The belief in the reality of the transference of strong mental or physical impressions on the mother into physical changes in the child she is bearing is very ancient and widespread. Most writers on the subject begin with the book of Genesis and the astute device of Jacob in influencing the color of his lambs by mental impressions on his ewes. But the belief exists among even more primitive people than the early Hebrews, and in all parts of the world.[189] Among the Greeks there is a trace of the belief in Hippocrates, the first of the world's great physicians, while Soranus, the most famous of ancient gynaecologists, states the matter in the most precise manner, with instances in proof. The belief continued to persist unquestioned throughout the Middle Ages. The first author who denied the influence of maternal impressions altogether appears to have been the famous anatomist, Realdus Columbus, who was a professor at Padua, Pisa, and Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the same century, however, another and not less famous Neapolitan, Della Porta, for the first time formulated a definite theory of maternal impressions. A little later, early in the seventeenth century, a philosophic physician at Padua, Fortunatus Licetus, took up an intermediate position which still finds, perhaps reasonably, a great many adherents. He recognized that a very frequent cause of malformation in the child is to be found in morbid antenatal conditions, but at the same time was not prepared to deny absolutely and in every case the influence of maternal impression on such conditions. Malebranche, the Platonic philosopher, allowed the greatest extension to the power of the maternal imagination. In the eighteenth century, however, the new spirit of free inquiry, of radical criticism, and unfettered logic, led to a sceptical attitude toward this ancient belief then flourishing vigorously.[190] In 1727, a few years after Malebranche's death, James Blondel, a physician of extreme acuteness, who had been born in Paris, was educated at Leyden, and practiced in London, published the first methodical and thorough attack on the doctrine of maternal impressions, The Strength of Imagination of Pregnant Women Examined, and exercised his great ability in ridiculing it. Haller, Roederer, and Soemmering followed in the steps of Blondel, and were either sceptical or hostile to the ancient belief. Blumenbach, however, admitted the influence of maternal impressions. Erasmus Darwin, as well as Goethe in his Wahlverwandtschaften, even accepted the influence of paternal impressions on the child. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the majority of physicians were inclined to relegate maternal impressions to the region of superstition. Yet the exceptions were of notable importance. Burdach, when all deductions were made, still found it necessary to retain the belief in maternal impressions, and Von Baer, the founder of embryology, also accepted it, supported by a case, occurring in his own sister, which he was able to investigate before the child's birth. L.W.T. Bischoff, also, while submitting the doctrine to acute criticism, found it impossible to reject maternal impressions absolutely, and he remarked that the number of adherents to the doctrine was showing a tendency to increase rather than diminish. Johannes Mueller, the founder of modern physiology in Germany, declared himself against it, and his influence long prevailed; Valentin, Rudolf Wagner, and Emil du Bois-Reymond were on the same side. On the other hand various eminent gynaecologists—Litzmann, Roth, Hennig, etc.—have argued in favor of the reality of maternal impressions.[191]

The long conflict of opinion which has taken place over this opinion has still left the matter unsettled. The acutest critics of the ancient belief constantly conclude the discussion with an expression of doubt and uncertainty. Even if the majority of authorities are inclined to reject maternal impressions, the scientific eminence of those who accept them makes a decisive opinion difficult. The arguments against such influence are perfectly sound: (1) it is a primitive belief of unscientific origin; (2) it is impossible to conceive how such influence can operate since there is no nervous connection between mother and child; (3) comparatively few cases have been submitted to severe critical investigation; (4) it is absurd to ascribe developmental defects to influences which arise long after the foetus had assumed its definite shape[192]; (5) in any case the phenomenon must be rare, for William Hunter could not find a coincidence between maternal impressions and foetal marks through a period of several years, and Bischoff found no case in 11,000 deliveries. These statements embody the whole of the argument against maternal impressions, yet it is clear that they do not settle the matter. Edgar, in a manual of obstetrics which is widely regarded as a standard work, states that this is "yet a mooted question."[193] Ballantyne, again, in a discussion of this influence at the Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, summarizing the result of a year's inquiry, concluded that it is still "sub judice."[194] In a subsequent discussion of the question he has somewhat modified his opinion, and is inclined to deny that definite impressions on the pregnant woman's mind can cause similar defects in the foetus; they are "accidental coincidences," but he adds that a few of the cases are difficult to explain away. At the same time he fully believes that prolonged and strongly marked mental states of the mother may affect the development of the foetus in her uterus, causing vascular and nutritive disturbances, irregularities of development, and idiocy.[195]

Whether and in how far mental impressions on the mother can produce definite mental and emotional disposition in the child is a special aspect of the question to which scarcely any inquiry has been devoted. So distinguished a biologist as Mr. A.W. Wallace has, however, called attention to this point, bringing forward evidence on the question and emphasizing the need of further investigation. "Such transmission of mental influence," he remarks, "will hardly be held to be impossible or even very improbable," (A.W. Wallace, "Prenatal Influences on Character," Nature, August 24, 1893.)

It has already been pointed out that a large number of cases of foetal deformities, supposed to be due to maternal impressions, cannot possibly be so caused because the impression took place at a period when the development of the foetus must already have been decided. In this connection, however, it must be noted that Dabney has observed a relationship between the time of supposed mental impressions and the nature of the actual defect which is of considerable significance as an argument in favor of the influence of mental impressions. He tabulated 90 carefully reported cases from recent medical literature, and found that 21 of them were concerned with defects of structure of the lips and palate. In all but 2 of these 21 the defect was referred to an impression occurring within the first three months of pregnancy. This is an important point as showing that the assigned cause really falls within a period when a defect of development actually could produce the observed result, although the person reporting the cases was in many instances manifestly ignorant of the details of embryology and teratology. There was no such preponderance of early impressions among the defects of skin and hair which might well, so far as development is concerned, have been caused at a later period; here, in 7 out of 15 cases, it was distinctly stated that the impression was made later than the fourth month.[196]

It would seem, on the whole, that while the influence of maternal impressions in producing definite effects on the child within the womb has by no means been positively demonstrated, we are not entitled to reject it with any positive assurance. Even if we accept it, however, it must remain, for the present, an inexplicable fact; the modus operandi we can scarcely even guess at. General influences from the mother on the child we can easily conceive of as conveyed by the mother's blood; we can even suppose that the modified blood might act specifically on one particular kind of tissue. We can, again, as suggested by Fere, very well believe that the maternal emotions act upon the womb and produce various kinds and degrees of pressure on the child within, so that the apparently active movements of the foetus may be really consecutive on unconscious maternal excitations.[197] We may also believe that, as suggested by John Thomson, there are slight incooerdinations in utero, a kind of developmental neurosis, produced by some slight lack of harmony of whatever origin, and leading to the production of malformations.[198] We know, finally, that, as Fere and others have repeatedly demonstrated during recent years by experiments on chickens, etc., very subtle agents, even odors, may profoundly affect embryonic development and produce deformity. But how the mother's psychic disposition can, apart from heredity, affect specifically the physical conformation or even the psychic disposition of the child within her womb must remain for the present an insoluble mystery, even if we feel disposed to conclude that in some cases such action seems to be indicated.

In comprehending such a connection, however at present undemonstrated, it may well be borne in mind that the relationship of the mother to the child within her womb is of a uniquely intimate character. It is of interest in this connection to quote some remarks by an able psychologist, Dr. Henry Rutgers Marshall; the remarks are not less interesting for being brought forward without any connection with the question of maternal impressions: "It is true that, so far as we know, the nervous system of the embryo never has a direct connection with the nervous system of the mother: nevertheless, as there is a reciprocity of reaction between the physical body of the mother and its embryonic parasite, the relation of the embryonic nervous system to the nervous system of the mother is not very far removed from the relation of the pre-eminent part of the nervous system of a man to some minor nervous system within his body which is to a marked extent dissociated from the whole neural mass.

"Correspondingly, then, and within the consciousness of the mother, there develops a new little minor consciousness which, although but lightly integrated with the mass of her consciousness, nevertheless has its part in her consciousness taken as a whole, much as the psychic correspondents of the action of the nerve which govern the secretions of the glands of the body have their part in her consciousness taken as a whole.

