Note 133 — Chapter XI · FAMILY INFLUENCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LOVE LIFE

Among the causes of the greater condemnation of masturbation in men one of great importance consists in the fear of castration which—as result of threats by parents and nurses and otherwise—frequently becomes intimately associated with the onanistic act. Closely connected with this is the fact that the significance and consequences of masturbation are more obvious in the male than in the female—the emission of semen and the lassitude that follows this being very liable to produce a sense of loss and injury, thus easily arousing or reinforcing the fears connected with the ideas of castration. Perhaps a further factor of a more general nature is played by the greater freedom of narcissistic impulses in women (Cp. Freud, "Zur Einführung des Narzißmus," Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse, VI. I.). The relatively greater persistence of infantile self-love shows itself clearly in the greater freedom of the milder manifestations of homosexuality in women (the homosexual partner being a projection of the lover's self; Cp. above p. 103) and may very well also be the cause of women's more natural attitude to masturbation as a form of auto-erotic gratification.