Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Vol. 1-6). Havelock Ellis
of dawning puberty, which are far more vivid." (G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 455.)
I may, further, quote the experience of an anonymous contributor—a healthy and chaste man between 30 and 38 years of age—to the American Journal of Psychology ("Nocturnal Emissions," Jan., 1904): "Legs and breasts often figured prominently in these dreams, the other sexual parts, however, very seldom, and then they turned out to be male organs in most cases. There were but two instances of copulation dreamt. Girls and young women were the, usual dramatis personæ, and, curiously enough, often the aggressors. Sometimes the face or faces were well known; sometimes, only once seen; sometimes, entirely unknown. The orgasm occurs at the most erotic part of the dream, the physical and psychical running parallel. This most erotic or suggestive part of the dream was very often quite an innocent looking incident enough. As, for example: while passing a strange young woman, overtaken on the street, she calls after me some question. At first, I pay no heed, but when she calls again, I hesitate whether to turn back and answer or not—emission. Again, walking beside a young woman, she said, 'Shall I take your arm?' I offered it, and she took it, entwining her arm around it, and raising it high—emission. I could feel stronger erection as she asked the question. Sometimes, a word was enough; sometimes, a gesture. Once emission took place on my noticing the young woman's diminished finger-nails. Another example of fetichism was my being curiously attracted in a dream by the pretty embroidered figure on a little girl's dress. As an illustration of the strange metamorphoses that occur in dreams, I one night, in my dream (I had been observing partridges in the summer) fell in love with a partridge, which changed under my caresses to a beautiful girl, who yet retained an indescribable wild-bird innocence, grace, and charm—a sort of Undina!"
These experiences may be regarded as fairly typical of the erotic dreams of healthy and chaste young men. The bird, for instance, that changes into a woman while retaining some elements of the bird, has been encountered in erotic dreams by other young men. It is indeed remarkable that, as De Gubernatis observes, "the bird is a well-known phallic symbol," while Maeder finds ("Interprétations de Quelques Rêves," Archives de Psychologie, April, 1907) that birds have a sexual significance both in life and in dreams. The appearance of male organs in the dream-woman is doubtless due to the dreamer's greater familiarity with those organs; but, though it occurs occasionally, it can scarcely be said to be the rule in erotic dreams. Even men who have never had connection with a woman, are quite commonly aware of the presence of a woman's sexual organs in their erotic dreams.
Moll's comparison of nocturnal emissions of semen with nocturnal incontinence of urine suggests an interesting resemblance, and at the same time seeming contrast. In both cases we are concerned with viscera which, when overfilled or unduly irritable, spasmodically eject their contents during sleep. There is a further resemblance which usually becomes clear when, as occasionally happens, nocturnal incontinence of urine persists on to late childhood or adolescence: both phenomena are frequently accompanied by vivid dreams of appropriate character. (See e.g. Ries, "Ueber Enuresis Nocturna," Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene, 1904; A. P. Buchan, nearly a century ago, pointed out the psychic element in the experiences of young persons who wetted the bed, Venus sine Concubitu, 1816, p. 47.) Thus, in one case known to me, a child of seven, who occasionally wetted the bed, usually dreamed at the same time that she wanted to make water, and was out of doors, running to find a suitable spot, which she at last found, and, on awaking, discovered that she had wetted the bed; fifteen years later she still sometimes had similar dreams, which caused her much alarm until, when thoroughly awake, she realized that no accident had happened; these later dreams were not the result of any actual strong desire to urinate. In another case with which I am acquainted, a little girl of eight, after mental excitement or indigestible meals, occasionally wetted the bed, dreaming that she was frightened by some one running after her, and wetted herself in consequence, after the manner of the Ganymede in the eagle's clutch, as depicted by Rembrandt. These two cases, it may be noted, belong to two quite different types. In the first case, the full bladder suggests to imagination the appropriate actions for relief, and the bladder actually accepts the imaginative solution offered; it is, according to Fiorani's phrase, "somnambulism of the bladder." In the other case, there is no such somnambulism, but a psychic and nervous disturbance, not arising in the bladder at all, irradiates convulsively, and whether or not the bladder is overfull, attacks a vesical nervous system which is not yet sufficiently well-balanced to withstand the inflow of excitement. In children of somewhat nervous temperament, manifestations of this kind may occur as an occasional accident, up to about the age of seven or eight; and thereafter, the nervous control of the bladder having become firmly established, they cease to happen, the nervous energy required to affect the bladder sufficing to awake the dreamer. In very rare cases, however, the phenomenon may still occasionally happen, even in adolescence or later, in individuals who are otherwise quite free from it. This is most apt to occur in young women even in waking life. In men it is probably extremely rare.