"It is very much as if the optic ganglia developed fully in themselves, without any closer connection with the rest of the brain than existed at their first appearance. They would form a little complex nervous system almost but not quite apart from the brain system; and it would be difficult to deny them a consciousness of their own; which would indeed form part of the whole consciousness of the individual, but which would be in a manner self-dependent." It must, if this is so, be said that before birth, on the psychic side, the embryo's activities "form part of a complex consciousness which is that of the mother and embryo together." "Without subscribing to the strange stories of telepathy, of the solemn apparition of a person somewhere at the moment of his death a thousand miles away, of the unquiet ghost haunting the scenes of its bygone hopes and endeavors, one may ask" (with the author of the address in medicine at the Leicester gathering of the British Medical Association, British Medical Journal, July 29, 1905) "whether two brains cannot be so tuned in sympathy as to transmit and receive a subtile transfusion of mind without mediation of sense. Considering what is implied by the human brain with its countless millions of cells, its complexities of minute structure, its innumerable chemical compositions, and the condensed forces in its microscopic and ultramicroscopic elements—the whole a sort of microcosm of cosmic forces to which no conceivable compound of electric batteries is comparable; considering, again, that from an electric station waves of energy radiate through the viewless air to be caught up by a fit receiver a thousand miles distant, it is not inconceivable that the human brain may send off still more subtile waves to be accepted and interpreted by the fitly tuned receiving brain. Is it, after all, mere fancy that a mental atmosphere or effluence emanates from one person to affect another, either soothing sympathetically or irritating antipathically?" These remarks (like Dr. Marshall's) were made without reference to maternal impressions, but it may be pointed out that under no conceivable circumstance could we find a brain in so virginal and receptive a state as is the child's in the womb.

On the whole we see that pregnancy induces a psychic state which is at once, in healthy persons, one of full development and vigor, and at the same time one which, especially in individuals who are slightly abnormal, is apt to involve a state of strained or overstrained nervous tension and to evoke various manifestations which are in many respects still imperfectly understood. Even the specifically sexual emotions tend to be heightened, more especially during the earlier period of pregnancy. In 24 cases of pregnancy in which the point was investigated by Harry Campbell, sexual feeling was decidedly increased in 8, in one case (of a woman aged 31 who had had four children) being indeed only present during pregnancy, when it was considerable; in only 7 cases was there diminution or disappearance of sexual feeling.[199] Pregnancy may produce mental depression;[200] but on the other hand it frequently leads to a change of the most favorable character in the mental and general well-being. Some women indeed are only well during pregnancy. It is remarkable that some women who habitually suffer from various nervous troubles—neuralgias, gastralgia, headache, insomnia—are only free from them at this moment. This "paradox of gestation," as Vinay has termed it, is specially marked in the hysterical and those suffering from slight nervous disorders, but it is by no means universal, so that although it is possible, Vinay states, to confirm the opinion of the ancients as to the beneficial action of marriage on hysteria, that is only true of slight cases and scarcely enables us to counsel marriage in hysteria.[201] Even a woman's intelligence is sometimes heightened by pregnancy, and Tarnier, as quoted by Vinay, knew many women whose intelligence, habitually somewhat obtuse, has only risen to the normal level during pregnancy.[202] The pregnant woman has reached the climax of womanhood; she has attained to that state toward which the periodically recurring menstrual wave has been drifting her at regular intervals throughout her sexual life[203]; she has achieved that function for which her body has been constructed, and her mental and emotional disposition adapted, through countless ages.

And yet, as we have seen, our ignorance of the changes effected by the occurrence of this supremely important event—even on the physical side—still remains profound. Pregnancy, even for us, the critical and unprejudiced children of a civilized age, still remains, as for the children of more primitive ages, a mystery. Conception itself is a mystery for the primitive man, and may be produced by all sorts of subtle ways apart from sexual connection, even by smelling a flower.[204] The pregnant woman was surrounded by ceremonies, by reverence and fear, often shut up in a place apart.[205] Her presence, her exhalations, were of extreme potency; even in some parts of Europe to-day, as in the Walloon districts of Belgium, a pregnant woman must not kiss a child for her breath is dangerous, or urinate on plants for she will kill them.[206] The mystery has somewhat changed its form; it still remains. The future of the race is bound up with our efforts to fathom the mystery of pregnancy. "The early days of human life," it has been truly said, "are entirely one with the mother. On her manner of life—eating, drinking, sleeping, and thinking—what greatness may not hang?"[207] Schopenhauer observed, with misapplied horror, that there is nothing a woman is less modest about than the state of pregnancy, while Weininger exclaims: "Never yet has a pregnant woman given expression in any form—poem, memoirs, or gynaecological monograph—to her sensations or feelings."[208] Yet when we contemplate the mystery of pregnancy and all that it involves, how trivial all such considerations become! We are here lifted into a region where our highest intelligence can only lead us to adoration, for we are gazing at a process in which the operations of Nature become one with the divine task of Creation.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] See, e.g., Groos, AEsthetische Genuss, p. 249. "We have to admit," Groos observes, "the entrance of another instinct, the impulse to tend and foster, so closely connected with the sexual life. It is seemingly due to the co-operation of this impulse that the little female bird during courtship is so often fed by the male like a young fledgling. In man 'love' from the biological standpoint is also an amalgamation of two needs; when the tender need to protect and foster and serve is lacking the emotion is not quite perfect. Heine's expression, 'With my mantle I protect you from the storm,' has always seemed to me very characteristic." Sometimes the sexual impulse may undergo a complete transformation in this direction. "I believe there is really a tendency in women," a lady writes in a letter, "to allow maternal feeling to take the place of sexual feeling. Very often a woman's feeling for her husband becomes this (though he may be twenty years older than herself); sometimes it does not, remaining purely sex feeling. Sometimes it is for some other man she has this curious self-obliterating maternal feeling. It is not necessarily connected with sex intercourse. A prostitute, who has relations with dozens of men, may have it for some feeble drunken fool, who perhaps goes after other women. I once saw the change from sex feeling to mother feeling, as I call it, come almost suddenly over a woman after she had lived about four years with a man who was unfaithful to her. Then, when all real sex feeling, the hatred of the woman he followed, the desire he should give her love and tenderness, had all gone, came the other feeling, and she said to me, 'You don't understand at all; he's only my little baby; nothing he does can make any difference to me now.' As I grow older and understand women's natures better, I can see almost at once which relation it is a woman has to her husband, or any given man. It is this feeling, and not sex passion, that keeps woman from being free." Not only is there a sexual association in the impulse to foster and protect, there would appear to be a similar element also in the response to that impulse. Freud has especially insisted on the partly sexual character of the child's feelings for those who care for it and tend it and satisfy its needs. It is begun in earliest infancy; "whoever has seen the sated infant sink back from the breast, to fall asleep with flushed cheeks and happy smile, must say that the picture is adequate to the expression of the sexual satisfaction of later life." The lips, moreover, are the earliest erogenous zone. "There will, perhaps, be some opposition," Freud remarks (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, pp. 36, 64), "to the identification of the child's feelings of tenderness and appreciation for those who tend it with sexual love, but I believe that exact psychological analysis will place the identity beyond doubt. The relationship of the child with the person who tends it is for it a continual source of sexual excitement and satisfaction flowing from the erogenous zones, especially since the fostering person—as a rule the mother—regards the child with emotions which proceed from her sexual life; strokes it, kisses it, rocks it, and very plainly treats it as a compensation for a fully valid sexual object." Freud remarks that girls who retain the childish character of their love for their parents to adult age are apt to make cold wives and to be sexually anaesthetic.

[170] Esbach (in his These de Paris, published in 1876) showed that even the finger nails are affected in pregnancy and become measurably thinner.

[171] C.H. Stratz, Die Schoenheit des Weiblichen Koerpers, Chapter VI.

[172] Iron appears to be liberated in the maternal organism during pregnancy, and Wychgel has shown (Zeitschrift fuer Geburtshuelfe und Gynaekologie, bd. xlvii, Heft II) that the pigment of pregnant women contains iron, and that the amount of iron in the urine is increased.

[173] Vinay, Maladies de la Grossesse, Chapter VIII; K. Hennig, "Exploratio Externa," Comptes-rendus du XIIe. Congres International de Medecine, vol. vi, Section XIII, pp. 144-166. A bibliography of the literature concerning the physiology of pregnancy, extending to ten pages, is appended by Pinard to his article "Grossesse," Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales.

[174] Stratz, op. cit., Chapter XII.

[175] W.S.A. Griffith, "The Diagnosis of Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, April 11, 1903.

[176] J. Mackenzie and H.O. Nicholson, "The Heart in Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, October 8, 1904; Stengel and Stanton, "The Condition of the Heart in Pregnancy," Medical Record, May 10, 1902 and University Pennsylvania Medical Bulletin, Sept., 1904 (summarized in British Medical Journal, August 16, 1902, and Sept. 23, 1905.)

[177] J. Henderson, "Maternal Blood at Term," Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, February, 1902; C. Douglas, "The Blood in Pregnant Women," British Medical Journal, March 26, 1904; W.L. Thompson, "The Blood in Pregnancy," Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, June, 1904.

[178] H.O. Nicholson, "Some Remarks on the Maternal Circulation in Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, October 3, 1903.

[179] J. Morris Slemans, "Metabolism During Pregnancy," Johns Hopkins Hospital Reports, vol. xii, 1904.

