There is, however, a closely allied, and, indeed, overlapping form of

auto-erotism which may be considered here: I mean that associated with
revery, or day-dreaming. Although this is a very common and important
form of auto-erotism, besides being in a large proportion of cases the
early stage of masturbation, it appears to have attracted little
attention.[226] The day-dream has, indeed, been studied in its chief form,
in the "continued story," by Mabel Learoyd, of Wellesley College. The
continued story is an imagined narrative, more or less peculiar to the
individual, by whom it is cherished with fondness, and regarded as an
especially sacred mental possession, to be shared only, if at all, with
very sympathizing friends. It is commoner among girls and young women than
among boys and young men; among 352 persons of both sexes, 47 per cent.
among the women and only 14 per cent. among the men, have any continued
story. The starting-point is an incident from a book, or, more usually,
some actual experience, which the subject develops; the subject is nearly
always the hero or the heroine of the story. The growth of the story is
favored by solitude, and lying in bed before going to sleep is the time
specially sacred to its cultivation.[227] No distinct reference, perhaps
naturally enough, is made by Miss Learoyd to the element of sexual emotion
with which these stories are often strongly tinged, and which is
frequently their real motive. Though by no means easy to detect, these
elaborate and more or less erotic day-dreams are not uncommon in young
men and especially in young women. Each individual has his own particular
dream, which is always varying or developing, but, except in very
imaginative persons, to no great extent. Such a day-dream is often founded
on a basis of pleasurable personal experience, and develops on that basis.
It may involve an element of perversity, even though that element finds no
expression in real life. It is, of course, fostered by sexual abstinence;
hence its frequency in young women. Most usually there is little attempt
to realize it. It does not necessarily lead to masturbation, though it
often causes some sexual congestion or even spontaneous sexual orgasm. The
day-dream is a strictly private and intimate experience, not only from its
very nature, but also because it occurs in images which the subject finds
great difficulty in translating into language, even when willing to do so.
In other cases it is elaborately dramatic or romantic in character, the
hero or heroine passing through many experiences before attaining the
erotic climax of the story. This climax tends to develop in harmony with
the subject's growing knowledge or experience; at first, merely a kiss, it
may develop into any refinement of voluptuous gratification. The day-dream
may occur either in normal or abnormal persons. Rousseau, in his
_Confessions_, describes such dreams, in his case combined with masochism
and masturbation. A distinguished American novelist, Hamlin Garland, has
admirably described in _Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_ the part played in the
erotic day-dreams of a healthy normal girl at adolescence by a
circus-rider, seen on the first visit to a circus, and becoming a majestic
ideal to dominate the girl's thoughts for many years.[228]
Raffalovich[229] describes the process by which in sexual inverts the
vision of a person of the same sex, perhaps seen in the streets or the
theatre, is evoked in solitary reveries, producing a kind of "psychic
onanism," whether or not it leads on to physical manifestations.

Although day-dreaming of this kind has at present been very little
studied, since it loves solitude and secrecy, and has never been counted
of sufficient interest for scientific inquisition, it is really a process
of considerable importance, and occupies a large part of the auto-erotic
field. It is frequently cultivated by refined and imaginative young men
and women who lead a chaste life and would often be repelled by
masturbation. In such persons, under such circumstances, it must be
considered as strictly normal, the inevitable outcome of the play of the
sexual impulse. No doubt it may often become morbid, and is never a
healthy process when indulged in to excess, as it is liable to be by
refined young people with artistic impulses, to whom it is in the highest
degree seductive and insidious.[230] As we have seen, however,
day-dreaming is far from always colored by sexual emotion; yet it is a
significant indication of its really sexual origin that, as I have been
informed by persons of both sexes, even in these apparently non-sexual
cases it frequently ceases altogether on marriage.

Even when we have eliminated all these forms of auto-erotic activity,
however refined, in which the subject takes a voluntary part, we have
still left unexplored an important portion of the auto-erotic field, a
portion which many people are alone inclined to consider normal: sexual
orgasm during sleep. That under conditions of sexual abstinence in healthy
individuals there must inevitably be some auto-erotic manifestations
during waking life, a careful study of the facts compels us to believe.
There can be no doubt, also, that, under the same conditions, the
occurrence of the complete orgasm during sleep with, in men, seminal
emissions, is altogether normal. Even Zeus himself, as Pausanias has
recorded, was liable to such accidents: a statement which, at all events,
shows that to the Greek mind there was nothing derogatory in such an
occurrence.[231] The Jews, however, regarded it as an impurity,[232] and
the same idea was transmitted to the Christian church and embodied in the
word _pollutio_, by which the phenomenon was designated in ecclesiastical
phraseology.[233] According to Billuart and other theologians, pollution
in sleep is not sin, unless voluntarily caused; if, however, it begins in
sleep, and is completed in the half-waking state, with a sense of
pleasure, it is a venial sin. But it seems allowable to permit a nocturnal
pollution to complete itself on awaking, if it occurs without intention;
and St. Thomas even says "_Si pollutio placeat ut naturae exoneratio vel
alleviatio peccatum non creditur_."

