ousness of the general social attitude toward his
practices and his dread of detection, for that may also exist as regards
normal coitus without any corresponding psychic effects. The masturbator,
if his practice is habitual, is thus compelled to cultivate an artificial
consciousness of self-esteem, and may show a tendency to mental arrogance.
Self-righteousness and religiosity constitute, as it were, a protection
against the tendency to remorse. A morbid mental soil is, of course,
required for the full development of these characteristics. The habitual
male masturbator, it must be remembered, is often a shy and solitary
person; individuals of this temperament are especially predisposed to
excesses in all the manifestations of auto-erotism, while the yielding to
such tendencies increases the reserve and the horror of society, at the
same time producing a certain suspicion of others. In some extreme cases
there is, no doubt, as Kraepelin believes, some decrease of psychic
capacity, an inability to grasp and co-ordinate external impressions,
weakness of memory, deadening of emotions, or else the general phenomena
of increased irritability, leading on to neurasthenia.

I find good reason to believe that in many cases the psychic influence of
masturbation on women is different from its effect on men. As Spitzka
observed, although it may sometimes render women self-reproachful and
hesitant, it often seems to make them bold. Boys, as we have seen, early
assimilate the tradition that self-abuse is "unmanly" and injurious, but
girls have seldom any corresponding tradition that it is "unwomanly," and
thus, whether or not they are reticent on the matter, before the forum of
their own conscience they are often less ashamed of it than men are and
less troubled by remorse.

Eulenburg considers that the comparative absence of bad effects
from masturbation in girls is largely due to the fact that,
unlike boys, they are not terrorized by exaggerated warnings and
quack literature concerning the awful results of the practice.
Forel, who has also remarked that women are often comparatively
little troubled by qualms of conscience after masturbation,
denies that this is due to a lower moral tone than men possess
(Forel, _Die Sexuelle Frage_, p. 247). In this connection, I may
refer to History IV, recorded in the Appendix to the fifth volume
of these _Studies_, in which it is stated that of 55 prostitu