[180] B. Wolff, Zentralblatt fuer Gynaekologie, 1904, No. 26.

[181] Tridandani, Annali di Ostetrica, March, 1900.

[182] R. Barnes, "The Induction of Labor," British Medical Journal, December 22, 1894.

[183] See, e.g., Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, pp. 344, et seq.

[184] Arthur Giles, "The Longings of Pregnant Women," Transactions Obstetrical Society of London, vol. xxxv, 1893.

[185] Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Chapter XXX.

[186] Thus, in Cornwall, "to be in the longing way" is a popular synonym for pregnancy.

[187] The apple, wherever it is known, has nearly always been a sacred or magic fruit (as J.F. Campbell shows, Popular Tales of West Highlands, vol. I, p. lxxv. et seq.), and the fruit of the forbidden tree which tempted Eve is always popularly imagined to be an apple. One may perhaps refer in this connection to the fact that at Rome and elsewhere the testicles have been called apples. I may add that we find a curious proof of the recognition of the feminine love of apples in an old Portuguese ballad, "Donna Guimar," in which a damsel puts on armour and goes to the wars; her sex is suspected and as a test, she is taken into an orchard, but Donna Guimar is too wary to fall into the trap, and turning away from the apples plucks a citron.

[188] A. Pinard, Art. "Grossesse," Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales, p. 138. On the subject of violent, criminal and abnormal impulses during pregnancy, see Cumston, "Pregnancy and Crime," American Journal Obstetrics, December, 1903.

[189] See especially Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter XXXI. Ballantyne in his work on the pathology of the foetus adds Loango negroes, the Eskimo and the ancient Japanese.

[190] In 1731 Schurig, in his Syllepsilogia, devoted more than a hundred pages (cap. IX) to summarizing a vast number of curious cases of maternal impressions leading to birth-marks of all kinds.

[191] J.W. Ballantyne has written an excellent history of the doctrine of maternal impressions, reprinted in his Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The Embryo, 1904, Chapter IX; he gives a bibliography of 381 items. In Germany the history of the question has been written by Dr. Iwan Bloch (under the pseudonym of Gerhard von Welsenburg), Das Versehen der Frauen, 1899. Cf., in French, G. Variot, "Origine des Prejuges Populaires sur les Envies," Bulletin Societe d'Anthropologie, Paris, June 18, 1891. Variot rejects the doctrine absolutely, Bloch accepts it, Ballantyne speaks cautiously.

[192] J.G. Kiernan has shown how many of the alleged cases are negatived by the failure to take this fact into consideration. (Journal of American Medical Association, December 9, 1899.)

[193] J. Clifton Edgar, The Practice of Obstetrics, second edition, 1904, p. 296. In an important discussion of the question at the American Gynaecological Society in 1886, introduced by Fordyce Barker, various eminent gynaecologists declared in favor of the doctrine, more or less cautiously. (Transactions of the American Gynaecological Society, vol. xi, 1886, pp. 152-196.) Gould and Pyle, bringing forward some of the data on the question (Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, pp. 81, et seq.) state that the reality of the influence of maternal impressions seems fully established. On the other side, see G.W. Cook, American Journal of Obstetrics, September, 1889, and H.F. Lewis, ib., July, 1899.

[194] Transactions Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, vol. xvii, 1892.

[195] J.W. Ballantyne, Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The Embryo, p. 45.

[196] W.C. Dabney, "Maternal Impressions," Keating's Cyclopaedia of Diseases of Children, vol. i, 1889, pp. 191-216.

[197] Fere, Sensation et Mouvement, Chapter XIV, "Sur la Psychologie du Foetus."

[198] J. Thomson, "Defective Co-ordination in Utero," British Medical Journal, September 6, 1902.

[199] H. Campbell, Nervous Organization of Man and Woman, p. 206; cf. Moll, Untersuchungen ueber die Libido Sexualis, bd. i, p. 264. Many authorities, from Soranus of Ephesus onward, consider, however, that sexual relations should cease during pregnancy, and certainly during the later months. Cf. Brenot, De l'influence de la copulation pendant la grosseisse, 1903.

[200] Bianchi terms this fairly common condition the neurasthenia of pregnancy.

[201] Vinay, Traite des Maladies de la Grossesse, 1894, pp. 51, 577; Mongeri, "Nervenkrankungen und Schwangerschaft." Allegemeine Zeitschrift fuer Psychiatrie, bd. LVIII, Heft 5. Haig remarks (Uric Acid, sixth edition, p. 151) that during normal pregnancy diseases with excess of uric acid in the blood (headaches, fits, mental depression, dyspepsia, asthma) are absent, and considers that the common idea that women do not easily take colds, fevers, etc., at this time is well founded.

[202] Founding his remarks on certain anatomical changes and on a suggestion of Engel's, Donaldson observes: "It is impossible to escape the conclusion that in women natural education is complete only with maternity, which we know to effect some slight changes in the sympathetic system and possibly the spinal cord, and which may be fairly laid under suspicion of causing more structural modifications than are at present recognized." H.H. Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain, p. 352.

[203] The state of menstruation is in many respects an approximation to that of pregnancy; see, e.g., Edgar's Practice of Obstetrics, plates 6 6 and 7, showing the resemblance of the menstrual changes in the breasts and the external sexual parts to the changes of pregnancy; cf. Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, Chapter XI, "The Functional Periodicity of Woman."

[204] Thus the gypsies say of an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant, "She has smelt the moon-flower"—a flower believed to grow on the so-called moon-mountain and to possess the property of impregnating by its smell. Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd. I, Chapter XXVII.

[205] This was a sound instinct, for it is now recognized as an extremely important part of puericulture that a woman should rest at all events during the latter part of pregnancy; see, e.g., Pinard, Gazette des Hopitaux, November 28, 1895, and Annales de Gynecologie, August, 1898.

[206] Ploss and Bartels, op. cit., Chapter XXIX; Kryptadia, vol. viii, p. 143.

[207] Griffith Wilkin, British Medical Journal, April 8, 1905.

[208] Weininger, Geschlecht und Charakter, p. 107. I may remark that a recent book, Ellis Meredith's Heart of My Heart, is devoted to a seemingly autobiographical account of a pregnant woman's emotions and ideas. The relations of maternity to intellectual work have been carefully and impartially investigated by Adele Gerhard and Helena Simon, who seem to conclude that the conflict between the inevitable claims of maternity and the scarcely less inevitable claims of the intellectual life cannot be avoided.



APPENDIX.

HISTORIES OF SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT.

HISTORY I.—The following narrative has been written by a university man trained in psychology:—

So far as I have been able to learn, none of my ancestors for at least three generations have suffered from any nervous or mental disease; and of those more remote I can learn nothing at all. It appears probable, then, that any peculiarities of my own sexual development must be explained by reference to the somewhat peculiar environment.

I was the first child and was, naturally, somewhat spoiled—a process which tended to increase my natural tendency to sentimentality. On the other hand, I was shy and undemonstrative with all except my nearest relatives, and with them as well after my seventh or eighth year. And here it may be well to describe my "mental type," as this is probably the most important factor in determining the direction of one's mental development. Of mental types the "visual" is, of course, by far the most common, but in my own case visual imagery was never strong or vivid, and has constantly grown weaker. The dominant part has been played by tactual, muscular and organic sensations, placing me as one of the "tactual motor" type, with strong "verbal motor" and "organic" tendencies. In reading a novel I seldom have a mental picture of the character or situation, but easily imagine the sensations (except the visual) and feel something of the emotions described. When telling of any event I have a strong impulse to make the movements described and to gesticulate. I remember events in terms of movements and the words to be used in giving an account of them; and in thinking of any subject I can feel the movements of the larynx and, in a less degree, of the lips and tongue that would be involved in putting my thoughts into words. I am easily moved to emotion, even to sentimentality, but am seldom if ever deeply affected and am so averse to any display of my feelings that I have the reputation among my acquaintances of being cold, unfeeling and unemotional. I am naturally quiet and bashful to a degree, which has rendered all forms of social intercourse painful through much of my life, and this in spite of a real longing to associate with people on terms of intimacy. As a child I was sensitive and solitary; later I became morbid as well. In a character so constituted the feelings and impulses of the moment are likely to rule, and such has been my constant experience, though a large element of obstinacy in my character has kept me from appearing impulsive, and slight influences will bring about reactions which seem out of all proportion to their cause. For instance, I cannot, even now, read the more erotic of Boccaccio's stories without a good deal of sexual excitement and restlessness, which can be relieved only by vigorous exercise or masturbation.

The first ten years of my life were passed on a farm, most of the time without playmates or companions of my own age.