Notwithstanding the fair and logical position of the more
distinguished Latin theologians, there has certainly been a
widely prevalent belief in Catholic countries that pollution
during sleep is a sin. In the "Parson's Tale," Chaucer makes the
parson say: "Another sin appertaineth to lechery that cometh in
sleeping; and the sin cometh oft to them that be maidens, and eke
to them that be corrupt; and this sin men clepe pollution, that
cometh in four manners;" these four manners being (1) languishing
of body from rank and abundant humors, (2) infirmity, (3) surfeit
of meat and drink, and (4) villainous thoughts. Four hundred
years later, Madame Roland, in her _Memoires Particulieres_,
presented a vivid picture of the anguish produced in an innocent
girl's mind by the notion of the sinfulness of erotic dreams. She
menstruated first at the age of 14. "Before this," she writes, "I
had sometimes been awakened from the deepest sleep in a
surprising manner. Imagination played no part; I exercised it on
too many serious subjects, and my timorous conscience preserved
it from amusement with other subjects, so that it could not
represent what I would not allow it to seek to understand. But an
extraordinary effervescence aroused my senses in the heat of
repose, and, by virtue of my excellent constitution, operated by
itself a purification which was as strange to me as its cause.
The first feeling which resulted was, I know not why, a sort of
fear. I had observed in my _Philotee_, that we are not allowed to
obtain any pleasure from our bodies except in lawful marriage.
What I had experienced could be called a pleasure. I was then
guilty, and in a class of offences which caused me the most shame
and sorrow, since it was that which was most displeasing to the
Spotless Lamb. There was great agitation in my poor heart,
prayers and mortifications. How could I avoid it? For, indeed, I
had not foreseen it, but at the instant when I experienced it, I
had not taken the trouble to prevent it. My watchfulness became
extreme. I scrupulously avoided positions which I found specially
exposed me to the accident. My restlessness became so great that,
at last I was able to awake before the catastrophe. When I was
not in time to prevent it, I would jump out of bed, with naked
feet on to the polished floor, and with crossed arms pray to the
Saviour to preserve me from the wiles of the devil. I would then
impose some penance on myself, and I have carried out to the
letter what the prophet King probably only transmitted to us as a
figure of Oriental speech, mixing ashes with my bread and
watering it with my tears."

To the early Protestant mind, as illustrated by Luther, there was
something diseased, though not impure, in sexual excitement during sleep;
thus, in his _Table Talk_ Luther remarks that girls who have such dreams
should be married at once, "taking the medicine which God has given." It
is only of comparatively recent years that medical science has obtained
currency for the belief that this auto-erotic process is entirely normal.
Blumenbach stated that nocturnal emissions are normal.[234] Sir James
Paget declared that he had never known celibate men who had not such
emissions from once or twice a week to twice every three months, both
extremes being within the limits of good health, while Sir Lauder Brunton
considers once a fortnight or once a month about the usual frequency, at
these periods the emissions often following two nights in succession.
Rohleder believes that they may normally follow for several nights in
succession. Hammond considers that they occur about once a fortnight.[235]
Ribbing regards ten to fourteen days as the normal interval.[236]
Loewenfeld puts the normal frequency at about once a week;[237] this seems
to be nearer the truth as regards most fairly healthy young men. In proof
of this it is only necessary to refer to the exact records of healthy
young adults summarized in the study of periodicity in the present volume.
It occasionally happens, however, that nocturnal emissions are entirely
absent. I am acquainted with some cases. In other fairly healthy young men
they seldom occur except at times of intellectual activity or of anxiety
and worry.

Lately there has been some tendency for medical opinion to revert
to the view of Luther, and to regard sexual excitement during
sleep as a somewhat unhealthy phenomenon. Moll is a distinguished
advocate of this view. Sexual excitement during sleep is the
normal result of celibacy, but it is another thing to say that it
is, on that account, satisfactory. We might, then, Moll remarks,
maintain that nocturnal incontinence of urine is satisfactory,
since the bladder is thus emptied. Yet, we take every precaution
against this by insisting that the bladder shall be emptied
before going to sleep. (_Libido Sexualis_, Bd. I, p. 552.) This
remark is supported by the fact, to which I find that both men
and women can bear witness, that sexual excitement during sleep
is more fatiguing than in the waking state, though this is not an
invariable rule, and it is sometimes found to be refreshing. In
a similar way, Eulenburg (_Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 55) states
that nocturnal emissions are no more normal than coughing or
vomiting.

Nocturnal emissions are usually, though not invariably, accompanied by
dreams of a voluptuous character in which the dreamer becomes conscious in
a more or less fantastic manner of the more or less intimate presence or
contact of a person of the opposite sex. It would seem, as a general rule,
that the more vivid and voluptuous the dream, the greater is the physical
excitement and the greater also the relief experienced on awakening.
Sometimes the erotic dream occurs without any emission, and not
infrequently the emission takes place after the dreamer has awakened.

