Multiple Orgasm in the Human Male

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It is not simple to determine the extent to which an individual’s total outlet represents something less than the rate to which he would rise if there were no restrictions on his behavior. In a few cases, however, it is possible to make some analyses.

Table 60. Total outlet in relation to marital status and age

Age Group	Total Sample Population
	Cases				Mean Frequency
	Single	Married	Post- marital		Single	Married	Post- marital
Adol.-15	3012				2.91
16-20	2868	272	46		2.88	4.67	4.08
21-25	1535	751	119		2.67	3.90	3.70
26-30	550	737	182		2.63	3.27	2.93
31-35	195	569	158		2.38	2.73	1.93
36-40	97	390	128		2.07	2.46	1.69
41-45	56	272	96		1.79	1.95	1.49
46-50	39	175	63		1.88	1.79	1.26
51-55		109	42			1.54	1.17
56-60		67				1.08
Age Group	Active Cases in Sample Population
	Incidence %				Mean Frequency
	Single	Married	Post- marital		Single	Married	Post- marital
Adol.-15	95.1				3.06
16-20	99.2	100.0	97.8		2.90	4.67	4.17
21-25	99.1	100.0	98.3		2.70	3.90	3.76
26-30	99.3	100.0	97.3		2.65	3.27	3.01
31-35	99.0	100.0	94.9		2.40	2.73	2.04
36-40	97.9	99.7	97.7		2.12	2.47	1.73
41-45	96.4	100.0	93.7		1.85	1.95	1.59
46-50	92.3	98.9	93.7		2.04	1.81	1.35
51-55		98.2	88.1			1.57	1.33
56-60		98.5				1.09
Age Group	Corrected for U. S. Population
	Total Population		Active Population
	Mean Frequency		Incidence %			Mean Frequency
	Single	Married	Single	Married		Single	Married
Adol.-15	3.17		94.2			3.36
16-20	3.30	4.83	98.8	100.0		3.35	4.83
21-25	3.04	4.14	97.9	100.0		3.11	4.14
26-30	2.94	3.51	98.6	100.0		2.98	3.51
31-35	2.44	2.90	99.2	100.0		2.46	2.90
36-40	2.00	2.42	98.5	99.9		2.04	2.42
41-45		1.95		100.0			1.95
46-50		1.80		98.1			1.83
51-55		1.54		97.2			1.58
Data for the U. S. population are based on the sample population which is corrected for the distribution of educational levels which is shown in the U. S. Census for 1940. For sigmas of means, median frequencies, etc., see the tables in Chapter 7.

The rates of unmarried males between the ages of 16 and 20 average 3.35 (based on 2868 histories, corrected for the U. S. Census distribution) while the rates for married males of the same age group average 4.83 (Table 60). The difference of 1.5 ejaculations per week is to a considerable extent dependent upon the social restrictions on pre-marital activity. It is probable that the biologic capacity of the average younger male is even higher than 4.8 per week, for even in marriage there is considerable interference with sexual performance. Periods of menstruation and pregnancy cause interruption of activity. Most males would have intercourse more frequently if their spouses were more interested, if other occupations did not interfere, if business routines that take precedence over intercourse did not leave one physically and mentally fatigued by the time sexual contacts are available. The human animal usually demands a certain privacy which is not always available when intercourse or other outlets are most desired; society tries to restrict all sexual activities to monogamous relations; and moral codes put a taint on many sorts of sexual gratification. It seems safe to assume that daily orgasm would be within the capacity of the average human male, and that the more than daily rates which have been observed for some primate species (Sokolowsky 1923, Bingham 1928, Yerkes and Elder 1936, Carpenter 1942, Young and Orbison 1944), could be matched by a large portion of the human population if sexual activity were unrestricted. The males who are astounded to find that 7.6 per cent of the population does, in actuality, have daily or more than daily outlet are, in most cases, simply unaware of their own capacities. Since this percentage of the males already has daily rates, in spite of the restrictions on their behavior, it is probable that such a percentage of the population would, under optimal conditions, be involved in still more frequent activity during the first five or ten years of their adolescent and adult lives.

