Sexual abstinence

“ A man may, indeed, as a matter of taste or preference, live his whole life in sexual abstinence, freely and easily, but in that case he is not an ascetic, and his abstinence is neither a subject for applause nor for criticism.
In the same way chastity, far from involving sexual abstinence, only has its value when it is brought within the erotic sphere. A purity that is ignorance, when the age of childish innocence is once passed, is mere stupidity; it is nearer to vice than to virtue. ”

“ Neurologists have observed women on whom continence was forced either during marriage or after its dissolution, who thereupon fell into a state of severe nervous exhaustion or nervous excitement, or suffered from threatening or even actually developed psychoses. That sexual abstinence is “absolutely harmless,” as moralists and many physicians would so gladly believe, appears to Erb a quite unwarrantable assumption.
“In the processes of reproduction,” continues Erb in his discussion of this subject, “woman is the principal sufferer. ”

“ If we thus decide to approach it, and if we have reached the conviction—which, in view of all the evidence we can scarcely escape—that, while sexual abstinence in so far as it may be recognized as possible is not incompatible with health, there are yet many adults for whom it is harmful, and a very much larger number for whom when prolonged it is undesirable, we encounter a serious problem. ”

“ But it is a very serious error to suppose that the effort to achieve complete and prolonged sexual abstinence is without any bad results at all, physical or psychic, either in men or women who are normal and healthy. ”

“ THE PLAY-FUNCTION OF SEX
When we hear the sexual functions spoken of we commonly understand the performance of an act which normally tends to the propagation of the race. When we see the question of sexual abstinence discussed, when the desirability of sexual gratification is asserted or denied, when the idea arises of the erotic rights and needs of woman, it is always the same act with its physical results that is chiefly in mind. Such a conception is quite adequate for practical working purposes in the social world. ”

“ Many, though not all, who deny that prolonged sexual abstinence is harmless, include women in this statement. There are some authorities indeed who believe that, whether or not any conscious sexual desire is present, sexual abstinence is less easily tolerated by women than by men. ”

“ Every physician can furnish numerous case histories to substantiate the statement that continual sexual abstinence is prejudicial to the health and happiness of the man and woman, and is the causation of hundreds of semiderelicts and psychoneurotics. Furthermore, the rising tide of insanity in this country would be stemmed were religion and sex permanently divorced. ”

“ Now for the first time, looking at the woman question as the most important problem of mankind, the demand for the sexual abstinence on the part of both sexes is put forward with good reason. To seek to ground this claim on the prejudicial effects on the health following sexual intercourse would be absurd, for any one with knowledge of the physical frame could upset such a theory at all points; to found it on the immorality of passion would also be wrong, because that would introduce a heteronomous motive into ethics. ”

“ During the sexual epoch of the menacme a woman’s principal hygienic need is marriage completely satisfactory alike to body and to mind. It cannot be denied that sufficient sexual gratification, regular, of course, and free from all excess, such as is usually experienced in married life, is very advantageous to the health of a woman who has attained sexual maturity—even though we admit that the drawbacks of sexual abstinence, regarded as a cause of disease of the female genital organs and the nervous system have been as a rule greatly exaggerated. ”

“ We may say that sexual abstinence is not a condition which must, under all circumstances and at any price, be avoided, though it is true that for the majority of healthy adult persons regular sexual intercourse is advantageous, and sometimes is even to be recommended. ”

“ The doctrine of permanent sexual abstinence, however, he regards as entirely false, except in the case of a small number of religious or philosophic persons. "Complete abstinence during a long period of years cannot be borne without producing serious results both on the body and the mind.... Certainly, a young man should repress his sexual impulses as long as possible and avoid everything that may artificially act as a sexual stimulant. ”

“ The question as to whether men or women suffer most from sexual abstinence, as well as the question whether definite morbid conditions are produced by such abstinence, remains, however, an obscure and debated problem. The available data do not enable us to answer it decisively. It is one of those subtle and complex questions which can only be investigated properly by a gynecologist who is also a psychologist. ”

“ Debay quotes among the diseases, caused by the inactivity of the sexual organs, satyriasis, nymphomania and hysteria; and he adds that celibacy exercises upon the intellectual powers, especially with woman, a highly injurious effect. On the subject of the harmfulness of sexual abstinence by woman, Busch says: [60] "Abstinence has in all ages been considered particularly harmful to woman; indeed it is a fact that excess, as well as abstinence, affects the female organism equally harmfully, and the effects show themselves more pronouncedly and intensively than with the male organism." ”

“ We must take into consideration every form and degree of sexual manifestation, normal and abnormal, gross and ethereal. When we do this, even cautiously and without going far afield, sexual abstinence is found to be singularly elusive. ”

“ It is no longer generally believed that sexual abstinence tends to produce insanity, and the occasional cases in which prolonged and intense sexual desire in young women is followed by insanity will usually be found to occur on a basis of hereditary degeneration. It is held by many authorities, however, that minor mental troubles, of a more or less vague character, as well as neurasthenia and hysteria, are by no means infrequently due to sexual abstinence. ”

“ There are, however, important clinical facts which support 395the supposition that total sexual abstinence may lead to alteration of these glands. Thus we have observed impotence in the cases of several men after sexual abstinence of long duration, which entirely disappeared in nearly every case after copulation at regular intervals; and we arrive at the conclusion that a regular use of these organs, which are intended by Nature to be used, is a necessity, and that impotence can frequently be best cured by marriage. In marriage only can hygienic and regular sexual intercourse best take place ”