The widest and most comprehensive investigation of erotic dreams
is that carried out by Gualino, in northern Italy, and based on
inquiries among 100 normal men--doctors, teachers, lawyers,
etc.--who had all had experience of the phenomenon. (L. Gualino,
"Il Sogno Erotico nell' Uomo Normale," _Rivista di Psicologia_,
Jan.-Feb., 1907.) Gualino shows that erotic dreams, with
emissions (whether or not seminal), began somewhat earlier than
the period of physical development as ascertained by Marro for
youths of the same part of northern Italy. Gualino found that all
his cases had had erotic dreams at the age of seventeen; Marro
found 8 per cent, of youths still sexually undeveloped at that
age, and while sexual development began at thirteen years, erotic
dreams began at twelve. Their appearance was preceded, in most
cases for some months, by erections. In 37 per cent, of the cases
there had been no actual sexual experiences (either masturbation
or intercourse); in 23 per cent, there had been masturbation; in
the rest, some form of sexual contact. The dreams are mainly
visual, tactual elements coming second, and the _dramatis
persona_ is either an unknown woman (27 per cent, cases), or only
known by sight (56 per cent.), and in the majority is, at all
events in the beginning, an ugly or fantastic figure, becoming
more attractive later in life, but never identical with the woman
loved during waking life. This, as Gualino points out, accords
with the general tendency for the emotions of the day to be
latent in sleep. Masturbation only formed the subject of the
dream in four cases. The emotional state in the pubertal stage,
apart from pleasure, was anxiety (37 per cent.), desire (17 per
cent.), fear (14 per cent.). In the adult stage, anxiety and fear
receded to 7 per cent, and 6 per cent., respectively.
Thirty-three of the subjects, as a result of sexual or general
disturbances, had had nocturnal emissions without dreams; these
were always found exhausting. Normally (in more than 90 per
cent.) erotic dreams are the most vivid of all dreams. In no case
was there knowledge of any monthly or other cyclic periodicity in
the occurrence of the manifestations. In 34 per cent, of cases,
they tended to occur very soon after sexual intercourse. 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 Psychology_ ("Nocturnal
Emissions," Jan., 1904): "Legs and breasts often figured
prominently in these dreams, the other sexual parts, however,
very seldom, and then they turned out to be male organs in most
cases. There were but two instances of copulation dreamt. Girls
and young women were the, usual _dramatis personae_, and,
curiously enough, often the aggressors. Sometimes the face or
faces were well known; sometimes, only once seen; sometimes,
entirely unknown. The orgasm occurs at the most erotic part of
the dream, the physical and psychical running parallel. This most
erotic or suggestive part of the dream was very often quite an
innocent looking incident enough. As, for example: while passing
a strange young woman, overtaken on the street, she calls after
me some question. At first, I pay no heed, but when she calls
again, I hesitate whether to turn back and answer or
not--emission. Again, walking beside a young woman, she said,
'Shall I take your arm?' I offered it, and she took it, entwining
her arm around it, and raising it high--emission. I could feel
stronger erection as she asked the question. Sometimes, a word
was enough; sometimes, a gesture. Once emission took place on my
noticing the young woman's diminished finger-nails. Another
example of fetichism was my being curiously attracted in a dream
by the pretty embroidered figure on a little girl's dress. As an
illustration of the strange metamorphoses that occur in dreams, I
one night, in my dream (I had been observing partridges in the
summer) fell in love with a partridge, which changed under my
caresses to a beautiful girl, who yet retained an indescribable
wild-bird innocence, grace, and charm--a sort of Undina!"

These experiences may be regarded as fairly typical of the erotic
dreams of healthy and chaste young men. The bird, for instance,
that changes into a woman while retaining some elements of the
bird, has been encountered in erotic dreams by other young men.
It is indeed remarkable that, as De Gubernatis observes, "the
bird is a well-known phallic symbol," while Maeder finds
("Interpretations de Quelques Reves," _Archives de Psychologie_,
April, 1907) that birds have a sexual significance both in life
and in dreams. The appearance of male organs in the dream-woman
is doubtless due to the dreamer's greater familiarity with those
organs; but, though it occurs occasionally, it can scarcely be
said to be the rule in erotic dreams. Even men who have never had
connection with a woman, are quite commonly aware of the presence
of a woman's sexual organs in their erotic dreams.

