The psychology of marriage / by Walter M. Gallichan.

  • Walter M. Gallichan
Date:
[1917]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of marriage / by Walter M. Gallichan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/202 page 28
    There is no need for me to urge the importance of this matter in any stronger terms than those expressed by Canon Lyttelton, Dr. Dukes, of Rugby School, Mr. A. C. Benson, and Mr. Sibly, who are all well known in the educational world. No inquiry could be valid as a guide to parents and teachers without reference to the diversity of modern medical opinion upon masturbation. We are forced to steer a course between the highly exaggerated statements of a past school of physicians, such as Lallemand and Acton, and the view of qualified practitioners of to-day in various countries. Certainly there is a growing opinion of very considerable weight that over-statement of the injury, physical and mental, arising from the auto-erotic habit is extremely harmful, inasmuch as it has caused incalculable distress of mind, despair, and not infrequently suicide.* It is this psychic perturbation that very often proves more disastrous than the practices themselves. Upon this there is an increasing agreement among those who have closely studied the question in England, America, and in Continental countries. Experience shows also that the unduly alarmed are always prone to excess. Dr. Charles D. Fox gives a typical instance of the danger and futility of gross over-statement, and says that “ youths, too, should be instructed concerning the harmless nature of nocturnal emissions, and thus saved from the decidedly harmful effects of quack literature ascribing disastrous consequences to this normal effect of sexual continence.” The following extract, quoted by Dr. Fox, is from “ Con¬ fessions of a Psychasthenic,” in the American “Journal of Abnormal Psychology ” :— “ After reading a book which dealt with the evil consequences of sexual irregularities the patient ' became very chaste from fear of the horrible consequences of a lapse from virtue.’ Obsessions having developed from the material afforded by the well-meant but decidedly pernicious book, the patient suffered much psychic distress, and then, as he expresses the outcome : ‘ My demon finally drove me to make true what I imagined would inevitably come about had I not read that book. I gave myself up to sexual excesses, not for the pleasure of them, since in my case this was impossible, but to make true what I thought would have been my fate.” In direct opposition to the exaggerated alarmist policy, which was adopted by almost all writers fifty years ago, * See page 31.
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