As far back as I can remember I indulged in elaborate day-dreams in which I figured as the chief character along with a few others who were chiefly creatures of my imagination, but at times borrowed from reality. These others were always boys until I learned the proper function of the sexual organs, when girls usurped the whole stage in numbers beyond the limits of a Turkish harem. Even at school my day-dreams were scarcely interrupted, for my shyness and timidity made me very unpopular among my schoolmates, who tormented me after the fashion of small boys or neglected me, as the spirit moved them. To make matters worse, I was brought up under the "sheltered life system," kept carefully away from the "bad boys," which category included nearly all the youngsters of the community, and deluged with moral homilies and tirades on things religious until I was thoroughly convinced that goodness and discomfort, the right and the unpleasant, were strictly synonymous; and I was kept through much of the time facing the prospect of an early death, to be followed by the good old orthodox hell or the equal miseries of its gorgeous alternative. I may say in all seriousness that this is a conservative and unexaggerated account of one phase of my early life—the one, I think, that tended most strongly to make me introspective and morbid. Later on, when I was trying to abandon the habit of masturbation, this early training greatly increased the despair I felt at each successive failure.

The first traces of sexual excitement that I can now recall occurred when I was about 4 years old. I had erections quite frequently and found a mild pleasure in fondling my genitals when these occurred, especially just after waking in the morning. I had no notion of an orgasm, and never succeeded in producing one until I was 13 years of age. In the summer of my sixth year I experienced pleasurable sensations in daubing my genitals with oil and then fondling or rubbing them, but I abandoned this amusement after getting some irritating substance into the meatus. A year later my mother warned me that playing with my penis would "make me very sick," but since experience had taught me that this was not true, my conviction that what was forbidden must necessarily be pleasant, sent me directly to my favorite retreat in the barn loft to experiment. Since, however, I failed, in spite of persistent effort, to produce any such pleasant results as I had expected, I soon gave up my attempts for other kinds of amusement.

A few months after this, in midsummer, a very sensual servant girl began a series of attempts to satisfy herself sexually with my help. She came nearly every day into the loft where I was playing and did her best to initiate me into the mysteries of sexual relationships, but I proved a sorry pupil. She would rub my penis until it became erect and then, placing me upon her, would insert the penis in her vulva and make movements of her thighs and hips calculated to cause friction. At times she varied the program by lying upon me and embracing me passionately. I can remember distinctly her quick, gasping breath and convulsive movements. She generally ended the seance by persuading me to perform cunnilingus upon her. None of these performances were intelligible to me and I invariably protested against being compelled to leave my play to amuse her. Even her fondling of my genitals annoyed me; and, stranger still, I preferred satisfying her by cunnilingus to the attempts at coitus.

It was nearly a year later that I experienced the first unmistakable manifestations of the sexual impulse—erections accompanied by lustful feeling and vague desires of whose proper satisfaction I had no notion whatever. It never occurred to me to associate my experiences with the servant girl with these new sensations. The peculiar fact about them was that they were generally occasioned by the infliction of pain upon animals. I do not remember how I first discovered that they could be evoked in this way, but I can clearly recollect many of my efforts to arouse this pleasurable excitement by abusing the dog or the cats, or by prodding the calves with a nail set in the end of a broom handle. I seldom manipulated my genitals at this time, and when I did it was for the purpose of causing sexual excitement rather than allaying it.

During this same year I got my first idea of sexual intercourse by watching animals copulate; but my powers of observation must have been limited, for I supposed that the penis of the male entered the anus of the female. In watching the coitus of animals I experienced lively sexual excitement and lustful sensations, located not only in the genitals, but apparently in the anus as well. I often excited, myself by imagining myself playing the part of the female animal—a peculiar combination of passive pederasty and bestiality. A servant girl put me to right on the error of observation just mentioned, but neglected to apply the principle to human animals, and I remained for another year in complete ignorance of the structure of woman's sexual organs and of the intercourse between man and woman. In the meantime I cultivated my fancies of intercourse with animals, often still perversely imagining myself taking the part of the female; and the notion of such relationships gradually became so familiar as to seem possible and desirable. This is especially significant in view of later developments.

Up to my eleventh or twelfth year the erotic element in my daydreaming varied with the seasons. In the summer it played a dominant part, while in the winter it was almost entirely absent, owing, it may be, to the fact that most of my time was spent indoors or on long, tiresome tramps to and from school, and the further fact that during the winter I saw but little of the animals which had acted as a stimulus to sexual excitement. So little was I troubled in winter and so ignorant was I of normal intercourse that sleeping with a cousin, a girl of about my own age (7 or 8 years), resulted in no addition to my knowledge of things sexual.

It was early in my ninth year that I first learned something of the anatomical difference between man and woman and of the functions of the sexual organs in coitus. These were explained to me by a young male servant, who, however, told me nothing of conception or pregnancy. At first I was very little interested, as it did not immediately occur to me to associate my own erotic experiences with the matter of these revelations; but under the faithful tuition of my new instructor I soon began to desire normal coitus, and my interest in the sexual affairs of animals weakened accordingly. His teachings went still further, for he masturbated before me, then persuaded me to masturbate him, and finally practiced coitus inter femora upon me. He also tried to masturbate me, but was unable to produce an orgasm, though I found the experiment mildly pleasurable.

Early in my eleventh year we left the farm and lived in the city for several months. In the meantime there had been no developments in my sexual life beyond what has already been indicated. In the city I found so much to interest and amuse me that I almost entirely forgot my erotic day-dreams and desires. Though my chief playmates were two girls of about my own age I never thought of attempting sexual intercourse with them, as I might easily have done, for they were much wiser and more experienced in these things than myself. Shortly before the end of our stay in town an older schoolmate explained to me as much of the process of reproduction as is usually known by a precocious youngster of 12 years, but I firmly refused to credit his statements. He adduced the fact of lactation in proof of the correctness of his views, but I had been too thoroughly steeped in supernaturalism to be very amenable to naturalistic evidence of this sort and remained obdurate. But the suggestion stayed with me and perplexed me not a little; when we returned to the farm I began to watch the reproductive process in animals.

The following two years were decidedly unpleasant. I was growing rapidly and was sluggish, awkward and stupid. At school I was more unpopular than ever and seemed to have a positive genius for doing the wrong thing. On the rare occasions when my companions admitted me to their counsels I was a willing dupe and catspaw, with the result that I was much in trouble with my teachers. Being morbidly sensitive I suffered keenly under these circumstances and, as my health was not at all good, I often made of my frequent headaches excuses to stay at home, where I would lie abed brooding over my small troubles or, more often, dreaming erotic day-dreams and making repeated attempts to produce an orgasm. But though these efforts were accompanied by the most lustful thoughts and my imagination created situations of oriental extravagance, I was 13 years old when they first met with success. I remember the occasion very distinctly, the more so because I thought of it much and bitterly when shortly afterwards I tried to abandon a habit which the family "doctor book" assured me must result in every variety of damnation. At the moment, however, I was greatly surprised and gratified and tried at once to repeat the delightful sensation, but was unable to do so until the following day. From that time to the present I think I have masturbated an average of ten times per week, and this is certainly a very conservative estimate; for though up to my sixteenth year I could seldom produce an orgasm more than once a day I have often, during the last four or five years, produced it from four to seven times per day without difficulty and this for days and even weeks in succession. During these periods of excessive masturbation very little liquid was ejaculated and the pleasurable sensations were slight or entirely lacking.

From the time when I began masturbating regularly practically my whole interest centered in things pertaining to sex. I read the chapters of the family "doctor book" which treated of sexual matters; my day-dreams were almost exclusively erotic; I sought opportunities to talk about sex-relationships with my schoolmates, with whom I was now slowly getting on better terms; I collected pictures of nude women, learned a great number of obscene stories, read such obscene books as I could obtain and even searched the dictionary for words having a sexual connotation. Up to my fifteenth year, when ejaculation of semen began, there was a strong sadistic coloring to my day-dreams. Through this period, too, my bashfulness in the presence of the opposite sex increased until it reached the point of absurdity.

When fifteen years old I began to practice coitus inter femora on my brother and continued it intermittently for about two years. The experience was disappointing, for I had confidently expected a great increase of pleasure over masturbation in this act; and in casting about for some stronger stimulus I recurred to the forgotten idea of intercourse with animals. I promptly tried to put the idea to a test, but failed several times, and finally succeeded, only to find that the result fell far short of my expectations. Nevertheless I continued the practice irregularly for about three years—or rather through that part of the three years that I spent at home, for while I was at school opportunity for such indulgence was lacking. Long familiarity with the idea of intercourse with animals had made it impossible for me to feel the disgust with the practice which it inspires in most people; and even the perusal of Exodus xxii: 19 failed to make me abandon it. Firmly as I believed in the Mosaic law the supremacy of the sexual impulse was complete.

