In
such cases some peripheral irritation or abnormal mental stimulus trains
the physical sexual orgasm to respond to an appeal which has nothing
whatever to do with the fascination normally exerted by the opposite sex.
At puberty, however, the claim of passion and the real charm of sex begin
to make themselves felt, but, owing to the physical sexual feelings having
been trained into a foreign channel, these new and more normal sex
associations remain of a purely ideal and emotional character, without the
strong sensual impulses with which under healthy conditions they tend to
be more and more associated as puberty passes on into adolescence or
mature adult life. I am fairly certain that in many women, often highly
intellectual women, the precocious excess in masturbation has been a main
cause, not necessarily the sole efficient cause, in producing a divorce in
later life between the physical sensuous impulses and the ideal emotions.
The sensuous impulse having been evolved and perverted before the
manifestation of the higher emotion, the two groups of feelings have
become divorced for the whole of life. This is a common source of much
personal misery and family unhappiness, though at the same time the clash
of contending impulses may lead to a high development of moral character.
When early masturbation is a factor in producing sexual inversion it
usually operates in the manner I have here indicated, the repulsion for
normal coitus helping to furnish a soil on which the inverted impulse may
develop unimpeded.
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