Читать книгу The sexual life of woman in its physiological, pathological and hygienic aspects - E. Heinrich Kisch - Страница 27

Masturbation is sometimes practised in very early childhood, being then commonly due to local irritation of some kind, as for instance when threadworms find their way into the vagina. Itching results, leading the child to rub the genital organs. This rubbing produces a pleasurable sensation, and gives rise to repeated masturbation. But in adolescent girls at the time of the menarche, a vague impulse arises to handle the genital organs, depending upon cerebral processes which are themselves the result of sexual sentiments, of reading, or of conversations with sexually instructed female friends. This vague impulse may lead to masturbation, and will do so earlier and more surely if the girl is a neuropsychopath by inheritance. The local influence of menstrual congestion, however, also plays a part in provoking the impulse toward masturbation, since at every period a hyperæsthetic state recurs in the genital organs.

Girls thus addicted have sometimes a very striking general appearance. They are pale, with a weary expression of countenance, their eyes are dull-looking and darkly ringed, their movements are sluggish, they like to spend a long time in bed—signs, however, which I by no means wish to adduce as characteristic of onanists.

Temperament and mode of life are decisive in determining the greater or less frequency of the habit of masturbation in young girls. Girls of a passionate temperament, those also who from early childhood have been accustomed to mix much with young persons of the opposite sex, and those, finally, in whom from conversation on the subject with female friends or from the perusal of erotic literature, sexual enlightenment has occurred at an early age, experience the awakening of the sexual impulse earlier and with greater force, than phlegmatic girls, than those who have grown up apart from boys, and than those who have been strictly and carefully brought up. Masturbation may arise either instinctively or from instruction.

In young girls masturbation is usually effected by friction of the clitoris; less often by intra-vaginal manipulation, since this is liable to lead to injury to the hymen. For the former purpose the finger may be used; or some other article, such as a knot tied in the nightgown, or a rounded projection on some article of furniture; in one case the friction was effected by the naked heel. If two female onanists come together, they practice tribadism, presently to be described. Opportunity for this practice occurs especially in institutions in which young girls occupy a common dormitory, and sleep together without adult supervision.

An experienced physician, Gutceit, is of opinion that in young girls of 10 to 16 years of age masturbation is on the whole less common than in boys of the same age, but that on the other hand from the ages of 18, 19, and 20 onward, “sexual self-gratification is almost universally practiced by women, even if it be not always practiced to excess,” an opinion which cannot, however, be regarded as conclusive. As consequences of masturbation in the female sex, this author has observed: Fluor albus, menorrhagia, enlargement and prolapse of the uterus, pains in one or other ovary, hysterical paroxysms, great pallor.

L. Löwenfeld remarks that the manifestations of the sexual impulse are not normally present in the days of childhood. In consequence of pathological conditions, especially of such as effect the genital organs, in consequence of chance impressions, or in consequence of a bad example, sexual passion may indeed be awakened in children in its fullest intensity. Normally, however, the distinct manifestation of the sexual impulse is associated with a certain degree of development, of ripeness, of the reproductive organs. Physiologically, sexual passion is entirely wanting in young girls before the age of puberty.

As regards the act of sexual self-gratification, this author distinguishes two forms of masturbation: (a) Peripheral-mechanical; (b) mental (psychical onanism). In the former class of cases, the sexual orgasm is produced solely or chiefly by mechanical stimulation of the skin or mucous membrane of the genital organs. In the female sex, in addition to manual stimulation, an extraordinary variety of hard and soft articles are introduced into the vagina for this purpose. Many females effect sexual self-gratification by rubbing and pressing movements of the thighs one against the other, in which the clitoris is implicated. In psychical onanism, on the contrary, as Löwenfeld points out, the orgasm is produced solely by central stimulatory representations, without the assistance of any manipulation of the genital organs. The ideas that have this effect are for the most part lascivious trains of thought or the recollection of previous sexual experiences, on which the attention is concentrated. If we wish to estimate the harmfulness of the different forms of masturbation as regards the mind and the nervous system, psychical onanism must incontestably be regarded as the most deleterious.

In the female sex onanism is, in Löwenfeld’s opinion, less widely practiced than in the male; none the less, it is in the former sex far commoner than is generally believed, a fact on which Eulenburg likewise insists. Frequently, also, in females, a congenital neuropathic tendency plays a part in the causation of masturbation, in so far as this tendency takes the form of premature sexual excitement or of excessive intensity of the sexual impulse. In the absence of this tendency, masturbation rarely leads to the production of well-marked nervous disturbances, and does so only when practiced to very great excess. Beard reports that in the powerful and full-blooded working-class girls of the Irish race, masturbation, even when practiced for many years, did not result in any notable disorder to health.

As regards the nature of the nervous manifestations met with in women as a result of masturbation, there develops, according to Löwenfeld, in one group of the cases, the sexual form of myelasthenia, characterized principally by sacrache and lumbago, hyperæsthesia and paræsthesia in the domain of the genital organs (ovarie,^[25] pruritus vulvæ et vaginæ, etc.), irritable bladder, coccygodynia, weakness and paræsthesia of the legs (feelings of fatigue and chilliness), finally, the onset of erotic dreams. In many cases, in the course of time, to these symptoms are superadded the manifestations of cerebral and visceral neurasthenia (headache, insomnia, nervous dyspepsia, palpitation), so that the clinical picture comes to be one of general neurasthenia. In addition to the neurasthenic troubles, manifold hysterical manifestations may occur.