Moll's comparison of nocturnal emissions of semen with nocturnal
incontinence of urine suggests an interesting resemblance, and at
the same time seeming contrast. In both cases we are concerned
with viscera which, when overfilled or unduly irritable,
spasmodically eject their contents during sleep. There is a
further resemblance which usually becomes clear when, as
occasionally happens, nocturnal incontinence of urine persists on
to late childhood or adolescence: both phenomena are frequently
accompanied by vivid dreams of appropriate character. (See e.g.
Ries, "Ueber Enuresis Nocturna," _Monatsschrift fuer
Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1904; A.P. Buchan, nearly
a century ago, pointed out the psychic element in the
experiences of young persons who wetted the bed, _Venus sine
Concubitu_, 1816, p. 47.) Thus, in one case known to me, a child
of seven, who occasionally wetted the bed, usually dreamed at the
same time that she wanted to make water, and was out of doors,
running to find a suitable spot, which she at last found, and, on
awaking, discovered that she had wetted the bed; fifteen years
later she still sometimes had similar dreams, which caused her
much alarm until, when thoroughly awake, she realized that no
accident had happened; these later dreams were not the result of
any actual strong desire to urinate. In another case with which I
am acquainted, a little girl of eight, after mental excitement or
indigestible meals, occasionally wetted the bed, dreaming that
she was frightened by some one running after her, and wetted
herself in consequence, after the manner of the Ganymede in the
eagle's clutch, as depicted by Rembrandt. These two cases, it may
be noted, belong to two quite different types. In the first case,
the full bladder suggests to imagination the appropriate actions
for relief, and the bladder actually accepts the imaginative
solution offered; it is, according to Fiorani's phrase,
"somnambulism of the bladder." In the other case, there is no
such somnambulism, but a psychic and nervous disturbance, not
arising in the bladder at all, irradiates convulsively, and
whether or not the bladder is overfull, attacks a vesical nervous
system which is not yet sufficiently well-balanced to withstand
the inflow of excitement. In children of somewhat nervous
temperament, manifestations of this kind may occur as an
occasional accident, up to about the age of seven or eight; and
thereafter, the nervous control of the bladder having become
firmly established, they cease to happen, the nervous energy
required to affect the bladder sufficing to awake the dreamer. In
very rare cases, however, the phenomenon may still occasionally
happen, even in adolescence or later, in individuals who are
otherwise quite free from it. This is most apt to occur in young
women even in waking life. In men it is probably extremely rare.

The erotic dream seems to differ flagrantly from the vesical
dream, in that it occurs in adult life, and is with difficulty
brought under control. The contrast is, however, very
superficial. When we remember that sexual activity only begins
normally at puberty, we realize that the youth of twenty is, in
the matter of sexual control, scarcely much older than in the
matter of vesical control he was at the age of six. Moreover, if
we were habitually, from our earliest years, to go to bed with a
full bladder, as the chaste man goes to bed with unrelieved
sexual system, it would be fully as difficult to gain vesical
control during sleep as it now is to gain sexual control.
Ultimately, such sexual control is attained; after the age of
forty, it seems that erotic dreams with emission become more and
more rare; either the dream occurs without actual emission,
exactly as dreams of urination occur in adults with full bladder,
or else the organic stress, with or without dreams, serves to
awaken the sleeper before any emission has occurred. But this
stage is not easily or completely attained. St. Augustine, even
at the period when he wrote his _Confessions_, mentions, as a
matter of course, that sexual dreams "not merely arouse pleasure,
but gain the consent of the will." (X. 41.) Not infrequently
there is a struggle in sleep, just as the hypnotic subject may
resist suggestions; thus, a lady of thirty-five dreamed a sexual
dream, and awoke without excitement; again she fell asleep, and
had another dream of sexual character, but resisted the tendency
to excitement, and again awoke; finally, she fell asleep and had
a third sexual dream, which was this time accompanied by the
orgasm. (This has recently been described also by Naecke, who
terms it _pollutio interrupta, Neurologisches Centralblatt_, Oct.
16, 1909; the corresponding voluntary process in the waking state
is described by Rohleder and termed _masturbatio interrupta,
Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft_, Aug., 1908.) The factors
involved in the acquirement of vesical and sexual control during
sleep are the same, but the conditions are somewhat different.

There is a very intimate connection between the vesical and the
sexual spheres, as I have elsewhere pointed out (see e.g. in the
third volume of these _Studies_, "Analysis of the Sexual
Impulse"). This connection is psychic as well as organic. Both in
men and women, a full bladder tends to develop erotic dreams.
(See e.g. K.A. Scherner, _Das Leben des Traums_, 1861, pp. 187 et
seq.; Spitta also points out the connection between vesical and
erotic dreams, _Die Schlaf und Traumzustaende_, 2d ed., 1882, pp.
250 et seq.) Raymond and Janet state (_Les Obscessions_, vol. ii,
p. 135) that nocturnal incontinence of urine, accompanied by
dreams of urination, may be replaced at puberty by masturbation.
In the reverse direction, Freud believes (_Monatsschrift fuer
Psychiatrie_, Bd. XVIII, p. 433) that masturbation plays a large
part in causing the bed-wetting of children who have passed the
age when that usually ceases, and he even finds that children are
themselves aware of the connection.

