ON MASTURBATION - - - - - ! The Non-discussable !
Dr. Arnie Zucker, a close friend and long time professional colleague, is an aging and effective psychiatrist. He and I team taught HUMAN SEXUALITY on a graduate level for 16 years. We argued amiably, disagreed with passion, involved our bright verbal students into dialogue and had marvelous fun and camaraderie.
For 30 class hours and innumerable informal “fireside” gatherings each year, we explored the great mysteries of what it might mean that we are all sexual beings. Wit h incredible openness, the faculty team and student body dug into both research findings and personal anecdotes to try to fathom the MYSTERY of the sexuality of the human being. Promiscuity, infidelity, rape, porno, child molestation, homosexuality, the bar scene, biological urges, anatomical structures, physiology, celibacy, sexual fantasies and all the rest of the classic Graduate level curricula were encountered with enthusiasm, energy and personal conviction. But there was a strange exception: masturbation !!
For some reason, when this topic was introduced for study and discussion a kind of heavy resistant mutism filled the room. In the whole 16 years, I can remember only one student reacting differently. She was an anorexic type, heavily wrinkled loner who shouted “ YEA!!!” when I announced that the immediately future study hours were to be on “ auto-sex.”
Arnie brought to my attention after our first few years teaching this course how silent the students were during the Masturbation unit. This was weird since our Iona students were noted for their outspoken views and their personal freedom in espousing their own particular conviction.
Why was this? What is it about masturbation which can intimidate such free spirited grad students? How does one account for this anomaly, this departure from a pattern?
Since both of us were psychotherapists, used to plumbing for hidden dynamics, we were enthused to attempt to discover “what is going on?” We both knew very well that external behaviors are often symptomatic of what is really happening deep within the psyche ( or preferably “soul”) Wise old Sig F. noted that “things are rarely what they seem.” Is it simply that people mastubate because “ … it feels good” ? Or is there something deeper involved here? And why the secrecy? Why the gag on discussion when these very students insist on their right to verbalize the rationale of their behavior and lifestyle?
Is there something about the very nature of masturbation that is disordered? Or vile ? Or weak ? Or what? Incidentally, I note that different terms are attached to this “masturbatory behavior.” I’ve heard self abuse, self pollution,” jacking off”,
“ sex with myself”, “ jerking off”, pocket-pool and some circumlocutionary expressions apparently attempting to verbalize masturbation actions without actually admitting to it--- and so on and on and on. What is it about masturbation that tends to hide such “goings on”? If it is so healthy and apple-pie American, why the dissimulation? Why the secrecy?
Why do so many patients ( and/or penitents) describe a kind of depression and self loathing after masturbating? Freud described post-masturbatory affects as temporary neurosthenic mild depression. In the jargon of the streets, What gives?
A possible clue comes from the creative group called Sexaholics Anonymous or simply SA ( clearly a spin-off from AA ) with their structure of the 12 steps. In their boldly stated position on sexual health called THE WHITE BOOK, which is really a handbook of their treatment process for persons addicted to sex , masturbation is unequivocally prohibited or at the least strongly discouraged.
They reason thusly.
The sexual drive functions most healthily when it is primarily directed lovingly , non-lustfully and non-possesssively to a Significant Other ! The enemy to healthy sex is LUST which can be defined as total sexual immersion in oneself. When one uses sex solely ( or almost so ) for one’s personal satisfaction and pleasure, one becomes lustful. On a deep unconscious level the psyche recognizes the intrinsic disorder and consequently experiences some disorientation which can surface as depression or self hatred. Obviously, there is enormous personal pleasure in healthy sexual behavior. Such healthy behavior does not mean that one is thinking ONLY of the other. The point of the SA position is that LUST totally overpowers the desire to please the “Beloved” and becomes self involved to the point of Narcississm. One can recall the huge reaction of an almost illiterate Media population when Pope John Paul II noted that no man can morally LUST after his wife. The media failed to see the distinction between God given / God approved passion and predominately uncaring selfish lust. Or—reification whereby one reduces the “other” to a non-person or thing.
Masturbation uses the powerful sex drive meant for “ the other”, for love,closeness, affection and union with the beloved and turns this drive totally back to oneself with a circularity which rules out true loving interpersonal behavior . One might recall the famous Woody Allen line in which he states his case against his girl friend’s disapporval of masturbation. “ Don’t knock it—you’re talking about the one I love.” Further, it is usually accompanied by sexual fantasies which, by definition, are often illusionary and which, in time, can disequip a person from satisfying relationships with the person of reality.
