<< Conclusions >>

In fine, the data add up as follows:

  1.  The males who are first adolescent begin their sexual activity almost immediately and maintain higher frequencies in sexual activity for a matter of at least 35 or 40 years.

  2.  The factors which contribute to this early adolescence apparently continue to operate for at least these 35 or 40 years.

  3.  Exercise of the sexual capacities does not seem to impair those capacities, at least as they are exercised by most of the persons who belong in the highest-rating segment of the population. While it is theoretically conceivable that very high rates of activity might contribute to physical impairment, or indirectly to diseased conditions, or to other difficulties in certain cases, the actual record includes exceedingly few high-rating males whose activities have had such an outcome.

  4.  Those individuals who become adolescent late, however, more often delay the start of their sexual activities and have the minimum frequencies of activity, both in their early years and throughout the remainder of their lives. If any of these individuals have deliberately chosen low frequencies in order to conserve their energies for later use, they appear never to have found the sufficient justification for such a use at any later time. It is probable that most of these low rating individuals never were capable of higher rates and never could have increased their rates to match those of the more active segments of the population.

  5.  In general, the boys who were first mature are the ones who most often turn to masturbation and, interestingly enough, to pre-marital socio-sexual contacts as well. They engage in both heterosexual and homosexual relations more frequently than the boys who are last in maturing.

There is some reason for thinking that these early-adolescent males are more often the more alert, energetic, vivacious, spontaneous, physically active, socially extrovert, and/or aggressive individuals in the population. Actually, 53 per cent of the early-adolescent boys are so described on their histories, while only 33 per cent of the late-adolescent boys received such personality ratings. Conversely, 54 per cent of the males who were last-adolescent were described as slow, quiet, mild in manner, without force, reserved, timid, taciturn, introvert, and/or socially inept, while only 31 per cent of the early-adolescent boys fell under such headings. There are, of course, some individuals who do not fall clearly into either of these classifications. Prior to analyzing these data for the present chapter, we had no indication that we would find this sort of correlation and, consequently, all of the personality notations on the original histories were made without regard for the ages at which adolescence had occurred.

There is, of course, much individual variation on all of these matters, and there is no invariable correlation between personalities and rates of sexual activity. There are some very energetic and socially extrovert individuals who rate low in their sexual frequencies, and there are quiet and even timid individuals who have considerable socio-sexual activity. Behavior is always the product of a multiplicity of factors, no one of which can be identified as the exclusive or predominant agent in more than some small portion of the cases which one studies.

There is evidence that the late-maturing males have more limited sexual capacities which would be badly strained if, through any circumstance, they tried to raise their rates to the levels maintained by the sexually more capable persons. If further studies show that some physiologic quality, such as metabolic rate, works together with or through the hormones to determine the time of onset of adolescence, it may become a matter of clinical importance to exercise some control over that event. If this were done, would the subsequent sexual performance then be affected? Parents and clinicians may properly be concerned with such questions.

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