The diagnostic value of sexual dreams, as an indication of the
sexual nature of the subject when awake, has been emphasized by
various writers. (E.g., Moll, _Die Kontraere Sexualempfindung_,
Ch. IX; Naecke, "Der Traum als feinstes Reagens fuer die Art des
sexuellen Empfindens," _Monatsschrift fuer Kriminalpsychologie_,
1905, p. 500.) Sexual dreams tend to reproduce, and even to
accentuate, those characteristics which make the strongest sexual
appeal to the subject when awake.

At the same time, this general statement has to be qualified,
more especially as regards inverted dreams. In the first place, a
young man, however normal, who is not familiar with the feminine
body when awake, is not likely to see it when asleep, even in
dreams of women; in the second place, the confusions and
combinations of dream imagery often tend to obliterate sexual
distinctions, however free from perversions the subjects may be.
Thus, a correspondent tells me of a healthy man, of very pure
character, totally inexperienced in sexual matters, and never
having seen a woman naked, who, in his sexual dreams, always sees
the woman with male organs, though he has never had any sexual
inclinations for men, and is much in love with a lady. The
confusions and associations of dream imagery, leading to abnormal
combinations, may be illustrated by a dream which once occurred
to me after reading Joest's account of how a young negress, whose
tattoo-marks he was sketching, having become bored, suddenly
pressed her hands to her breasts, spirting two streams of
lukewarm milk into his face, and ran away laughing; I dreamed of
a woman performing a similar action, not from her breasts,
however, but from a penis with which she was furnished. Again, by
another kind of confusion, a man dreams sexually that he is with
a man, although the figure of the partner revealed in the dream
is a woman. The following dream, in a normal man who had never
been, or wished to be, in the position shown by the dream, may be
quoted: "I dreamed that I was a big boy, and that a younger boy
lay close beside me, and that we (or, certainly, he) had seminal
emissions; I was complacently passive, and had a feeling of shame
when the boy was discovered. On awaking I found I had had no
emission, but was lying very close to my wife. The day before, I
had seen boys in a swimming-match." This was, it seems to me, an
example of dream confusion, and not an erotic inverted dream.
(Naecke also brings forward inverted dreams by normal persons; see
e.g. his "Beitraege zu den sexuellen Traeumen," _Archiv fuer
Kriminal-Anthropologie_, Bd. XX, 1908, p. 366.)

So far as I have been able to ascertain, there seem to be, generally
speaking, certain differences in the manifestations of auto-erotism during
sleep in men and women which I believe to be not without psychological
significance. In men the phenomenon is fairly simple; it usually appears
about puberty continues at intervals of varying duration during sexual
life provided the individual is living chastely, and is generally, though
not always, accompanied by erotic dreams which lead up to the climax, its
occurrence being, to some extent, influenced by a variety of
circumstances: physical, mental, or emotional excitement, alcohol taken
before retiring, position in bed (as lying on the back), the state of the
bladder, sometimes the mere fact of being in a strange bed, and to some
extent apparently by the existence of monthly and yearly rhythms. On the
whole, it is a fairly definite and regular phenomenon which usually leaves
little conscious trace on awaking, beyond probably some sense of fatigue
and, occasionally, a headache. In women, however, the phenomena of
auto-erotism during sleep seem to be much more irregular, varied, and
diffused. So far as I have been able to make inquiries, it is the
exception rather than the rule for girls to experience definitely erotic
dreams about the period of puberty or adolescence.[238] Auto-erotic
phenomena during sleep in women who have never experienced the orgasm when
awake are usually of a very vague kind; while it is the rule in a chaste
youth for the orgasm thus to manifest itself, it is the exception in a
chaste girl. It is not, as a rule, until the orgasm has been definitely
produced in the waking state--under whatever conditions it may have been
produced--that it begins to occur during sleep, and even in a strongly
sexual woman living a repressed life it is often comparatively
infrequent.[239] Thus, a young medical woman who endeavors to deal
strenuously with her physical sexual emotions writes: "I sleep soundly,
and do not dream at all. Occasionally, but very rarely, I have had
sensations which awakened me suddenly. They can scarcely be called dreams,
for they are mere impulses, nothing connected or coherent, yet prompted, I
know, by sexual feeling. This is probably an experience common to all."
Another lady (with a restrained psycho-sexual tendency to be attracted to
both sexes), states that her first sexual sensations with orgasm were felt
in dreams at the age of 16, but these dreams, which she has now forgotten,
were not agreeable and not erotic; two or three years later spontaneous
orgasm began to occur occasionally when awake, and after this, orgasm
took place regularly once or twice a week in sleep, but still without
erotic dreams; she merely dreamt that the orgasm was occurring and awoke
as it took place.

It is possible that to the comparative rarity in chaste women of complete
orgasm during sleep, we may in part attribute the violence with which
repressed sexual emotion in women often manifests itself.[240] There is
thus a difference here between men and women which is of some significance
when we are considering the natural satisfaction of the sexual impulse in
chaste women.