This, then, is lust which cannot satisfy deep yearnings but can only act as a temporary “ medication” to numb out loneliness, frustration, fear and deprivation ( all of which return in full or fuller force when the “ fix” wears off----and like any of the other addictions used as the “ quick fix.”)
While such reasoning is highly psychological, there are also very powerful and perennial spiritual factors which argue for abstinence from self stimulation “ to orgasm.” Yet, there are many dissenting voices even within the religious community. Recently, I was sitting with two Catholic priests probing the masturbation question along the lines of the SA tradition, when one of the Fathers ( who struggles with a serious sexual history) plaintively , almost whiningly, stated: “ But…. it’s not a sin !!!!!”
Apparently, he echoes the “ wishful” thinking rife in the Liberal wing of the American sacerdotal membership. Many years ago, (1965) the book THE SEXUAL CELIBATE ( Don Goergen OP) argued that for celibates, masturbation is licit and even recommended when one is tense, worried, lonely or can’t sleep. Sex as a sleeping pill !! Or perhaps, the lesser of two evils when one is tempted to act out sinfully with another person. Does one resist one evil by using another?
Shades of Thomas Aquinas who taught that the Evil One presents sin as if it were a good. Otherwise, even the naïve would be able to resist outright evil—unadorned and plain.
The human will MUST reach for the good—as perceived!
The modern or liberal moral position in effect destroys the whole moral system—since nothing really – in se-- is evil. Everything depends on one’s perception. Deconstructionism then prevails ……Evil has won.
From a Catholic point of view, evil does exist regardless of how one sees “ reality.” See the official CATHOLIC position on “auto sex” dating way back to 1976:
“ The traditional Catholic doctrine that masturbation constitutes a grave moral disorder is often called into doubt or expressly denied today. It is said that psychology and sociology show that it is a normal phenomenon of sexual development, especially among the young. It is stated that there is real and serious fault only in the measure that the subject deliberately indulges in solitary pleasure closed in on self, because in this case the act would indeed be radically opposed to the loving communion between persons of different sex which some hold is what is principally sought in the use of the sexual faculty.
This opinion is contradictory to the teaching and pastoral practice of the Catholic Church.
Declaration Concerning Sexual Ethics
S.Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Osservatore Romano, Jan. 22 1976, pp5 and 11.
For a more current articulation of the Catholic view of masturbation one can cite the CATHECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. ( Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994)` where in item # 2352, we can read the following.
“ by masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the g enital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action. The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose…..”
So perhaps, for Catholics, the discomfort attendant upon discussing masturbation is linked not only to the sense of
emotional dis- ease, post masturbation, but also might be linked to the guilt sense rising from official Catholic assessments concerning this kind of self stimulation.
In the 1950’s, two Catholic commentators in the book COUNSELING THE CATHOLIC (G. Hagmaier CSP and
J. Gleason SJ) approach ed masturbation in m anner totally different from the traditional mode. It was at least implied that this might be nothing more than a developmental experience shared by most human beings particularly in the adolescent stage. No moral dimension involved!!! The Catechism certainly understands the difference between objective and subjective responsibility as is shown in # 2352 . “ To form an equitable judgment about the
subjects’ moral respponsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety, or other psychological or social factors that lessen or even extenuate moral culpabillity.”
Yet to go from such a measured , compassionate and real stance to a total jettisoning of the Catholic position is unwarrented. Do we hear the familiar rumblings of the slippery slope?
There is a further factor to be considered in the strange silence about the “ secret” habit. Duplicity !!! Does the progressive and liberal Catholic fear to articulate his REAL view of masturbation? Does he give lip service to Catholic teaching or imply consent by silence when privately he behaves differently? Does he support or advise or teach those who insist that masturbation is nothing more than maintaining one’s mental health ? If this is so, then clearly he has lost integrity. He would then operate on two conflicting levels at the same time.
The statistic that human beings almost universally have masturbated at SOME time in their lives is adduced as proof that such behavior is normal---- at ANY age ! Then, one asks whether or not morality is decided by frequency of performance or consensus or some other social device?
This is an interesting subject. It is too vast to contain within this short essay but it can be an exploration into honesty. At least into an area that irritates the politically correct. That alone is worth the effort