As early as my sixteenth year I tried to abandon "self-abuse" in all its forms and have repeatedly made the same effort since that time but never with more than very partial success. On two or three occasions I have stopped for periods of several weeks, but only to begin again and indulge more recklessly than before. The deep depression which followed each failure, and often each act of masturbation, I attributed solely to the loss of semen, leaving out of account the fact that I expected to feel depressed and the utter discouragement and self-contempt which accompanied the sense of failure and weakness when, in the face of my resolution, I repeatedly gave way and yielded to the temptation to an act whose consequences I firmly believed must be ruinous. I am now convinced that by far the greater part of this depression was due to suggestion and the humiliating sense of defeat. And this feeling of moral impotence, this seeming helplessness against an overpowering impulse which, on the other hand, seemed so trivial when viewed without passion, eventually weakened my self-control to a degree guessed by no one but myself and sapped the foundations of my moral life in a way which I have constant occasion to deplore.

The foregoing paragraphs give, I think, a fair idea of my condition when I left home for a boarding school at the beginning of my seventeenth year. From this time my experiences may be said to have run on in two distinct cycles—that of the summer months when I was at home, and that of the remainder of the year when I was at school. This fact will make some confusion and apparent inconsistency in the rest of this "history" unavoidable. When I left home I was shy, retiring, totally ignorant of social usage, without self-confidence, unambitious, dreamy, and subject to fits of melancholy. I masturbated at least once a day, though I was in almost constant rebellion against the habit. In my more idle moments I elaborated erotic day dreams in which there was a peculiar mixture of the purely sensual and the purely ideal element; which never fused in my experience, but held the field alternately or mingled somewhat in the manner of air and water. One person usually served as the object of my ideal attachment, another as the center round which I grouped my sensual dreams and desires.

At school I found more congenial companions than I had fallen in with elsewhere, and the necessary contact with people of both sexes gradually wore off some of the rougher corners and brought a measure of self-confidence. I had two or three incipient love affairs which my backwardness kept from growing serious. Out of this change of environment came a sense of expansion, of escape from self, which was distinctly pleasant. I still masturbated regularly, but no longer experienced the former depression except when at home during vacation. Relatively to the past, life was now so varied and interesting that I had less and less time for melancholy; and the discovery that I could lead my classes and hold my own in athletic sports seemed to indicate that my past fears had been exaggerated. Nevertheless I was never reconciled to the habit and often rebelled at the weakness that kept me its slave.

When I entered the university the effects of my useless struggle with the practice of masturbation were pretty well developed. I could no longer fix my attention steadily upon my work and found that only by "cribbing" and "bluffing" could I keep my place at the head of my classes. I was troubled not a little by the shoddiness of my work, and tried again and again during the course of the two years spent at this college to shake off the habit. At the university I was introduced gradually to a wider social circle and so far outgrew my bashfulness that I began to seek the society of the opposite sex assiduously. As I gained self-confidence I became reckless, getting at one time into serious trouble with the authorities which came near resulting in my expulsion. I became one of the more popular members of the clique to which I belonged—much to my surprise and even more to that of my acquaintances. The physical culture craze attacked me at this time and my pet ambition was the attainment of strength and agility. My bump of vanity also grew apace, but an unmeasured hatred of all kinds of foppishness kept me on the safe side of moderation in my dress and behavior.

During my second year of university life I had two love affairs in the course of which I found that my interest in any particular member of the fair sex disappeared as soon as it was returned. The pursuit was fascinating enough, but I cared nothing at all for the prize when once it was within reach. I may add that the interest I had in the girls was purely ideal. While at this school I do not think I masturbated half as often as while at the preparatory school.

When I left this college for —— University I took with me a formidable catalogue of good resolutions, first among which was the determination to abandon all kinds of "self-abuse." I think I kept this one about a month. As I had gone from a comparatively small school to one of the largest of American universities the change was great and the revelations it brought me frequently humiliating. I was lonesome, home-sick, and my bump of self-esteem was woefully bruised; and not unnaturally I soon began to seek a partial solace in day-dreams and masturbation. After I had become somewhat adapted to my new environment I indulged less frequently in either, and from that time to the present I have masturbated very irregularly, sometimes but little and again to excess.

Not long after I came to this place I met a young lady with whom I soon became quite intimate. For over a year our friendship was strictly platonic and then swung suddenly around to a sexual basis. We were ardent lovers for a few weeks, after which I tired of the game as I had before in other cases, and broke off all relations with her as abruptly as was possible. Since then I have almost wholly withdrawn from the society and companionship of women and have almost entirely lost whatever tact and assurance I once possessed in their company. Things pertaining to sexual life have interested me rather more than less, but have occupied my attention much less exclusively than before this episode. Though I have never intended to marry, my breaking off relations with this girl affected me much. At any rate it marked an abrupt change in the character of my sexual experiences. The sexual impulse seems to have lost its power to rouse me to action. Hitherto I had practiced masturbation always under protest, as it were—as the only available form of sexual satisfaction; while now I resigned myself to it as all that there was to hope for in that field. Of course I knew that a little effort or a little money would procure natural satisfaction of my sexual needs, but I also knew that I would never, under any ordinary circumstances, put forth the necessary effort, and fear of venereal disease has been more than enough to keep me away from houses of prostitution.

Some months ago I refrained from masturbation for a period of about six weeks and watched carefully for any change in my health or spirits, but noticed none at all. The only impulse to masturbate was occasioned by fits of restlessness accompanied by erections and a mildly pleasurable feeling of fullness in the penis and scrotum. I think that over 75 per cent, of my acts of masturbation are provoked by these fits of restlessness and are unaccompanied by fancy images, erotic thoughts, lustful desires, or marked pleasure. At other times the act is occasioned by erotic thoughts and images, and is accompanied by a considerable degree of lustful pleasure which, however, is never so intense as in my earlier experiences and has steadily decreased from the first. Usually the orgasm is accompanied by a strong contraction of all the voluntary muscles, particularly the extensors, followed by a slight giddiness and slight feeling of exhaustion. If repeated several times in the course of a single day the acts are followed by dullness and lassitude; otherwise the feeling of exhaustion passes away quickly and a sense of relief and quiet takes its place. So natural or rather habitual has this resort to masturbation as a means of relief from nervousness and restlessness become that the act is almost instinctive in its unconsciousness.

I am extremely sensitive to all kinds of sexual influences, and have an insatiable curiosity regarding everything that pertains to the sexual life of men or women. I am not, however, excited sexually by conversation about sexual facts and relationships, no matter what its nature, though in reading erotic literature my excitement is often intense.

The tendency to day dream has never left me, but there are no longer any elaborate scenes or long-continued "stories," these having been replaced by vaguely imagined incidents which are usually broken off before they reach a satisfactory climax. They are always interrupted by the intrusion of other matters, usually of more practical interest; and the long-continued habit of satisfying myself by masturbation has made erotic dreams rather tantalizing than pleasurable. I dream very seldom at night—at least I can scarcely ever remember any dreams upon waking—and practically never of sexual relations. I have not had a nocturnal emission for over three years, and probably not more than twenty-five in my life.

In my "love passages" with girls there has been no serious thought of coitus on my part, and I have never had intercourse with a woman—unless my early experiences with the servant girl be called such. Like all masturbators I always idealized "love" to the utter exclusion of all sensual cravings; and the notion that the physical act of coitus was something degrading and destructive of real love rather than its consummation was, of all prejudices I have ever formed, the most difficult to escape—a circumstance due, I suppose, to the fact that all I had ever been taught on the subject tended to the complete divorce of what was called "love" from what was stigmatized as a "base sensual desire." Judging from my own experience and observation I should say that "ideal love" is a mere surface feeling, bound to disappear as soon as it has gained its object by arousing a reciprocal interest on the part of the one to whom it is directed. So little did I "materialize" the objects of my "love" that I have never cared for kissing or the warm embraces in which lovers usually indulge. I have never kissed but one girl, and her with far too little enthusiasm to satisfy her. My last sweetheart was a very passionate girl, the warmth of whose embraces was somewhat torrid and, to me, both puzzling and annoying. The intensity of feeling which demanded such strenuous expression was beyond my knowledge of human nature. A somewhat peculiar circumstance in connection with these experiences is the fact that I often found myself trying to analyze my emotions with a purely psychological interest while playing the part of the intoxicated lover in his mistress's arms.

There is but little left to say on the subject of my sexual development. During the last two or three years my knowledge of the facts of the sexual life has been very greatly increased, and I have become acquainted with phases of human nature which were wholly unknown to me before. The part played by things sexual in my life is still, I suppose, abnormally large; it is undoubtedly the largest single interest, though my outer life is determined almost wholly by other considerations.

Of course I know nothing of the effect which long-continued masturbation may have had on my ability to perform normal coitus. I do not think I am subject to any kind of sexual perversion, for all my indulgence has been faute de mieux and, at least since I began masturbation, all my desires and erotic day-dreams have had to do only with normal coitus. The mystery which surrounds the sexual act seems at times to be regaining its former influence and power of fascination. I have no doubt, however, but that I should be greatly disillusioned should I ever perform coitus; and I greatly regret that I have not been able to test this conviction and so round out and complete this "history."