In women, who have become accustomed to sexual intercourse, erotic dreams
of fully developed character occur, with complete orgasm and accompanying
relief--as may occasionally be the case in women who are not acquainted
with actual intercourse;[241] some women, however, even when familiar with
actual coitus, find that sexual dreams, though accompanied by emissions,
are only the symptoms of desire and do not produce actual relief.

Some interest attaches to cases in which young women, even girls at
puberty, experience dreams of erotic character, or at all events dream
concerning coitus or men in erection, although they profess, and almost
certainly with truth, to be quite ignorant of sexual phenomena. Several
such dreams of remarkable character have been communicated to me. One can
imagine that the psychologists of some schools would see in these dreams
the spontaneous eruption of the experiences of the race. I am inclined to
regard them as forgotten memories, such as we know to occur sometimes in
sleep. The child has somehow seen or heard of sexual phenomena and felt no
interest, and the memory may subsequently be aroused in sleep, under the
stimulation of new-born sexual sensations.

It is a curious proof of the ignorance which has prevailed in
recent times concerning the psychic sexual nature of women that,
although in earlier ages the fact that women are normally liable
to erotic dreams was fully recognized, in recent times it has
been denied, even by writers who have made a special study of the
sexual impulse in women. Eulenburg (_Sexuale Neuropathie_, 1895,
pp. 31, 79) appears to regard the appearances of sexual phenomena
during sleep, in women, as the result of masturbation. Adler, in
what is in many respects an extremely careful study of sexual
phenomena in women (_Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des
Weibes_, 1904, p. 130), boldly states that they do not have
erotic dreams. In 1847, E. Guibout ("Des Pollutions Involontaires
chez la Femme," _Union Medicale_, p. 260) presented the case of a
married lady who masturbated from the age of ten, and continued
the practice, even after her marriage at twenty-four, and at
twenty-nine began to have erotic dreams with emissions every few
nights, and later sometimes even several times a night, though
they ceased to be voluptuous; he believed the case to be the
first ever reported of such a condition in a woman. Yet,
thousands of years ago, the Indian of Vedic days recognized
erotic dreams in women as an ordinary and normal occurrence.
(Loewenfeld quotes a passage to this effect from the Oupnek'hat,
_Sexualleben und Nervenleiden_, 2d ed., p. 114.) Even savages
recognize the occurrence of erotic dreams in women as normal, for
the Papuans, for instance, believe that a young girl's first
menstruation is due to intercourse with the moon in the shape of
a man, the girl dreaming that a man is embracing her. (_Reports
Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. v., p. 206.) In the
seventeenth century, Rolfincius, in a well-informed study (_De
Pollutione Nocturna_, a Jena Inaugural Dissertation, 1667),
concluded that women experience such manifestations, and quotes
Aristotle, Galen, and Fernelius, in the same sense. Sir Thomas
Overbury, in his _Characters_, written in the early part of the
same century, describing the ideal milkmaid, says that "her
dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them," clearly implying
that It was not so with most women. The notion that women are not
subject to erotic dreams thus appears to be of comparatively
recent origin.

One of the most interesting and important characters by which the erotic
dreams of women--and, indeed, their dreams generally--differ from those of
men is in the tendency to evoke a repercussion on the waking life, a
tendency more rarely noted in men's erotic dreams, and then only to a
minor extent. This is very common, even in healthy and normal women, and
is exaggerated to a high degree in neurotic subjects, by whom the dream
may even be interpreted as a reality, and so declared on oath, a fact of
practical importance.

Hersman--having met with a case in which a school-girl with chorea, after
having dreamed of an assault, accused the principal of a school of
assault, securing his conviction--obtained the opinions of various
American alienists as to the frequency with which such dreams in unstable
mental subjects lead to delusions and criminal accusations. Dercum, H.C.
Wood, and Rohe had not personally met with such cases; Burr believed that
there was strong evidence "that a sexual dream may be so vivid as to make
the subject believe she has had sexual congress"; Kiernan knew of such
cases; C.H. Hughes, in persons with every appearance of sanity, had known
the erotic dreams of the night to become the erotic delusions of the day,
the patient protesting violently the truth of her story; while Hersman
reports the case[242] of a young lady in an asylum who had nightly
delusions that a medical officer visited her every night, and had to do
with her, coming up the hot-air flue. I am acquainted with a similar case
in a clever, but highly neurotic, young woman, who writes: "For years I
have been trying to stamp out my passional nature, and was beginning to
succeed when a strange thing happened to me last autumn. One night, as I
lay in bed, I felt an influence so powerful that a man seemed present with
me. I crimsoned with shame and wonder. I remember that I lay upon my back,
and marveled when the spell had passed. The influence, I was assured, came
from a priest whom I believed in and admired above everyone in the world.
I had never dreamed of love in connection with him, because I always
thought him so far above me. The influence has been upon me ever
since--sometimes by day and nearly always by night; from it I generally go
into a deep sleep, which lasts until morning. I am always much refreshed
when I awake. This influence has the best effect upon my life that
anything has ever had as regards health and mind. It is the knowledge that
I am loved _fittingly_ that makes me so indifferent to my future. What
worries me is that I sometimes wonder if I suffer from a nervous disorder
merely." The subject thus seemed to regard these occurrences as
objectively caused, but was sufficiently sane to wonder whether her
experiences were not due to mental disorder.[243]

