tes
of various nationalities, with whom the subject had had
relations, 18 spontaneously told him that they were habitual
masturbators, while of 26 normal women, 13 made the same
confession, unasked. Guttceit, in Russia, after stating that
women of good constitution had told him that they masturbated as
much as six or ten times a day or night (until they fell asleep,
tired), without bad results, adds that, according to his
observations, "masturbation, when not excessive, is, on the
whole, a quite innocent matter, which exerts little or no
permanent effect," and adds that it never, in any case, leads to
_hypochondria onanica_ in women, because they have not been
taught to expect bad results (_Dreissig Jahre Praxis_, p. 306).
There is, I think, some truth--though the exceptions are
doubtless many--in the distinction drawn by W.C. Krauss
("Masturbational Neuroses," _Medical News_, July 13, 1901): "From
my experience it [masturbation] seems to have an opposite effect
upon the two sexes, dulling the mental and making clumsy the
physical exertions of the male, while in the female it quickens
and excites the physical and psychical movements. The man is
rendered hypoesthetic, the woman hyperesthetic."

In either sex auto-erotic excesses during adolescence in young men and
women of intelligence--whatever absence of gross injury there may
be--still often produce a certain degree of psychic perversion, and tend
to foster false and high-strung ideals of life. Kraepelin refers to the
frequency of exalted enthusiasms in masturbators, and I have already
quoted Anstie's remarks on the connection between masturbation and
premature false work in literature and art. It may be added that excess in
masturbation has often occurred in men and women whose work in literature
and art cannot be described as premature and false. K.P. Moritz, in early
adult life, gave himself up to excess in masturbation, and up to the age
of thirty had no relations with women. Lenau is said--though the statement
is sometimes denied--to have been a masturbator from early life, the habit
profoundly effecting his life and work. Rousseau, in his _Confessions_,
admirably describes how his own solitary, timid, and imaginative life
found its chief sexual satisfaction in masturbation.[342] Gogol, the
great Russian novelist, masturbated to excess, and it has been suggested
that the dreamy melan