casionally serve as a method
for obtaining auto-erotic satisfaction, including the orgasm, in both
sexes. I have been told of a case in a man, and a medical correspondent in
India informs me that he knows a Eurasian woman, addicted to masturbation,
who can only obtain the orgasm by rubbing the genitals with one hand while
with the other she rubs and finally squeezes her breasts. The tactile
stimulation even of regions of the body which are not normally erogenous
zones in either sex may sometimes lead on to sexual excitement;
Hirschsprung, as well as Freud, believes that this is often the case as
regards finger-sucking and toe-sucking in infancy. Even stroking the chin,
remarks Debreyne, may produce a pollution.[220] Taylor refers to the case
of a young woman of 22, who was liable to attacks of choreic movements of
the hands which would terminate in alternately pressing the middle finger
on the tip of the nose and the tragus of the ear, when a "far-away,
pleased expression" would appear on her face; she thus produced sexual
excitement and satisfaction. She had no idea of wrong-doing and was
surprised and ashamed when she realized the nature of her act.[221]

Most of the foregoing examples of auto-erotism, are commonly included, by
no means correctly, under the heading of "masturbation." There are,
however, a vast number of people, possessing strong sexual emotions and
living a solitary life, who experience, sometimes by instinct and
sometimes on moral grounds, a strong repugnance for these manifestations
of auto-erotism. As one highly intelligent lady writes: "I have sometimes
wondered whether I could produce it (complete sexual excitement)
mechanically, but I have a curious unreasonable repugnance to trying the
experiment. It would materialize it too much." The same repugnance may be
traced in the tendency to avoid, so far as possible, the use of the hands.
It is quite common to find this instinctive unreasoning repugnance among
women, a healthy repugnance, not founded on any moral ground. In men the
same repugnance exists, more often combined with, or replaced by, a very
strong moral and aesthetic objection to such practices. But the presence of
such a repugnance, however invincible, is very far from carrying us
outside the auto-erotic field. The production of the sexual orgasm is not
necessarily dependent on any external contact or voluntary mechanical
cause.

As an example, though not of specifically auto-erotic mani