There's an article in the journal Pastoral Psychology from 2003 with an unusual (and to my mind, improbable) theory:
I argue that the decline in moral disapproval of masturbation in the American religious culture over the last half-century is directly responsible for increased moral disapproval of homosexuality. Moral disapproval previously directed toward masturbators is being redirected instead toward homosexuals.
Yet it's still interesting to read because to bolster his case, the author spends a lot of time showing how intense (and medicalised) the disapproval of masturbation had been in the couple of centuries before the mid 20th. He talks about Kant's completely over-the-top condemnation, which I already knew about; but there were things new to me too. Sigmund Freud, for example:
As Menninger notes, Freud considered masturbation “the primary addiction,” and suggested that other addictions (alcohol, tobacco, morphine, etc.) are a substitute for and means of withdrawal from masturbation (p. 34). His physician-biographer, Max Shur, noted that Freud viewed his compulsive addiction to smoking, which he could not relinquish in spite of near-cancerous lesions in his mouth for which he submitted to many painful operations the last 14 years of his life, as a substitute for the primary addiction of masturbation (p. 34).
Hence the title of this post.
One might have expected that he would be calmer about the practice, but not really: his condemnation is pretty much the same as used in religions (and Kant), and he had little sympathy for a son worried about it:
As Szasz shows, Freud did not view masturbation as a cause of mental insanity, but he did contend that neurasthenia (a condition whose symptoms include lack of motivation, feelings of inadequacy, and psychosomatic symptoms) may be traced back to a condition of the nervous system caused by excessive masturbation or frequent emissions (1984, p 349). Freud also considered masturbation “perverse” because “it has given up the aim of reproduction and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it” (p. 349). Thus, masturbation is problematic on moral grounds because it departs from conventional, genital, heterosexual intercourse aimed at procreation. Menninger notes that when one of Freud’s own sons came to him with worries about masturbation, he issued a strong parental warning against engaging in the practice, and this, according to another of Freud’s sons, led to an estranged relationship between them (p. 34). Szasz notes the absurdity of Gay Talese’s use of the term “this Freudian age” in a book published in 1980 that promoted “a therapeutic ideology of sexual salvation through masturbation” (1984, p. 336).As for the medical approach to the activity, it remains bizarrely funny to read that cause and effect could be so ridiculously mixed up:
...in a recent article, “Remembering Masturbatory Insanity” (2000), he returns to the subject, noting that, from the very beginning of scientific medicine, masturbation (or “self-abuse”) was a handy scapegoat when medical practitioners could not identify the cause of a particular disease: “By the end of the 1700s, it was medical dogma that masturbation causes blindness, epilepsy, gonorrhea, tabes dorsalis, priapism, constipation, conjunctivitis, acne, painful menstruation, nymphomania, impotence, consumption, anemia, and of course insanity, melancholia, and suicide” (p. 2).
As with witchcraft a couple of centuries before that, it sure made for easy diagnosis of a problem:
R. H. Allnott reported in 1843 that when one of his patients “entered the room with a timid and suspicious air and appeared to quail like an irresolute maniac when the eye was fixed steadily on him,” there was no doubt of the cause of the patient’s problems (p. 32). When Allnott “directly charged” the patient with masturbatory behavior, he would usually admit it.
And the attempts to help included surgery, which sounds very similar to a modern vasectomy, which I did not think had any particular influence on libido:
The medical journals of the late 19th century were replete with articles describing surgical and other procedures designed to eradicate masturbation. Writing in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1883, Dr. Timothy Haynes described a surgical procedure that he had developed for curing “hopeless cases of masturbation and nocturnal emissions.” Indicating that he has frequently been called upon to care for victims of self-abuse, his normal procedure is to help the “perverted” state of mind of the victims by counseling marriage and even, at times, the immorality of a mistress. But some cases are so utterly desperate, the individual so destroyed mentally and physically, that he began to wonder whether some help could be provided even at the expense of the procreative powers. Judging the scar of castration to be an intolerable stigma, he developed a less extreme surgical procedure, which involved removing parts of the spermatic duct. He would make an incision midway between the external inguinal ring and the testis. This incision provided access to the duct, from which a half inch was cut off, and the “slight” wound was then closed with a suture.He claimed it worked in some cases - but one would have to guess it might be more an elaborate placebo effect.
As I have speculated before, it's hard to believe that all of the public was ever completely convinced of the harmfulness of the practice, despite an apparent uniformity of medicalised condemnation.
This led me to another article, and a fairly esoteric one, about the cryptic mentions of masturbation (well, probably) in the diary of a 17th century Scotsman. The more interesting part of it is the description of the legal and religious condemnation of the practice, which apparently technically carried the death penalty for a time, but no actual application of that law is known. (Phew). The writer points out that when Europeans started reading more, the educated could look at Greek and Roman literature as painting it as nothing remarkable, and...:
However, one snippet indicates Scottish tradition took bestiality very seriously:
It's not the death sentence I am so surprised about - it's the idea of someone being tried in secret at night and drowned "discretely" before (say) the parents knew why their son hadn't come home the day before. Of course, it is unclear (given there were no records to be kept!) as to how often that may have happened.
That's a dark note to end on, but it's hard to know how to end a post like this. Not a happy ending. (Ha ha.)
Update: well, through the wonders of Sci Hub, I have now read an enlightening 1997 article about how Freud's Vienna Circle of psychoanalyists, meeting around 1907 - 1912, got into arguments about masturbation, with Freud having a major falling out with Stekel over his (Stekel's) take that it was basically harmless. There's even a Freudian explanation for why Freud couldn't accept Stekel's views!:
The debate with Stekel continued in Freud’s mind: his conscience ordercd him to fight the temptation to resort to the bclief in the harmlessness of masturbation, because of the danger of “neurasthenia.” He was unable to free himself from this theory, which was in this respect, however, nothing but a justification of a taboo installcd in his childhood, by his father Jacob Freud, who had discovercd his son’s “self-abuse” and will have threatened him with castration if he did ever play with his genitals, according to Kriill (1986, IlOff, 142; cf. Oerlemans 1949, 44). Stekel had come close to the mainspring of Freud’s “onanism leads to neurasthenia” theory. Freud, however, in attempting to honor his fathcr, prevented himself from this insight by silencing his rebellious son” Stekel (cf. Kriill 1986, 1890.
Despite Freud's refusal to change his mind, the articles notes that by the late 1920's, most psychoanalysts had adopted Stekel's "meh, it's harmless" views. I see that Freud didn't die until 1939, so I wonder if that irked him.