The tendency of the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep to be manifested with
such energy as to flow over into the waking life and influence conscious
emotion and action, while very well marked in normal and healthy women, is
seen to an exaggerated extent in hysterical women, in whom it has,
therefore, chiefly been studied. Sante de Sanctis, who has investigated
the dreams of many classes of people, remarks on the frequently sexual
character of the dreams of hysterical women, and the repercussion of such
dreams on the waking life of the following day; he gives a typical case of
hysterical erotic dreaming in an uneducated servant-girl of 23, in whom
such dreams occur usually a few days before the menstrual period; her
dreams, especially if erotic, make an enormous impression on her; in the
morning she is bad-tempered if they were unpleasant, while she feels
lascivious and gives herself up to masturbation if she has had erotic
dreams of men; she then has a feeling of pleasure throughout the day, and
her sexual organs are bathed with moisture.[244] Pitres and Gilles de la
Tourette, two of Charcot's most distinguished pupils, in their elaborate
works on hysteria, both consider that dreams generally have a great
influence on the waking life of the hysterical, and they deal with the
special influence of erotic dreams, to which, doubtless, we must refer
those conceptions of _incubi_ and _succubi_ which played so vast and so
important a part in the demonology of the Middle Ages, and while not
unknown in men were most frequent in women. Such erotic dreams--as these
observers, confirming the experience of old writers, have found among the
hysterical to-day--are by no means always, or even usually, of a
pleasurable character. "It is very rare," Pitres remarks, when insisting
on the sexual character of the hallucinations of the hysterical, "for
these erotic hallucinations to be accompanied by agreeable voluptuous
sensations. In most cases the illusion of sexual intercourse even provokes
acute pain. The witches of old times nearly all affirmed that in their
relations with the devil they suffered greatly.[245] They said that his
organ was long and rough and pointed, with scales which lifted on
withdrawal and tore the vagina." (It seems probable, I may remark, that
the witches' representations, both of the devil and of sexual intercourse,
were largely influenced by familiarity with the coupling of animals). As
Gilles de la Tourette is careful to warn his readers, we must not too
hastily assume, from the prevalence of nocturnal auto-erotic phenomena in
hysterical women, that such women are necessarily sexual and libidinous in
excess; the disorder is in them psychic, he points out, and not physical,
and they usually receive sexual approaches with indifference and
repugnance, because their sexual centres are anaesthetic or hyperaesthetic.
"During the period of sexual activity they seek much more the care and
delicate attention of men than the genital act, which they often only
tolerate. Many households, begun under the happiest auspices--the bride
all the more apt to believe that she loves her betrothed in virtue of her
suggestibility, easily exalted, perhaps at the expense of the
senses--become hells on earth. The sexual act has for the hysterical woman
more than one disillusion; she cannot understand it; it inspires her with
insurmountable repugnance."[246] I refer to these hysterical phenomena
because they present to us, in an extreme form, facts which are common
among women whom, under the artificial conditions of civilized life, we
are compelled to regard as ordinarily healthy and normal. The frequent
painfulness of auto-erotic phenomena is by no means an exclusively
hysterical phenomenon, although often seen in a heightened form in
hysterical conditions. It is probably to some extent simply the result of
a conflict in consciousness with a merely physical impulse which is strong
enough to assert itself in spite of the emotional and intellectual
abhorrence of the subject. It is thus but an extreme form of the disgust
which all sexual physical manifestations tend to inspire in a person who
is not inclined to respond to them. Somewhat similar psychic disgust and
physical pain are produced in the attempts to stimulate the sexual
emotions and organs when these are exhausted by exercise. In the detailed
history which Moll presents, of the sexual experiences of a sister in an
American nursing guild,--a most instructive history of a woman fairly
normal except for the results of repressed sexual emotion, and with strong
moral tendencies,--various episodes are narrated well illustrating the way
in which sexual excitement becomes unpleasant or even painful when it
takes place as a physical reflex which the emotions and intellect are all
the time struggling against.[247] It is quite probable, however, that
there is a physiological, as well as a psychic, factor in this phenomenon,
and Sollier, in his elaborate study of the nature and genesis of hysteria,
by insisting on the capital importance of the disturbance of sensibility
in hysteria, and the definite character of the phenomena produced in the
passage between anaesthesia and normal sensation, has greatly helped to
reveal the mechanism of this feature of auto-erotic excitement in the
hysterical.

