Note 80 — Chapter VI

Regarding the precise significance of the terms iomasturbation and onanism, see the author's footnote to page 87. The adjectives corresponding to those words are respectively masturbatory and onanistic. By German writers, onanismus or onanie, and onanistisch, are often used where, strictly speaking, the words are inapplicable, since reference is made to cases in which sexual gratification is obtained by direct manipulation. In this translation, I prefer for such cases to use the words masturbation (i.e. manustupration) and masturbatory; and to limit the use of the terms onanism and onanistic to cases in which no direct use is made of the hand. Where sexual gratification is obtained without any mechanical act at all, it to preferable to speak of psychical onanism, or else to employ the general term introduced by Havelock Ellis for the description of all varieties of self-induced sexual stimulation and sexual gratification—whether mechanical or psychical—viz. auto-erotism (adjectival form, auto-erotic). See Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. i., 3rd ed., 1910. Part III., "Auto-Erotism: A Study of the Spontaneous Manifestations of the Sexual Impulse."—Translator's Note.