It may be worth while to say a word about my religious experiences, as, in many cases, they are closely bound up with the sexual impulse. I was never "converted," but on a dozen or more occasions approached the crisis more or less closely. The dominant emotion in these experiences was always fear, sometimes with anger and despair intermixed in varying proportions. A complete analysis of these experiences is, of course, impossible, but the various pleasurable feelings of which converts spoke in the revivals which I attended were a closed book to me. Following my revival-meeting experiences came a few days spent in a sort of moral exaltation during which I eschewed all my habits of which conventional morality disapproved, save masturbation, and felt no small satisfaction with my moral conditions. I became a first-rate Pharisee. Toward the women who had figured in my day dreams I suddenly conceived the chastest affection, resolutely smothering every sensual thought and fancy when thinking of them, and putting in place of these elements ideal love, self-sacrifice, knightly devotion—Sunday-school Garden-of-Eden pictures with a mediaeval, romantic coloring. These day-dreams were always sexual, involving situations of extreme complexity and monumental silliness. Masturbation was always continued and usually with increased frequency. The end of these periods was always abrupt and much like awaking from a dream in which the dreamer has been behaving in a manner to arouse his own disgust. They were followed by feelings of sheepishness and self-contempt mingled with anger and a dislike of all things having to do with religion. My inability to pass the conversion crisis and a growing contempt for empty enthusiasm finally led me to a saner attitude toward religion, from which I passed easily into religious scepticism; and later the study of philosophy and science, and particularly of psychology, banished the last lingering remnant of faith in a supernatural agency and led me to the passion for facts and indifference to values which have caused me to be often called "dead to all morality."

HISTORY II.—C.A., aged 25, unmarried; tutor, preparing to take Holy Orders:—

My paternal ancestry (which is largely Huguenot) is noteworthy for its patriotism and its large families. My father, who died when I was a year old, is remembered for the singular uprightness and purity of his life from his earliest childhood. The photograph which I have shows him as possessed of a rare classic beauty of features. He was an ideal husband and father. At the time of his death he was a Master of Arts and a school principal. My mother is an extraordinarily neurotic woman, yet famed among her friends for her great domesticity, attachment to her husbands, and an almost abnormal love of babies. She has nobly borne the ill-treatment of her second husband, who for several years has been in a state of melancholia. My mother has been "highly-wrought" all her life, and has suffered intensely from fears of all kinds. As a young girl she was somnambulistic, and once fell down a stairhead during sleep. In spite of her bodily sufferings with indigestion, eye-strain, and depression she retains her youthfulness. She has slight powers of reasoning. She has had times of unconsciousness and rigidity, I have never heard any mention of epilepsy. She has a horror of showing prudishness in regard to the healthful manifestations of sex life, and is always praising examples of what she terms "a natural woman."

I have heard that during my first year my mother detected my nurse in the act of putting a morphine powder on my tongue for the purpose of keeping me quiet. I was subject to convulsions at this period, and narrowly escaped a permanent hernia. My family tell me that from the beginning I was a well-developed and boyish boy, full of mischief, impulsive, good to look upon, unusually affectionate, beloved by all.

In my third year I took pleasure in crawling under the bed with my boy-cousin who was nine months my senior, and after we had taken down our drawers, in kissing each other's nates. I do not remember which of us first thought of this pastime.

At the age of 4 I gave myself a treat by gazing upward through a cellar window at the nates of a woman who was defecating from several feet above into a cesspool that lay beneath. It was during this summer also that I frightened myself by pulling back my prepuce far enough to disclose the purple glans, which I had never seen before. But this act gave me no desire to masturbate.

When 5 years old, and living in a great city, I drew indecent pictures in company with a little girl and her younger brother. These pictures represented men in the act of urinating. The penes were drawn large, and the streams of urine plainly indicated. One afternoon I induced the boy to go to the bath-room, lie on his back, and allow me to perform fellatio on him. I did not ask him to return the favor. I remember the curious tar-like smell of his clothing and the region about his genitals. It is possible that I gained my knowledge of fellatio from an unknown boy of 10, who had induced me, during the preceding summer to enter a sandy lot with him, watch him urinate, and then, kneeling before him, commit fellatio. A year later, as I was walking home in the rain to our summer cottage, with an open umbrella over my shoulder, a boy of 15, who was leaning against our fence, exhibited a large, erect penis, and when I had passed him urinated upon me and my umbrella. I never saw the boy again. I felt peculiarly insulted by his act. Back of the house there lived a 12-year-old boy who invited me to watch him defecate in the outdoor privy, and during the act told me a number of indecent stories and words which I cannot remember.

About this time I fell in love with a little Jewish boy next door. Often I cried myself to sleep over the thought that perhaps he was lying on a sofa alone and crying with a stomach-ache. I longed to embrace him; and yet I saw little of him, and made little of him when I was with him.

Living in a Western city a few months later, some girls of 12 and 14 led me to their barn, where they dressed themselves in boys' clothing and made believe that they were cowboys. One of them told me to "shut my eyes, open my mouth, and get a surprise." When I opened my eyes once more a piece of hen-dung lay in my mouth. I have a vague remembrance of one of the girls asking me to enter a water-closet with her. She uttered some indelicate phrase, but I performed no act with her. In the house where I lived I once entered the bedroom of a half-grown girl while she was dressing. She knelt to kiss me innocently enough, and I, by a sudden impulse, ran my hand between her bare neck and her corset as far as I could reach. Apparently she took no notice of my movement. Although I did not masturbate, yet during this winter I experienced a tickling sensation about my genitals when I placed my hand beneath them as I lay on my stomach in bed. One evening I pulled up my night-dress and, holding my penis in my hand, I danced to and fro on the carpet. I imagined that I was one of a line of naked men and women who were advancing toward another similar line that faced them. I imagined myself as pleasurably coming in contact with my female partner who possessed male genitals.

The following summer I lived in the woods. My next-door playmate was a little girl of my own age—6 years. She sat down before me in the barn and exposed her genitals. This was the first time I had seen female organs, or had thought for a moment that they differed from my own. In great perplexity I asked the little girl: "Has it been cut off?" She and I defecated in peach baskets that we found in the upper part of the barn.

When I was 7 years old and back in the Eastern city I lived in the house of a physician. Alone with his 3-year-old daughter one day, I showed her my erect organ, and felt a delicious gratification when she stroked it with the words: "Nice! Nice!" I confessed my fault to my guardian that night after I had said my prayers. I had complained to my mother a year before of the inconvenience I found in my penis being "so long sometimes." She said that she would "see about having the end taken off." But I was never circumcised. Her words gave me the doubly unpleasant impression that my glans was to be cut off.

There came occasionally to the kitchen of Dr. W.'s house a foul-mouthed Irish laundress who used coarse language to me concerning urination. I loathed the woman, and yet one night I dreamed that I was embracing her naked form and rolling over and over with her on the bed; and in spite of my sight of female genitals a few months before, I thought of her as having organs of my own kind and size. At my first school I watched a red-haired boy of 12 expose the penis of a 7-year-old boy as he lay on his back in the bath-room. I do not remember that the sight gave me sexual pleasure.

I spent the summer before I was 8 in a double house. The adopted daughter of our neighbor (a neurotic, retired physician) was a girl of 13 who had been taken from a poor laboring family. She got me to show her my parts, touched them, and asked whether I urinated from my scrotum. She also induced me to play with her genitals as we sat on a sofa in the twilight, and to spank her naked nates with the back of a hair-brush as she lay on a bed; but from none of these performances did I derive physical satisfaction. The girl E. and I took delight in "talking dirty secrets," as she expressed it. Her young cousin H. (nephew of her adopted mother) never heard me use the word "thing" without suggestively smiling. E. recalled the pleasant hours that she had spent with her cousin when they were in their night-gowns. She did not particularize these sexual relations. Under the board-walk the boy H. and I once defecated in bottles. Some little girls who lived opposite us pulled up their dresses one night and "dared" each other to dance out beyond the end of the house, in full view of the road. We boys merely looked on.

I now fell passionately in love with a remarkably handsome little boy of my own age. I longed to kiss and hug him, but I did not dare to do so, for he was haughty and intolerant of my attentions. I even allowed him to stand with one foot on me and remark in a loud tone: "I am Conqueror!" I endured no end of petty insults and much ill-treatment from this boy. I reached the height of my passion on the night that he appeared at our cottage in a tight-fitting suit of pepper-and-salt. I gloried in his perfect legs and besought my guardian that she would buy me a similar suit of clothes.