In another study we will present data on the relation of sexual and physical activity. There is no invariable correlation, and the list of top athletes includes persons with both low and high rates of sexual outlet. On the whole it is evident that general good health and, therefore, the physical activity which engenders good health, may contribute to an increase in the frequency of sexual performance. Only physical exercise which is carried to the point of exhaustion interferes with sexual as well as other sorts of reactions.

Sexual abstinence for short periods of time, such as a few days or weeks, is of common occurrence; but average frequencies as low as once in two weeks, or lower, occur in only 11.2 per cent of the males under 31 years of age (Table 40). Average frequencies ranging between 0.0 and once in ten weeks (for any five-year period under 31 years of age) occur in only about 2.9 per cent of the population. There is a steady increase in the number of low-rating males after age 35. The list may include some whose pruderies led them to understate the frequency of their sexual activity; but this is more likely to be true among the females, and it is probably not true of more than an insignificantly small portion of the male population, for most males are inclined to be ashamed of very low rates of activity. On the other hand, the list of inactive males includes some persons of such superior scientific and other professional training that there can be no question that their statements were as complete and accurate as could be made. The low-rating males have all sorts of educational, religious, and social backgrounds (Table 41). Larger segments of the low-rating population come, however, from persons with lower grade school education (many of whom are of lower intellectual capacity and dull sexually as well as mentally); from persons who are religiously most active (especially devout Catholics and Orthodox Jews); and particularly from males who are late in arriving at adolescence.

Table 41. Individual variation in frequency of total sexual outlet

Group	Population in Total Study	Low Rating Cases	% of Population
Ages Involved
Adol.-15	4102	138	3.4
16-20	3836	80	2.1
21-25	2642	47	1.8
26-30	1405	25	1.8
31-35	950	22	2.3
Educational Level
Grades 0-4	173	19	11.0
Grades 5-8	729	45	6.2
High School 9-12	724	25	3.5
College 13-16	1413	43	3.0
Professional 17+	1063	47	4.4
Occupational Class
1. Underworld	81	2	2.5
2. Day Laborers	708	44	6.2
3. Semi-Skilled Laborers	839	54	6.4
4. Skilled Laborers	287	21	7.3
5. Lower White Collar	1116	41	3.7
6. Upper White Collar	1288	45	3.5
7. Professional	595	29	4.9
8. Business Executive	26	1	3.8
Religion
Protestant: Inactive	2310	89	3.9
Protestant: Active	834	51	6.1
Catholic: Inactive	303	9	3.0
Catholic: Active	173	13	7.5
Jewish: Inactive	436	10	2.3
Jewish: Active	64	6	9.4
Total: Inactive	3049	108	3.5
Total: Active	1071	70	6.5
Age At Onset Of Adolescence
9-12	1252	25	2.0
13	1339	40	3.0
14	1093	74	6.8
15	281	19	6.8
16+	104	8	7.7
Every age and every educational, religious, and social background are represented. Larger segments of the low-rating population come from poorly educated and religiously devout persons, and from males who became adolescent at late ages.

An examination of these cases of low outlet should give some information on the incidence of so-called sublimation. The concept, ascribed by the psychoanalysts to Freud (Brill, in Freud 1938), implies that it is possible for an individual to divert his sexual energies to such “higher levels” of activity as art, literature, science, and other socially more acceptable channels. The concept is, of course, much older than Freud. Its affinity to Christian, Hebraic, Greek, and more ancient asceticism is betrayed by its recognition of social values, and confirmed by the speed with which moral leaders of all denominations have adopted the term to cover everything that Freud originally intended, and abstinence, self-control, stern suppression, and the rest of the ascetic virtues as well. One can hardly object if a supposedly scientific concept has been turned into a moral issue, when the supposedly scientific concept amounted, in the first place, to little more than a formalization of an age-old tenet of several religions. Its original presentation (Freud, 1938 transl.) was dogmatic and without supporting data, and its subsequent treatment has usually involved little more than a faithful acceptance of the doctrine (e.g., Henry 1938, Brown 1940, Allen 1940, Young 1940, Brill 1944).