“ That total sexual abstinence may have very injurious effects on the nervous system, as mentioned in Chapter IV, and assist in the development of hysteria and neurasthenia, is shown by the fact that when there is an accumulation of semen in the male, or a swelling of the Graafian follicles in the female, then an excitation of the nervous system follows, with sexual desire. ”

“ Professor Erb, the famous Heidelberg specialist for nervous diseases, declared at the Congress of the German Society for the Suppression of Vice, held a few years ago at Frankfort, that there are adult individuals in whom sexual abstinence for a long time produces serious mischief in the nervous system.
Buddha says: “Sexual instinct is stronger than the iron hook with which wild elephants are tamed; it is hotter than fire; it is an arrow that pierces the soul of man.” ”

“ But if we turn to the allied profession which is strongly on the side of sexual abstinence, we find that among theological students, as has been shown in the United States, while prostitution may be infrequent, no temptation is so frequent or so potent, and in most cases so irresistible, as that to solitary sexual indulgence. Such is the actual attitude towards the two least ideal forms of sexual practice—as distinguished from mere theory—on the part of the two professions which most definitely pronounce in favour of continence. ”

“ Whether in quite healthy women with normal sexual impulse, complete abstinence from sexual intercourse, too often compulsory but sometimes voluntarily undertaken, is harmful in its consequences—this, says Erb, is a question very difficult to answer. Many such unfortunate women have assured him that they suffered severely in consequence of their enforced continence ”

“ We will enter more fully into the consequences of complete sexual abstinence in the chapter on sexual hygiene; but the great majority of young men have the danger from sexual intercourse suspended, as the sword of Damocles, over their heads, and the best way to avoid this is by marriage. ”

“ A vague belief in the transformation of sexual energy has long been widespread. It is apparently shown in the idea that continence, as an economy in the expenditure of sexual force, may be practised to aid the physical and mental development, while folklore reveals various sayings in regard to the supposed influence of sexual abstinence in the causation of insanity. ”

“ The deleterious effects of total sexual abstinence on the sexual glands have also been observed. Professor Kisch noted that with women who had lived an active sexual life and who had had several children, whom they had fed from the breast, menstruation continued till a later period in life than it did in old maids, or in women who early in life had become widows, or in barren women. ”

“ Sexual abstinence, recommended so warmly by the physicians of to-day, has the same significance in the development of conditions of anxiety only when the libido, to which satisfactory relief is denied, is sufficiently strong and not for the most part accounted for by sublimation. The decision whether illness is to result always depends upon the quantitative factors. ”

“ But many such persons are the subjects of a remarkable self-deception; for a long time they really believe themselves to be exceptionally moral, and succeed in convincing themselves that their abstinence from sexual intercourse is dependent upon ethical motives, whereas often the real reason has merely been the lack of inclination and of capacity for sexual intercourse. In most cases the real nature of the case subsequently becomes clear to them, and they come to understand that their previous sexual abstinence was not determined by ethical motives. ”

“ In another case a vigorous and healthy man, not inverted, and with strong sexual desires, who remained abstinent up to marriage, suffers from psychic impotence, and his wife remains a virgin notwithstanding all her affection and caresses. Ord considered that sexual abstinence might produce many minor evils. "Most of us," he wrote (British Medical Journal, Aug. 2, 1884) "have, no doubt, been consulted by men, chaste in act, who are tormented by sexual excitement. ”

“ No mind residing in a healthy young male body, practising sexual abstinence, can remain clean every minute of the day, and even in the night it is disturbed by occasional bodily protests in the form of dreams. ”

“ Convalescence from a severe sickness is a just cause for sexual abstinence. The existence of any local or constitutional disease which would be aggravated by marital relationship is also a just cause of refusal. The existence of a contagious disease renders a refusal valid. Sexual intercourse should never be permitted during the menses. Pregnancy is unquestionably a just cause for refraining from all marriage duties. ”

“ Now the monogamic marriage makes this sort of plague almost a natural necessity, a sort of ineluctable scourge. It is impossible to ask a normal, positive, healthy man to exercise sexual abstinence for sixteen or eighteen months—that is to say, the nine months of his wife’s pregnancy and the seven or nine months of lactation. Only Manicheans, Puritans, or people thoroughly below par and quite devoid of virility, could possibly think of recommending such a course. ”

“ Sublimation, we see again and again, is limited, and the best developments of the spiritual life are not likely to come about by the rigid attempt to obtain a complete transmutation of sexual energy.
The old notion that any strict attempt to adhere to sexual abstinence is beset by terrible risks, insanity and so forth, has no foundation, at all events where we are concerned with reasonably sound and healthy people. ”

“ The question whether sexual intercourse is permissible during pregnancy is often put to the physician. Some extremists and theorists demand complete abstinence during the entire duration of pregnancy. Such abstinence is not only not feasible, but is unnecessary and may prove a disrupting factor; it may create not only dissension, it may wreck the love-life of husband and wife. ”

“ Complete sexual anæsthesia is, however, so rare a state that it may be practically left out of consideration, and as the sexual impulse, if it exists, must by physiological necessity sometimes become active in some shape—even if only, according to Freud's view, by transformation into some morbid neurotic condition—we reach the conclusion that "sexual abstinence" is strictly impossible. ”

“ It has been necessary to treat seriously this problem of "sexual abstinence" because we have behind us the traditions of two thousand years based on certain ideals of sexual law and sexual license, together with the long effort to build up practices more or less conditioned by those ideals. We cannot immediately escape from these traditions even when we question their validity for ourselves. ”

“ The physician is usually content to consider his duty to his patient in relationship to sexual abstinence as sufficiently fulfilled when he attempts to allay sexual hyperæsthesia by medical or hygienic treatment. ”