For the summer after I was 8 years old I lived in a cottage in a country town. The servant maid M. was a young girl of 16 who listened eagerly to my accounts of the "secrets" and actions in which the girl E. and I had taken delight a year before. I think that M. arranged a meeting between a little black-haired girl and me in order that we might take a walk and play sexually with each other. Just as we were starting on our walk one of my relatives said that I must not leave the yard.

The little girl and I had see-sawed together and I had been interested in her legs as she rose in the air. (When I was 13 years old and see-sawing at a picnic with a stout girl, the motion of the board and the sight of her straddled form filled me with longing to embrace her sexually.) One afternoon M. took me to the house of an acquaintance of hers. M's brother was in the room and made a number of unremembered remarks which struck me as being rather "free," and M. told me later that she and the girl once dressed as ballet dancers and danced before M.'s brother. I felt that he was lascivious. I was always remarkably intuitive.

I fell in love with a handsome, stout, black-haired boy who lived on a farm; but he was not a "farmer's son" in the common sense of the word. I visited him for two or three days, and we slept with each other, to my boundless joy. For his freckled girl cousin I did not care the turn of my wrist, although she was a nice enough little thing. One night when we three lay on a bed in the dark, and neither of us boys had eyes or words for her, she silently left us. He and I never committed the slightest sexual fault. I left him with tears at the summer-end, and I often kissed his photograph during the following winter.

In the flat-house where I began to live when I was 8 years old, I once practiced mutual tickling of a very slight character with a boy of my own age. We sat on chairs placed opposite to each other and we inserted our fingers through the openings in our trousers. Just as we were beginning to enjoy the titillation we were interrupted by the approach of one of my family who, however, was not quick enough to discover us. Down cellar I often saw the genitals of the janitor's little girls—they were fond of lifting their skirts and they did not wear drawers—but I had no desire to attempt conjunction. I once caught an older friend of mine (he was 13) in the act of leaving one of the girls. The pair had been in a coal-compartment. The boy was buttoning his trousers and I guessed what he had been doing. When I began to sleep alone in my tenth year I had no desire to masturbate, and was loath to do so by reason of ample warnings given me by my guardian and by the family physician. One afternoon a stunted friend of mine sat down in the back yard and astonished me by tying a piece of string to his penis. At a large private school which I now attended I made the acquaintance of the principal's son, and wondered why he had such a fancy for dressing his 5-year-old sister in boy's clothes. He closed the door on me while he was thus engaged. At my house we went to the bath-room together, and he showed me his circumcised and much-ridged penis. Neither of us made any mention of masturbating.

At this period I fell slightly in love with a 5-year-old boy with intensely black eyes. I would kiss him whenever we were alone, but I had no wish to seduce him. I was always interested in watching the urination of younger children. When I was 5 years old I went on my knees to a strange little boy in order to whisper in his ear an inquiry as to whether he wanted to urinate. I experienced a pleasurable thrill when I was 10 years old in leading a small girl cousin to the outdoor privy, in helping her on and off the open seat, in buttoning and unbuttoning her drawers, and in gazing at her vulva.

The summer before I was 10 I lived a wild life in the mountains. My companions were a negro girl, the two daughters of a clergyman, the two sons of a questionable woman hotel-keeper, and the daughter of the Irish scavenger. All of these children were extraordinarily sensual. Their leading pastime, from morning until night, was varying forms of indecency, with the supreme caress—which they termed "raising dickie"—as the most frequent enjoyment. The 5-year-old daughter of the scavenger explained to us how she had seen her father approaching her stout mother with an erect penis, the pair standing up before the lamplight during the act. This curly-headed, rosy-cheeked child handled her genitals so much that they were inflamed. I once saw her sitting in the road and rubbing dust against her vulva. I saw little of the elder daughter of the minister (she was 12 years old). She persuaded me to expose myself before her in the cellar of a partially-built house. In return for my favor she allowed me to look at her genitals. She did not ask for conjunctio. The two younger daughters were my intimates. With the middle one I was forever performing a weak conjunction that consisted in the laying of my member against her vulva. Notwithstanding all the entreaties of my little friend, I could not be persuaded to protrude my penis against her vagina; and not on one occasion can I remember obtaining an erection or extreme pleasure. Up in the garret she straddled slanting beams with her genitals exposed, and I followed her example. The negro girl and my little friend both urinated on a tent floor at my request. I did not fancy the odor of a girl's genitals, nor the appearance of the vulva when the labia were held apart.

The following summer, when I was almost 11, I took a long walk one day with my old friend, the girl E. We entered a patch of woods and ate our lunch, but no sense of sexual drawing toward the girl came over me and she did not offer to entice me. I slept with her boy-cousin one night, and her neuropathic aunt, a retired lady physician, bothered us by repeatedly creeping into our room. I felt intuitively that she was watching to see whether we would commit mutual masturbation—which we had no thought of doing. Three years before I had opened the door of her bedroom suddenly and saw E.'s naked form. The physician had been examining her, E. told me later. My guardian also annoyed me by repeated warnings not to play with myself.

Just before I turned 11 I was sent to a small and so-called "home" boarding-school. Eight of us lived in the smaller dormitory. The matron roomed downstairs. There was no resident master—a serious error. We small boys were told to strip one evening. We were then tied neck-to-neck and made to dance a "slave-dance," which was marked by no sexuality. A boy of 15, R., one afternoon gave me the astonishing information that my father had taken a part in my procreation. Up to this moment I had known only of the maternal offices, information of which had been beautifully supplied to me by my guardian when I was 7 years old. At that time I talked freely about the coming of a baby brother in a distant city; I watched the construction of baby clothes; I named the newcomer, and I was momentarily disappointed when he proved to be a girl. This same R., a strong boy with a large penis, got into the custom of lying in bed with me just before lights were put out. He would read to himself and occasionally pause to pump his penis and make with his lips the sound of a laboring locomotive. I felt impelled to handle his organ, for I was fascinated by its size, and stiffness, and warmth. Rarely he would titillate my then small and unerect penis. R. never ejaculated when he was with me; hence not until my third year was I acquainted with the appearance of a flow of semen. Sometimes R. would stop during his dressing to manipulate his penis, but was such a picture of rosy health that I doubt whether he brought himself often to ejaculation. R. told me that he had been to a brothel where his genitals were examined to determine whether they were large enough and not diseased. He also related how he "played cow" with a girl of his own age, she consenting to perform fellatio upon him. A dark-skinned, unwashed, pimpled but fairly vigorous boy of 16, with an irritable domineering manner, told me the delights of coitus with a girl in a bath-house, and I overheard his conversation with another "old" boy concerning the purchase of a girl in a big city for the sum of five dollars. No details were given.

I will now pass to my third year, when I was 13 years old. A large, well-set-up boy of 16, A., became my idol. His toleration of my presence in his room filled me with endless love. When I lied about a matter in which he was concerned, his denunciation of me brought me to a state of shuddering and weeping unspeakable. When our relations were established again A. allowed me to creep into his bed after the lights were out, and there I passionately embraced him, but without performing any definite act. When I turned over on my side with my back to him he drew my prepuce back and forth until I experienced orgasm, but not ejaculation. I would return his favor by pumping his erect penis, but with no ejaculation on his part. He did not propose fellatio, and I did not think of it. One night when he was in my bed I began to masturbate very slightly, whereupon he laughed, saying: "So that is the way you amuse yourself!" As a matter of fact the habit was not fastened upon me. He always laughed when the rubbing of his finger on my exposed glans caused me to shrink. Another boy, H., now began to show me his erect penis and we practiced mutual manipulations. A. laughingly told me how me had caught H. in the act of masturbating as he stood in the bath-tub. A. told me a number of sexual stories—how he enjoyed coitus in the bushes with a girl on the way home from entertainments; how half a dozen boys and girls stripped in the basement of a church and performed coitus on the velvet chairs which stood behind the pulpit; and how he and a younger boy, who camped out together, played with each other's genitals. F., a boy of 11, was highly nervous, subject to timidity and tears on the slightest provocation, often morose, and under treatment for kidney trouble. His penis was erect whenever I saw him undress. He told me that a partially idiotic man taught F. and his companion how to masturbate. The man invited the boys to his tent and there pumped his organ until "some white stuff came out of it." F. also told me that an Indian princess in his part of the country would permit coitus for fifty cents. A. sometimes slept with F., and I could imagine their embraces. S., a secretive, handsome boy of 13, wetted his bed with urine every night. The only sign that he gave of an interest in sexuality was his laughing remark concerning the coupling of rose-bugs. Of his chum, my beloved C., I will speak later. My small room-mate handled himself only slightly. I never had a desire to lie with him, since I disliked him, nor with my first room-mate, a "chunky," fiery boy of 10, whose penis interested me merely because it was circumcised and almost always erect. His masturbation was also so slight as not to attract any particular attention. A lusty German boy, B., showed no signs of sexuality until his third year, when he laughed about his newly-appearing pubic hair, and told several of us openly of how he enjoyed to play "a drum-beat" on his penis before going to sleep. "I don't do it too much, though," he explained. He showed a mild curiosity when I gave him the resume of a book on cohabitation which contained illustrations of the erect penis and the female organs. I had found this book in the woods and I read it eagerly during my third year.

