sons were wholly innocent and knew nothing of such “vile things,” while the sons in question already possessed a large store of experience. All the obvious excitations of sexuality are belittled as accidental, as innocent play, as distant instinct. The child is something holy, pure, and noble, to the mother. Every mother feels herself a Mary who has given birth to a savior. She may admit as a last resort that possibly other children may be degenerates at an early age, but her child is a remarkable exception.

Yet in truth all children are alike. Only the forms differ under which sexuality manifests itself.

It is untrue therefore that our sexual life begins only at puberty. It is untrue that children become acquainted with sexual excitations only by being seduced or through the example of others, or that it depends on education alone whether a child is precocious or retarded in sexual matters.

Children start the practice of onanism during the first few days after birth! In most cases there are noticeable slight rhythmic swayings which thus disclose early the relationship between rhythm and sex. Before long the hand reaches down searchingly and finds the genitalia. Sometimes sucklings display erections immediately after birth. Every experienced midwife is able to corroborate this observation. I myself have observed erections occurring within a few hours after birth. The sucklings carry out onanism in various ways. Many, as soon as their hand is free carry it down to a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter I. The Social Function of Onanism
• Chapter II. Masturbation and Neurosis
• Chapter III. Cryptic Masturbation
• Chapter IV. Psychogenesis of Guilty Conscience
• Chapter V. Masturbation and Religion
• Chapter VI. General Considerations
• Glossary
• Index