The importance of a soundly scientific critique of the whole theory of sublimation can hardly be over-emphasized. A great many persons have tried to establish their sexual lives on the assumption that sublimation is possible and the outcome desirable. In the histories available in the present study there are many cases of individuals who make definite and distinct, and sometimes heroic, efforts (also see Brockman 1902) to control their responses and who, in actuality, reduce the frequencies of their orgasms considerably below the levels which they otherwise would attain. But it still remains to be determined whether these persons turn their sexual energies into “higher” things, as nervous energy is shunted from one to another portion of a nervous system, or electricity short-circuited into new paths and channels. If sublimation is a reality, it should be possible to find individuals whose erotic responses have been reduced or eliminated, without nervous disturbance, as a result of an expenditure of energy in utterly non-sexual activities. It does not suffice to cite artists, or statesmen, or other busy persons as cases of sublimation, merely because they are energetic in the pursuit of their non-sexual professions. Certainly no one who actually knew the sexual histories of particular artists would have thought of using them as illustrations of sexually sublimated people. It is not sufficient to cite sexually apathetic or frigid women as examples of sublimation with no regard to the high incidence of relatively unresponsive females who never had any appreciable amount of sexual energy to be diverted. There must be a determination, based on an objective and thorough psychologic, psychoanalytic, and physiologic examination, of the incidence of persons of proved sexual capacity who have expended at least part of that energy in non-sexual activities, and whose energies are not merely dulled or suppressed.

We, in the present study, are not qualified to make all of these necessary analyses. It is possible, however, to draw attention to the sorts of cases that might conceivably serve as instances of sublimation, and to show the presence of other factors that must be taken into account in analyzing such histories. The most likely cases are those with unusually low rates of outlet. There are 179 males in our series who are under 36 years of age and whose rates have averaged once in two weeks, or lower, for periods of at least five years. These are the males whose histories would be most likely to show evidence of sublimation. There may be high-rating individuals whose activities would be still more frequent if they were not sublimated, but such cases will be more difficult to recognize and to analyze.

(1)    Among these 179 males with the lowest rates, there are a few individuals (9 males = 5.0%) who are in such poor health, or otherwise so incapacitated by structural, hormonal, or other physical deficiencies, that all heavy expenditures of energy are impossible or held at a minimum. At ages over 45 there is a fair number of cases of impotency, and at younger ages there are a few males (4 cases cited in the previous chapter) who have been totally impotent throughout their lives for physical or physiologic reasons. There are more cases of younger males who are impotent under particular situations; but at ages under 36, neither erectal nor ejaculatory impotence accounts for more than a few stray cases of low rates of outlet. Other physical deficiencies are involved in the 9 cases which belong in this list.

(2)    There is another group of males (at least 52.5% of the above tabulation) who are apathetic. They never, at any time in their histories, have given evidence that they were capable of anything except low rates of activity. These are persons who would be described, figuratively, as “low in sex drive.” Whether the factors are biologic, psychologic, or social, it is certain that such persons exist. After these apathetic persons have had orgasm, they may go for some days or weeks without further arousal. There are few if any psychologic stimuli which will excite them, and even when these males deliberately put themselves in erotic situations which involve active petting and genital manipulation they may be unable to respond more than once in several weeks. This situation is even more often found among females, 30 per cent of whom are more or less sexually unresponsive. Such fundamentally apathetic persons are the ones who are most often moral (conforming with the mores), most insistent that it is a simple matter to control sexual response, and most likely to offer themselves as examples of the possibility of the diversion of probably nonexistent sexual energies. But such inactivity is no more sublimation of sex drive than blindness or deafness or other perceptive defects are sublimation of those capacities.

