In
numerous cases they were peculiarly frequent (even three in one
night) during courtship, when the young man was in the habit of
kissing and caressing his betrothed, but ceased after marriage.
It was not noted that position in bed or a full bladder exerted
any marked influence in the occurrence of erotic dreams;
repletion of the seminal vesicles is regarded as the main factor.

In Germany erotic dreams have been discussed by Volkelt (_Die
Traum-Phantasie_, 1875, pp. 78-82), and especially by Loewenfeld
(_Sexual-Probleme_, Oct., 1908), while in America, Stanley Hall
thus summarizes the general characteristics of erotic dreams in
men: "In by far the most cases, consciousness, even when the act
causes full awakening from sleep, finds only scattered images,
single words, gestures, and acts, many of which would perhaps
normally constitute no provocation. Many times the mental
activity seems to be remote and incidental, and the mind retains
in the morning nothing except, perhaps, a peculiar dress pattern,
the shape of a finger-nail, the back of a neck, the toss of a
head, the movement of a foot, or the dressing of the hair. In
such cases, these images stand out for a time with the
distinctness of a cameo, and suggest that the origin of erotic
fetichisms is largely to be found in sexual dreams. Very rarely
is there any imagery of the organs themselves, but the tendency
to irradiation is so strong as to re-enforce the suggestion of so
many other phenomena in this field, that nature designs this
experience to be long circuited, and that it may give a peculiar
ictus to almost any experience. When waking occurs just
afterward, it seems at least possible that there may be much
imagery that existed, but failed to be recalled to memory,
possibly because the flow of psychic impressions was over very
familiar fields, and this, therefore, was forgotten, while any
eruption into new or unwonted channels, stood out with
distinctness. All these psychic phenomena, although very
characteristic of man in his prime, are not so of the dreams of
dawning puberty, which are far more vivid." (G. Stanley Hall,
_Adolescence_, vol. i, p. 455.)

I may, further, quote the experience of an anonymous
contributor--a healthy and chaste man between 30 and 38 years of
age--to the _American Journal of Psyc