In such the mere influence of erotic thoughts and visions can bring about lustful feeling, or even pollution, in the wakeful state and in dreams, and many of them are largely concerned in picturing to themselves the most pleasing situations of sexual relations. Cases are recorded where persons who have no pleasure from tactile stimulation yet have erection and ejaculation by "ideal coitus". Schrenck Notzing gives the following typical case: "One of my patients is also able to indulge in the pleasure of this ideal coitus at any time. A quiet, comfortable position, either lying or sitting, is the preparatory measure necessary for success. Then he allows his fancy free rein, and dreams intensely though consciousness is intact that he is in the desired situation, until ejaculation takes place".
In hyperffisthetic individuals various external influences react on the brain through the senses of sight, hearing, touch and smell, so as to reflexly produce sexual stimulation and ejaculation; and sometimes even a memory picture, if brought before the mind in an intense light, may produce a similar effect. There are many persons, without question, who practise some form of this oculo cerebral masturbation. The contemplation of lascivious plays and costumes, the masquerading in the attire of the opposite sex, the applause for pictures in the nude, the enthusiasm for the ballet, for erotic literature, and for many other of the immodest amusements of society, all afford onanistic enjoyment to some at least of the beholders and participants along these lines.
In that such amusements are erotic and highly stimulating sexually to certain nervous individuals predisposed to immorality, they come well within the limits of mental masturbation, and should be recognized as such by the censors of public entertainments. Results of Onanism. Onanism in any form is exceedingly harmful in the injury done to both mind and body, because from its want of conformity to nature it keeps the imagination inflamed with erotic excitement and exaggerates the importance of the sexual functions in the individual's view, besides draining the system of one of the most vital fluids by a frequency of gratification usually not practised by the fornicator. This form of excitation produces an intense nervous shock, which is greater than that produced in coitus.
Psychical Results.
1. It destroys the normal sexual feeling and substitutes for it inflamed passions and a hyper excitability of the sexual functions.
2. It separates the victim further and further from wo men and puts him into a peculiarly unnatural relation to them.
3. It renders him indisposed to marriage by poisoning the very source from which the impulse to love comes.
4. It tends to ruin the very foundations of his vita sexualis by substituting an unnatural and purposeless act for the physiological incentive of procreation.
5. The onanist transgresses the law of self preservation and prostitutes his sexual powers, thereby losing the stimulus to put forth his strength, with the loss as well of self confidence.
6. He becomes a morose, solitary, timid and cowardly semblance of manhood.
7. He becomes psychically impotent and unfit for natural coitus, because natural means disappoint him and are not so pleasing as the fantastic fancies which he pictures to himself.
8. His conscience is perverted by the inherent apper ception of his sin and shame, and his mental strength and power of concentration become weakened.
9. Being maintained in a constant state of lustful feel ing he is liable to fall a victim to male seducers and pe derasts, of whom there are many.
10. Psychically and physically he becomes characterless, less and less a man, and more and more a slave to his passions, the opportunity for the gratification of which is always in his power.