Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Vol. 1-6). Havelock Ellis
p. 58) gives the case of a young homosexual woman, a trick cyclist at the music halls, who often, when excited by the sight of her colleague in tights, would experience the orgasm while cycling before the public.
[226] Janet has, however, used day-dreaming—which he calls "reveries subconscients"—to explain a remarkable case of demon-possession, which he investigated and cured. (Névroses et Idées fixes, vol. i, pp. 390 et seq.)
[227] "Minor Studies from the Psychological Laboratory of Wellesley College," American Journal of Psychology, vol. vii, No. 1. G. E. Partridge ("Reverie," Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1898) well describes the physical accompaniments of day-dreaming, especially in Normal School girls between sixteen and twenty-two. Pick ("Clinical Studies in Pathological Dreaming," Journal of Mental Sciences, July, 1901) records three more or less morbid cases of day-dreaming, usually with an erotic basis, all in apparently hysterical men. An important study of day-dreaming, based on the experiences of nearly 1,500 young people (more than two-thirds girls and women), has been published by Theodate L. Smith ("The Psychology of Day Dreams," American Journal Psychology, October, 1904). Continued stories were found to be rare—only one per cent. Healthy boys, before fifteen, had day-dreams in which sports, athletics, and adventure had a large part; girls put themselves in the place of their favorite heroines in novels. After seventeen, and earlier in the case of girls, day-dreams of love and marriage were found to be frequent. A typical confession is that of a girl of nineteen: "I seldom have time to build castles in Spain, but when I do, I am not different from most Southern girls; i.e., my dreams are usually about a pretty fair specimen of a six-foot three-inch biped."
[228] The case has been recorded of a married woman, in love with her doctor, who kept a day-dream diary, at last filling three bulky volumes, when it was discovered by her husband, and led to an action for divorce; it was shown that the doctor knew nothing of the romance in which he played the part of hero. Kiernan, in referring to this case (as recorded in John Paget's Judicial Puzzles), mentions a similar case in Chicago.
[229] Uranisme, p. 125.
[230] The acute Anstie remarked, more than thirty years ago, in his work on Neuralgia: "It is a comparatively frequent thing to see an unsocial, solitary life (leading to the habit of masturbation) joined with the bad influence of an unhealthy ambition, prompting to premature and false work in literature and art." From the literary side, M. Léon Bazalgette has dealt with the tendency of much modern literature to devote itself to what he calls "mental onanism," of which the probable counterpart, he seems to hint, is a physical process of auto-erotism. (Léon Bazalgette, "L'onanisme considéré comme principe createur en art," L'Esprit Nouveau, 1898.)
[231] Pausanias, Achaia, Chapter XVII. The ancient Babylonians believed in a certain "maid of the night," who appeared to men in sleep and roused without satisfying their passions. (Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia, p. 262.) This succubus was the Assyrian Liler, connected with the Hebrew Lilith. There was a corresponding incubus, "the little night man," who had nocturnal intercourse with women. (Cf. Ploss, Das Weib, 7th ed., pp. 521 et seq.) The succubus and the incubus (the latter being more common) were adopted by Christendom; St. Augustine (De Civitate Dei, Bk. XV, Ch. XXIII) said that the wicked assaults of sylvans and fauns, otherwise called incubi, on women, are so generally affirmed that it would be impudent to deny them. Incubi flourished in mediæval belief, and can scarcely, indeed, be said to be extinct even to-day. They have been studied by many authors; see, e.g., Dufour, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. v, Ch. XXV, Saint-André, physician-in-ordinary to the French King, pointed out in 1725 that the incubus was a dream. It may be added that the belief in the succubus and incubus appears to be widespread. Thus, the West African Yorubas (according to A. B. Ellis) believe that erotic dreams are due to the god Elegbra, who, either as a male or a female, consorts with men and women in sleep.
[232] "If any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall bathe all his flesh in water and be unclean until the even. And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water and be unclean until the even." Leviticus, XV, v. 16–17.
[233] It should be added that the term pollutio also covers voluntary effusion of semen outside copulation. (Debreyne, Mœchialogie, p. 8; for a full discussion of the opinions of theologians concerning nocturnal and diurnal pollutions, see the same author's Essai sur la Théologie Morale, pp. 100–149.)
[234] Memoirs, translated by Bendyshe, p. 182.
[235] Sexual Impotence, p. 137.
[236] L'Hygiène Sexuelle, p. 169.
[237] Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, p. 164.
[238] I may here refer to the curious opinion expressed by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, that, while the sexual impulse in man is usually relieved by seminal emissions during sleep, in women it is relieved by the occurrence of menstruation. This latter statement is flagrantly at variance with the facts; but it may perhaps be quoted in support of the view expressed above as to the comparative rarity of sexual excitement during sleep in young girls.
[239] Löwenfeld has recently expressed the same opinion. Rohleder believes that pollutions are physically impossible in a real virgin, but that opinion is too extreme.
[240] It may be added that in more or less neurotic women and girls, erotic dreams may be very frequent and depressing. Thus, J. M. Fothergill (West-Riding Asylum Report, 1876, vol. vi) remarks: "These dreams are much more frequent than is ordinarily thought, and are the cause of a great deal of nervous depression among women. Women of a highly-nervous diathesis suffer much more from these drains than robust women. Not only are these involuntary orgasms more frequent among such women, but they cause more disturbance of the general health in them than in other women."
[241] I may remark here that a Russian correspondent considers that I have greatly underestimated the frequency of erotic manifestations during sleep in young girls. "All the women I have interrogated on this point," he informs me, "say that they have had such pollutions from the time of puberty, or even earlier, accompanied by erotic dreams. I have put the question to some twenty or thirty women. It is true that they were of southern race (Italian, Spanish, and French), and I believe that Southerners are, in this matter, franker than northern women, who consider the activity of the flesh as shameful, and seek to conceal it." My correspondent makes no reference to the chief point of sexual difference, so far as my observation goes, which is that erotic dreams are comparatively rare in those women "who have yet had no sort of sexual experience in waking life." Whether or not this is correct, I do not question the frequency of erotic dreams in girls who have had such experience.