The erotic dream seems to differ flagrantly from the vesical dream, in that it occurs in adult life, and is with difficulty brought under control. The contrast is, however, very superficial. When we remember that sexual activity only begins normally at puberty, we realize that the youth of twenty is, in the matter of sexual control, scarcely much older than in the matter of vesical control he was at the age of six. Moreover, if we were habitually, from our earliest years, to go to bed with a full bladder, as the chaste man goes to bed with unrelieved sexual system, it would be fully as difficult to gain vesical control during sleep as it now is to gain sexual control. Ultimately, such sexual control is attained; after the age of forty, it seems that erotic dreams with emission become more and more rare; either the dream occurs without actual emission, exactly as dreams of urination occur in adults with full bladder, or else the organic stress, with or without dreams, serves to awaken the sleeper before any emission has occurred. But this stage is not easily or completely attained. St. Augustine, even at the period when he wrote his Confessions, mentions, as a matter of course, that sexual dreams "not merely arouse pleasure, but gain the consent of the will." (X. 41.) Not infrequently there is a struggle in sleep, just as the hypnotic subject may resist suggestions; thus, a lady of thirty-five dreamed a sexual dream, and awoke without excitement; again she fell asleep, and had another dream of sexual character, but resisted the tendency to excitement, and again awoke; finally, she fell asleep and had a third sexual dream, which was this time accompanied by the orgasm. (This has recently been described also by Näcke, who terms it pollutio interrupta, Neurologisches Centralblatt, Oct. 16, 1909; the corresponding voluntary process in the waking state is described by Rohleder and termed masturbatio interrupta, Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, Aug., 1908.) The factors involved in the acquirement of vesical and sexual control during sleep are the same, but the conditions are somewhat different.
There is a very intimate connection between the vesical and the sexual spheres, as I have elsewhere pointed out (see e.g. in the third volume of these Studies, "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse"). This connection is psychic as well as organic. Both in men and women, a full bladder tends to develop erotic dreams. (See e.g. K. A. Scherner, Das Leben des Traums, 1861, pp. 187 et seq.; Spitta also points out the connection between vesical and erotic dreams, Die Schlaf und Traumzustände, 2d ed., 1882, pp. 250 et seq.) Raymond and Janet state (Les Obscessions, vol. ii, p. 135) that nocturnal incontinence of urine, accompanied by dreams of urination, may be replaced at puberty by masturbation. In the reverse direction, Freud believes (Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie, Bd. XVIII, p. 433) that masturbation plays a large part in causing the bed-wetting of children who have passed the age when that usually ceases, and he even finds that children are themselves aware of the connection.
The diagnostic value of sexual dreams, as an indication of the sexual nature of the subject when awake, has been emphasized by various writers. (E.g., Moll, Die Konträre Sexualempfindung, Ch. IX; Näcke, "Der Traum als feinstes Reagens für die Art des sexuellen Empfindens," Monatsschrift für Kriminalpsychologie, 1905, p. 500.) Sexual dreams tend to reproduce, and even to accentuate, those characteristics which make the strongest sexual appeal to the subject when awake.
At the same time, this general statement has to be qualified, more especially as regards inverted dreams. In the first place, a young man, however normal, who is not familiar