Our diagnosis was made on the basis of the Fleisher and Morrison study9 that reported the frequency of an event to vary from 1/week to 12/day, with a mean frequency of 16/week, and a median of 7/week. The mean duration of the event was 9 minutes (median 2.5 minutes, range 30 seconds to 2 hours).9 The median frequency of events in our study was 4/day, and the median duration of the event was 3.9 minutes. The female-to-male ratio was 3:1 in our study. Varied ratios have been reported in other studies.6,9,13 Consistent with our findings, masturbation has been reported to start in most children before 2 years of age.6 Since Jordan is a sexually conservative country with no formal sex education, childhood masturbation may create more parental concern than in Western societies, and the referral rate may differ. Ten (77%) of our children did not attend any follow-up visits after their parents were informed about the diagnosis of childhood masturbation, possibly due to the concern of stigmatization. The etiology of childhood masturbation and its predisposing factors are still controversial and poorly understood. Childhood masturbation has been linked to emotional deprivation, which may in turn lead to more self-stimulation.14 It may also be associated with sexual abuse.14 A possible correlation of childhood masturbation to the duration of breast-feeding has also been reported: masturbation was found to be significantly associated with weaning, but not with pacifier usage.6
In October 1934, Reich and Lindenberg moved to Oslo, Norway, where Harald K. Schjelderup, professor of psychology at the University of Oslo, had invited Reich to lecture on character analysis and vegetotherapy. They ended up staying for five years.[83] During his time in Norway, Reich attempted to ground his orgasm theory in biology, exploring whether Freud's metaphor of the libido was in fact electricity or a chemical substance, an argument Freud had proposed in the 1890s but had abandoned.[84] Reich argued that conceiving of the orgasm as nothing but mechanical tension and relaxation could not explain why some experience pleasure and others do not. He wanted to know what additional element had to be present for pleasure to be felt.[85]
Masturbation 201 By Professor Ho
When Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, Reich's ex-wife and daughters had already left for the United States. Later that year, Theodore P. Wolfe, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, traveled to Norway to study under Reich. Wolfe offered to help Reich settle in the States, and managed to arrange an invitation from The New School in New York for Reich to teach a course on "Biological Aspects of Character Formation". Wolfe and Walter Briehl, a former student of Reich's, put up $5,000 to guarantee his visa.[103] Wolfe also pulled strings with Adolph Berle, an official in the State Department.[104] Reich wrote in his diary in May 1939:
Over the years the FDA interviewed physicians, Reich's students and his patients, asking about the orgone accumulators.[137] A professor at the University of Oregon who bought an accumulator told an FDA inspector that he knew the device was phoney, but found it helpful because his wife sat quietly in it for four hours every day.[146]
49. PML MA 2250. The letter appears in Bradley: 167-8; cf. Burd, Ruskin and Rose: 114-116. In it, Ruskin compares himself to Rousseau who, in his Confessions, admitted to masturbation: for more, see Simpson, esp. 33-5.
Owen Burns's chief accuser on the Potomac was SeamanCummings, and the nature of the various connections among the two men and theboy were made clear when, after Cummings was sworn in as a witness, Burnsasked him to justify the accusations he had made against him. The seamanresponded with a lengthy and rambling narrative detailing how he and Hanson"turned in and out together" on separate watches and how he oftenloaned the boy his pea jacket. On one occasion when the boy did not returnthe coat, the seaman went looking for him. He eventually found him in hishammock. As Cummings told it, he reached into the hammock to retrieve thejacket, and as he groped about he touched the boy's wet penis. The nextday he demanded to know whom Hanson had been with the previous night, and indue course the boy confessed to having been with Lieutenant Burns. Furtherinterrogation produced the information that theirs was a regular practice. Hehad been with Burns four or five times before. Cummings continued hisresponse to the initial question, detailing what he had been told of thecontinuing contacts between Hanson and the lieutenant. On one occasion,shortly after the incident with the jacket, Hanson visited Burns in hiscabin. At another time, Burns summoned him to his cabin. And, according toCummings, there was more. The ship's corporal, Robert Alexson, hadrevealed to him that he had once summoned the boy from his hammock in themiddle of the night at Burns's request and sent him to thelieutenant's room. Seaman Cummings continued, revealing that the boytold him that "Mr. Burns and himself have sit in the room of the formerin the side of the bed and do it for each other." (25) In furtherquestioning, Cummings denied ever saying that the officer and the boycommitted sodomy, explaining that he claimed only that the two went"chaw for chaw," the vernacular phrase for mutual masturbation.(26)
Burns also managed to explain away the self-masturbation charge.He claimed he was only inspecting his penis and not masturbating when acrewman encountered him with his trousers lowered. He was being treated bythe ship's doctor for a venereal infection at the time, he explained,and was merely checking the progress of the cure when observed. ThePotomac's surgeon, Dr. George Terrell, confirmed that he had beentreating Burns for the past two months and said that it might be a verynormal and natural thing for him to be checking regularly on the pace of hisrecovery. (36)
The last lengthy transcript for investigating a sexual offense inthe antebellum US Navy involved fondling, groping, or perhaps masturbationrather than sodomy or attempted sodomy. The way the navy dealt with thematter only reinforces the conclusion drawn from the Lupenny case, that thenavy was more discomfited than enraged by public airings of untoward sexualactivity on board its ships. The case centered on accusations made againstMidshipman Thomas P. Miller by half a dozen of his fellow midshipmen from theUS Frigate Savannah. The six informed Lieutenant Robert B. Hitchcock, thefrigate's executive officer, that Miller had engaged in "certaindisgraceful conduct," the nature of which they did not specify in thenote they presented to him on 10 April 1845. They also sent a pair of notesto Miller on the same day, the first informing him that they had reported hisconduct to the executive officer, the second detailing the charge they leviedagainst him. (54) "You are charged, Sir," they wrote, "withhaving (during our stay in the port about the month of May 1844) creptstealthily (under cover of night) to Mr. [Samuel P.] Griffin's hammockand then while that gentleman was asleep removed the bedclothes from hisperson and taken his penis [several words illegible] in your hand for whatpurpose we are at a loss to imagine." (55) The note to Hitchcock carriedthe signature of each accuser; one of those sent to Miller was signed"Steerage Officers."