I came to the point of agreeing with A., who said: "Everyone is smutty." Indeed I lived in a lustful world, and yet my mind was bent also on books, and writing, and the outdoor world. I was overgrown and splendidly developed, with a medium-sized penis and a scant growth of pubic hair. My face wore a somewhat infantile expression. My mouth was a perfect "Cupid's bow," my hair thin and light. I was troubled about my snub-nose, which gave the boys a great deal of amusement. As a matter of fact I exaggerated its upward tendency out of my morbid self-consciousness and cowardice. My imagination was extraordinarily intense, as it had always been. I was sensitive to smells and sounds and colors and personalities, and to the subtle influence of the night. I was timid and easily moved to tears, but not from any physical weakness until after. At the lower house there was the boy Z., famed for his large penis; and the older G., a boy of 15, who was the leader in sexuality at his dormitory. Z. showed me his penis and exposed his glans often enough, but we did not manipulate each other. G. told us to notice how large a space his penis occupied in his trousers, and laughed over Z.'s custom of masturbating by means of a narrow vase. G.'s special lover was a nervous boy of ten. It is remarkable that none of us mentioned fellatio or paedicatio. These acts may have occurred at school, but not to my knowledge. We did not have much to say sexually about the girls. We heard rumors of a 16-year-old, V., who had been sent away from school for coitus; and my first room-mate was said to have obtained conjunctio with a girl under cover of the chapel shed. Once A. and I pointed a telescope at the open windows of the girls' dormitory, but we saw nothing to interest us. A day-scholar, J., a pale, nervous, bright boy of 13, took me into the study of his uncle-physician and together we gloated over pictures of the sexual organs. A. was with us on one occasion. J. told me how he liked to roll over and over in bed with his hand placed under his scrotum. This act, he said, made him imagine that he was obtaining coitus. He advised me to slide my penis back and forth in the vagina whenever I should actually obtain coitus. In my room at school J. once drew an imaginary map of a bagnio, in which the water-closet was carefully displayed en suite with the bedrooms. J. and I never masturbated together. Indeed, I cannot remember seeing his organ. A hulking boy of 16, who lived opposite the school-grounds, became intimate with J., and we three went on a walk up the railroad track. The big boy, W., tried to inflame my passions by telling me how he and J. had had coitus with a handsome black-haired widow in town, but I remained cold.

During this year I fell in love with C., a popular, talkative, witty boy of my own age, or perhaps a year younger. He fancied me and we slept together one night under the most innocent circumstances. I never dreamed of having sexual relations with him, and yet I fairly burned with love for him. My stay at his beautiful home over Sunday while his parents were away was one long delight. We slept in each other's arms, but there was no sexuality. En route to C.'s home he pointed with a glove to a little working-girl, saying he would like to have intercourse with her, but this was the only remark of the kind that ever passed his lips in my presence. When undressed save for his undershirt, he laughingly held his unerect organ in his hand and made the motions of obtaining conjunction with an imaginary partner. Once we spoke of masturbation (I could recite the information of my good physician with a marvelous show of virtue), and C. remarked: "Yes, doing that makes boys crazy." C. finally grew tired of my deceptive, babyish nature and ultra-interest in books and puzzles, but I cherished an undiminished affection for him, and when he was detained at home for a fortnight with a broken arm, I wrote him a passionate letter, which I sobbed over and actually wetted with my tears. But the fervor of my passion died at the close of the year. I consider this unsullied friendship to be the only redeeming feature of my sensual days at school.

Versed as I was in the warnings against masturbation, I found pleasure one afternoon when I was alone in slipping my penis through the open handle of a pair of scissors and in violently flapping my partially erect organ until a strange, sweet thrill crept over me from top to toe and a drop of clear liquid oozed from my member. But I gave up the manipulation with scissors, finding a greater satisfaction in masturbating while I was defecating or just after it. I either pumped my organ by slipping the prepuce back and forth, or I grasped the organ at its root and violently jerked it back and forth. I soon began to masturbate not only every time that I defecated, but also at night just before I went to sleep, and sometimes early in the morning. On the whole I preferred the jerking just described. I always brought about ejaculation after perhaps five minutes of violent exertion.

My penis became chafed at the root, but I did not especially care. I remember the afternoon that I masturbated for the first time while I was defecating in the school water-closet. I cannot recall that at first I thought of coitus while I masturbated. On one occasion I masturbated over the vase de nuit after a delightful afternoon of tobogganing exploration up and down the mountain.

During this first year of abuse, I felt no ill effects whatsoever, although I realized, in an unthinking way, that I was doing wrong. But sexuality had assumed the proportion of a regular feature of our school life. It was difficult for me to place a "universal" view in its true perspective. I used to smile at the glazed, dull morning eye of poor H., who was a stunted boy of 15, and thus could not endure his losses so well as I could endure them. The qualms of conscience which I suffered were lost in my delight in my dawning sexual life. Sometimes I lay on my stomach in bed, and by placing my hand under my scrotum, according to the directions of J., brought up a pretty girl to mind. Just before Sunday school G., our chief reprobate, and the rest of us would hunt out what we considered to be nasty texts of Scripture. The chapter concerning the whoredoms of Aholah and Aholibah gave me an especial pleasure. T. mentioned the giggling that occurred at prayers in the lower dormitory when the details of Esau's birth were read out. A few days before G. was expelled—for exactly what cause I do not know—he told me of how greatly he enjoyed coitus on his grandmother's sofa with a girl of fifteen. When I went home on the boat for holidays I noted the large, black-haired penis of the strong boy of our school. He occupied a state-room with me, but made no sexual overtures.

Since my twelfth year I had been wrapped up all summer long in a boy who was six months my senior. We slept together constantly, but not once did we think of obtaining mutual gratification. On the contrary, we held up high ideals to each other and frowned on masturbation. I took delight in saying that I never had handled myself, and never would do so. Even at the height of my "auto-erotic" period, I skillfully concealed my habits from all my boy friends. A neurotic solo choir boy friend once spoke of obtaining ejaculation, whereupon I expressed utter ignorance of such an act, little hypocrite that I was. This boy told how the house servants joked with him about coitus and made laughing lunges at his organs.

But much as I loved my chum, my most passionate regard went out in my thirteenth year to N., a chubby, blue-eyed, choir-boy of 12. He was a pretty boy to any eye. He was not gifted, except in water-sports, and anything but popular either with girls or with boys; yet I grew warm at the mention of his name. He did not care a fig for me. From first to last I had no consciousness of the sexual nature of my passion, and the thought of doing more than embrace and kiss him in an innocent manner never crossed my mind. For two summers I had nights of tossing on my bed (although I almost never was sleepless for any cause) when I would see his dear face and form, in and out of the swimming pool, or engaged perhaps in singing or in showing his beautiful teeth. I seldom was smitten with little girls, and I found myself embarrassed in their company after my ninth year; yet I thought well enough of their looks and ways to enjoy their company at dances. The girls liked me in a platonic way, for I was accounted a good, big, kind, blundering boy with a helping hand for the smallest fry.

During the summer after I was 13, I imagined myself in the early morning, when I was half awake, as persuading my wife to have coitus with me. In the course of my spoken words I kept my hand under my scrotum.

A plump girl-cousin of my own age was visiting at my uncle's during the summer after I was 13. With her I greatly desired to satisfy myself, but I could not be sure that my boy cousin (5 years old) might not find us out, even though she should consent. Once when we three were in the hay-loft a wave of lust rolled over me, but I made no proposal. Night and gaslight greatly increased my libido. On one occasion my aunt had gone to the village for ice-cream, and L. and I were left alone in the dining-room. I took her on my lap and had a powerful erection. I almost asked her to play sexually with me in the barn, but instead I spoke of an imaginary girl, the first letters of whose successive names spelled an indecent word for coitus—a word known to almost every Anglo-Saxon child, I fear. L. laughed, but gave no sign of assent. For a neighboring girl of 15 I felt such a drawing that early in the morning I would roll on the floor with my erect organ in my hand in riotous imagining of coitus with her. I walked with her in the woods and sat at her feet, but although I felt instinctively that she would satisfy me without much persuasion, yet I could not ask her. One night I started to church in order to walk home with her, and lead her (if possible) to a field where we might gratify ourselves (I picked out the exact grassy spot where we might lie); but when I was almost at the church door my "moral sense" (if that is what it was) rose and dragged me home again.