There is an inclination among psychiatrists to consider all unresponding individuals as inhibited, and there is a certain scepticism in the profession of the existence of people who are basically low in capacity to respond. This amounts to asserting that all people are more or less equal in their sexual endowments, and ignores the existence of individual variation. No one who knows how remarkably different individuals may be in morphology, in physiologic reactions, and in other psychologic capacities, could conceive of erotic capacities (of all things) that were basically uniform throughout a population. Considerable psychiatric therapy can be wasted on persons (especially females) who are misjudged to be cases of repression when, in actuality, at least some of them never were equipped to respond erotically.

(3)    In this list of relatively inactive males there are 35 cases (19.6%) who were delayed in starting activity, but whose rates were abruptly and materially increased as soon as they made their first socio-sexual contacts. As their later performances demonstrated, their earlier rates were low only because their capacities had not been awakened. Having once been conditioned by sexual experience, these males subsequently found it difficult to get along without regular sexual outlet. Such histories are not cases of sublimation.

(4)    There are many cases of males of proved sexual capacity who are suddenly forced into relative inactivity by being deprived of opportunities for outlet. Sometimes this results in nervous disturbance; but where the individuals are effectively removed from sources of erotic arousal, most of them are able to adjust to the lower rates. This is best illustrated by the many hundreds of histories which we have from men who have been confined to penal institutions, some of them for periods of as much as twenty or twenty-five years. In a prison, there may be opportunity for such outlets as masturbation, nocturnal emission, the homosexual, or a stray experience of some other sort; but the sum total of sexual activity is very much below that found in similar groups outside of an institution. In a short-time prison, the majority of the men do not accept homosexual contacts, and there are a great many who, coming from a social level in which masturbation is taboo and from a social level where nocturnal emissions are at a minimum, may go for long periods of months, or for a year or more, without ejaculation. A few of these men are nervously disturbed as a result of their lack of outlet; but most of them live comfortably enough, apparently because there is little erotic arousal which needs to be relieved by orgasm. The men in such institutions regularly insist that there is very little if any arousal from conversation, printed pictures, descriptions in literature, or anything short of actual contact with a sexual partner. Educated persons are commonly misled by the constant discussion of sex for which prisons, armies, factories, and other places of partial restraint are notorious. Academically trained students are too prone to interpret such situations in terms of their own, highly conditioned, responses. For the more poorly educated portion of the population, however, there is a minimum of erotic fantasy, and 91.5 per cent of all of those committed to penal institutions never go beyond high school in their education (U. S. Census 1940). In consequence, these prison males do not illustrate sublimation, for they have little or no aroused sexual energy which needs dissipation. This is such a special situation that prison cases are not included in the above list of low-rating cases, and frequencies in prison have not entered into any of the calculations of the rates of outlet in the present volume.

There are, however, males who represent cases of deprivation under more usual situations, such as divorce, the illness of the wife, and other causes; and these constitute 8.3 per cent of the low-rating list given above.

(5) Finally there are timid or inhibited individuals in this low-rating list, who are afraid of approaching other persons for sexual relations, afraid of condemnation were they to engage in such socially taboo behavior as masturbation, pre-marital intercourse, or the homosexual; or afraid of their own self condemnation if they were to engage in almost any sort of sexual activity. This accounts for more than half of the low-rating list (58.1%). Some of these individuals become paranoid in their fear of moral transgression, or its outcome. There are 9 cases of attempted suicide among the histories of males who were trying to suppress some aspect of their sexual activity. These individuals readily acquire and accept every superstitious tale concerning the consequences of masturbation; ascribe every pimple and stomach ache, their limitations in height and their failures in school or business to their occasional departures from the moral code; and seek religious confession, penance, and introverted solitude as means of avoiding further sin. Many of these individuals in actuality reduce the frequencies of their orgasms considerably below the level of the rest of the population.

