not
exclusively on one side," remarks Loewenfeld (_Sexualleben und
Nervenleiden_, second edition, p. 40). Sexual abstinence is
certainly often injurious to neuropathic persons. (This is now
believed by a large number of authorities, and was perhaps first
decisively stated by Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber Neurosen durch
Abstinenz," _Jahrbuch fuer Psychiatrie_, 1889, p. 1). Loewenfeld
finds no special proclivity to neurasthenia among the Catholic
clergy, and when it does occur, there is no reason to suppose a
sexual causation. "In healthy and not hereditarily neuropathic
men complete abstinence is possible without injury to the nervous
system." Injurious effects, he continues, when they appear,
seldom occur until between twenty-four and thirty-six years of
age, and even then are not usually serious enough to lead to a
visit to a doctor, consisting mainly in frequency of nocturnal
emissions, pain in testes or rectum, hyperaesthesia in the
presence of women or of sexual ideas. If, however, conditions
arise which specially stimulate the sexual emotions, neurasthenia
may be produced. Loewenfeld agrees with Freud and Gattel that the
neurosis of anxiety tends to occur in the abstinent, careful
examination showing that the abstinence is a factor in its
production in both sexes. It is common among young women married
to much older men, often appearing during the first years of
marriage. Under special circumstances, therefore, abstinence can
be injurious, but on the whole the difficulties due to such
abstinence are not severe, and they only exceptionally call forth
actual disturbance in the nervous or psychic spheres. Moll takes
a similar temperate and discriminating view. He regards sexual
abstinence before marriage as the ideal, but points out that we
must avoid any doctrinal extremes in preaching sexual abstinence,
for such preaching will merely lead to hypocrisy. Intercourse
with prostitutes, and the tendency to change a woman like a
garment, induce loss of sensitiveness to the spiritual and
personal element in woman, while the dangers of sexual abstinence
must no more be exaggerated than the dangers of sexual
intercourse (Moll, _Libido Sexualis_, 1898, vol. i, p. 848; id.,
_Kontraere Sexualempfindung_, 1899, p. 588). Bloch also (in a
chapter on the question of sexual abstinence in his _Sex