No doubt there has been a tendency to exaggerate the unpleasant character
of the auto-erotic phenomena of hysteria. That tendency was an inevitable
reaction against an earlier view, according to which hysteria was little
more than an unconscious expression of the sexual emotions and as such was
unscientifically dismissed without any careful investigation. I agree with
Breuer and Freud that the sexual needs of the hysterical are just as
individual and various as those of normal women, but that they suffer from
them more, largely through a moral struggle with their own instincts, and
the attempt to put them into the background of consciousness.[248] In many
hysterical and psychically abnormal women, auto-erotic phenomena, and
sexual phenomena generally, are highly pleasurable, though such persons
may be quite innocent of any knowledge of the erotic character of the
experience. I have come across interesting and extreme examples of this in
the published experiences of the women followers of the American religious
leader, T.L. Harris, founder of the "Brotherhood of the New Life." Thus,
in a pamphlet entitled "Internal Respiration," by Respiro, a letter is
quoted from a lady physician, who writes: "One morning I awoke with a
strange new feeling in the womb, which lasted for a day or two; I was so
very happy, but the joy was in my womb, not in my heart."[249] "At last,"
writes a lady quoted in the same pamphlet, "I fell into a slumber, lying
on my back with arms and feet folded, a position I almost always find
myself in when I awake, no matter in which position I may go to sleep.
Very soon I awoke from this slumber with a most delightful sensation,
every fibre tingling with an exquisite glow of warmth. I was lying on my
left side (something I am never able to do), and was folded in the arms of
my counterpart. Unless you have seen it, I cannot give you an idea of the
beauty of his flesh, and with what joy I beheld and felt it. Think of it,
luminous flesh; and Oh! such tints, you never could imagine without
seeing. He folded me so closely in his arms," etc. In such cases there is
no conflict between the physical and the psychic, and therefore the
resulting excitement is pleasurable and not painful.

At this point our study of auto-erotism brings us into the sphere of
mysticism. Leuba, in a penetrating and suggestive essay on Christian
mysticism, after quoting the present _Study_, refers to the famous
passages in which St. Theresa describes how a beautiful little angel
inserted a flame-tipped dart into her heart until it descended into her
bowels and left her inflamed with divine love. "What physiological
difference," he asks, "is there between this voluptuous sensation and that
enjoyed by the disciple of the Brotherhood of New Life? St. Theresa says
'bowels,' the woman doctor says 'womb,' that is all."[250]

The extreme form of auto-erotism is the tendency for the sexual
emotion to be absorbed and often entirely lost in
self-admiration. This Narcissus-like tendency, of which the
normal germ in women is symbolized by the mirror, is found in a
minor degree in some men, and is sometimes well marked in women,
usually in association with an attraction for other persons, to
which attraction it is, of course, normally subservient. "The
mirror," remarks Bloch (_Beitraege_ 1, p. 201), "plays an
important part in the genesis of sexual aberration.... It cannot
be doubted that many a boy and girl have first experienced sexual
excitement at the sight of their own bodies in a mirror."

Valera, the Spanish novelist, very well described this impulse in
his _Genio y Figura_. Rafaela, the heroine of this novel, says
that, after her bath: "I fall into a puerility which may be
innocent or vicious, I cannot decide. I only know that it is a
purely contemplative act, a disinterested admiration of beauty.
It is not coarse sensuality, but aesthetic platonism. I imitate
Narcissus; and I apply my lips to the cold surface of the mirror
and kiss my image. It is the love of beauty, the expression of
tenderness and affection for what God has made manifest, in an
ingenuous kiss imprinted on the empty and incorporeal
reflection." In the same spirit the real heroine of the _Tagebuch
einer Verlorenen_ (p. 114), at the point when she was about to
become a prostitute, wrote: "I am pretty. It gives me pleasure to
throw off my clothes, one by one, before the mirror, and to look
at myself, just as I am, white as snow and straight as a fir,
with my long, fine, hair, like a cloak of black silk. When I
spread abroad the black stream of it, with both hands, I am like
a white swan with black wings."

A typical case known to me is that of a lady of 28, brought up on
a farm. She is a handsome woman, of very large and fine
proportions, active and healthy and intelligent, with, however,
no marked sexual attraction to the opposite sex; at the same time
she is not inverted, though she would like to be a man, and has a
considerable degree of contempt for women. She has an intense
admiration for her own person, especially her limbs; she is
never so happy as when alone and naked in her own bedroom, and,
so far as possible, she cultivates nakedness. She knows by heart
the various measurements of her body, is proud of the fact that
they are strictly in accordance with the canons of proportion,
and she laughs proudly at the thought that her thigh is larger
than many a woman's waist. She is frank and assured in her
manners, without sexual shyness, and, while willing to receive
the attention and admiration of others, she makes no attempt to
gain it, and seems never to have experienced any emotions
stronger than her own pleasure in herself. I should add that I
have had no opportunity of detailed examination, and cannot speak
positively as to the absence of masturbation.

In the extreme form in which alone the name of Narcissus may
properly be invoked, there is comparative indifference to sexual
intercourse or even the admiration of the opposite sex. Such a
condition seems to be rare, except, perhaps, in insanity. Since I
called attention to this form of auto-erotism (_Alienist and
Neurologist_, April, 1898), several writers have discussed the