If they are better educated persons, and especially if they have some command of psychology, these inhibited persons rationalize more adroitly, admit that masturbation does no physical harm, but reason that it is bad to continue a habit that may subsequently make one unfit for normal marital relations, decide that pre-marital intercourse similarly unfits one for making satisfactory sexual adjustments in marriage, that the homosexual is a biologic abnormality, and that extra-marital intercourse inevitably destroys homes. Even among scientifically trained persons, these propositions are offered as excuses for their sexual inactivity. Of 58 male psychologists who have contributed histories to the present study, 57 have defended one or more of these theses, in spite of the fact that no one of these conclusions has ever been justified by objective data that would satisfy scientists in any field that did not have a moral (traditional) implication. Out of 74 male psychiatrists who have contributed, 70 defend one or more of these same prejudices. These are all rationalizations, clutched at in support of a sexual suppression that is too often mistaken for sublimation.

Table 42. Sexual outlet in a restrained group of males

Outlet	Cases in Restrained Group	A Restrained Group of 134 Males Compared with U. S. Population
Outlet		Restrained Group	U. S. Population
Total outlet		Mean Frequency	Mean Frequency
Single males, at age:
Adol.-15	130	2.26	3.17
16-20	132	2.11	3.30
21-25	115	1.68	3.04
26-30	36	1.65	2.94
Married males, at age:
21-25	22	3.10	4.14
26-30	24	2.58	3.51
		Accumulative incidence %	Accumulative incidence %
Masturbation	124	92.5	93.0
Pre-marital intercourse	60	44.8	85.0
Homosexual	44	32.8	35.0
Compared with the U. S. population of same age and marital status.

Recently we have secured histories from a segregated group of males, a high percentage of whom are sexually restrained. This has provided an unusual opportunity to see the results of suppression on a large scale. The group is not at all typical of the American population as a whole. It is drawn largely (82.8%) from males in their twenties (Table 42), almost wholly from college trained (90.3%) and white collar levels (93.3%), and almost wholly from Protestant religious groups (96.3%), with 43.3 per cent of the group actively religious, which is about double the number of actively religious persons in the total population on which the present study is based. The mean frequencies of total outlet of the segregated group, both in the single and the married histories, are between a half and two-thirds of the frequencies for corresponding age groups in the total population. The incidences of masturbation and of homosexual contacts in the group are almost identical with those found in the total population, but the incidence of pre-marital intercourse is definitely less (74% of the figure for the total population). The group has been honored by several religious organizations for its idealism and its refusal to allow any interference with its ideals. Many of these males are belligerently defensive of their sexual philosophy. Some of them are vociferous in claiming that they are perfect examples of sublimation, and many outsiders look on the group as sexually sublimated. However, several of the members of the group were receiving psychiatric attention at the time of our interviews, and several psychiatrists have reached the conclusion that a high percentage of the whole group is neurotic.

If then, from the list of low-rating males, one removes those who are physically incapacitated, natively low in sexual drive, sexually unawakened in their younger years, separated from their usual sources of sexual stimulation, or timid and upset by their suppressions, there are simply no cases which remain as clear-cut examples of sublimation. Whether there is partial sublimation among individuals with higher rates of outlet, it would be much harder to determine. Whether there is more real sublimation among certain groups, as among celibate priests, is a matter that cannot be known until we have an adequate sample of histories from such groups. Certain it is that among the many males who have contributed to the present sample, sublimation is so subtle, or so rare, as to constitute an academic possibility rather than a demonstrated actuality. In view of the widespread and easy acceptance of the theory, and the efforts that such a large proportion of the population has made to achieve this goal, one might have expected better evidence of its existence, at least among the sexually least active 5 per cent of the males in the population.

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