There is no explanation to be had from the trial transcript forthe level of hostility and vengefulness exhibited by Genet and Phenix intheir efforts to destroy Miller's career and reputation. Neither isthere any indication that a love triangle played any part in their actions,as was the case in a complicated and lengthy Royal Navy court-martial someyears earlier. (68) What does emerge from the affair is the incendiary natureof shipboard sexual tensions and the willingness of naval officers to dealjudiciously with them. The midshipmen who signed the original complaintagainst Miller knew that the consequences of their action could be far moredestructive than a mere reprimand for more ordinary breaches of conduct orprotocol. The recommendations made by officers to suppress the incident canbe explained most persuasively by lack of evidence rather than hesitation inprosecuting homoerotic matters, but the very language used to describe thealleged contact between Miller and Griffin as well as similar events on boardthe Savannah evinces a calculated lack of specificity. In earlier years, thefew transcripts of trials or inquiries for shipboard sexual offenses werestudded with pungent nouns and verbs, but by the 1840s this had changed. Inboth the Royal and the US Navies earthy language had been banished fromofficial proceedings as ships became more genteel than they had been acentury earlier. "Fuck," "prick," "buggery,"and like nomenclature were things of the past. Miller was charged only withtaking Griffin's penis in his hand, for what purpose, the accuserspuzzled, "we are at a loss to imagine." Were they really at a lossto imagine what would have happened if the just-awakened Griffin had keptsilent? Not likely. Midshipmen were young men for the most part, theirsteerage messes had reputations for unabashed grossness and crudity, and theywere undoubtedly conversant with a host of coarse terms denominating sexualacts. They very likely knew the intent of the perpetrator or perpetrators whodisturbed the sleep of Griffin and others on board the Savannah. The purposewas almost certainly not merely to touch penises or twiddle them momentarilybut to masturbate the men, a not-uncommon nocturnal activity on warships. Yetnowhere is the term "masturbation" used in the inquiry, nor doesits lower-deck equivalent, "fig," appear in the transcript. As wasthe case in the Royal Navy, the officers on board American warships hadmitigated the rough and expressive language of seafarers in Nelson's dayand replaced it with Victorian circumspection. (69)
Anecdotal information on homoerotic contacts in the antebellum USNavy is rare, but the limited data confirm what is suggested by thecourts-martial. Naval officers preferred to deal with such goings-on in anunderstated, professional manner rather than prosecute them in a vindictive,outraged, or hysterical fashion. Henry Bulls Watson, the commander of marineson board the USS Portsmouth, reported that Midshipman Frederick Kellogg ofthe USS Warren was allowed to resign in the 1840s after being accused ofbuggery. Watson also heard of buggery elsewhere in the squadron, but he couldnot decide if the rumors were true. Joseph Downey, storekeeper of thePortsmouth, was once investigated for having "to do" with a boy inhis ship's storeroom. He was acquitted of the charge but demoted forfailing to keep the storeroom locked. As many as three men may have beendischarged from the Savannah during the mid-1840s for taking indecentliberties with their shipmates. By the 1850s marine Philip C. Van Buskirkrailed in his diary against those in positions of authority who turned ablind eye to regular and fairly open mutual masturbation and occasionalsodomy practiced by the corps' drummers and fifers. Men and boyscontinually talked and joked about masturbation, he wrote, and goingchaw-for-chaw was a regular practice of youngsters hiding under boom coversand tarpaulins on the decks of warships. (72) 2ff7e9595c
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