Multiple Orgasm in the Human Male

<< Sexual Fantasies and Sex Dreams >>

Considering the importance which Freud (1938, 1945) and others have attached to the interpretation of dreams, and considering the considerable literature which has in consequence developed on this subject (e.g., Moll 1899, Ellis 1936, Weiss and English 1943, Meyer in Lorand 1944), we will attempt to add nothing at this time except certain factual data that have been accumulated in the course of the present investigation.

Nearly, but not quite, all males experience sexual fantasies during masturbation. The female fantasies much less often while masturbating. Masturbatory fantasies accord with the general psychiatric and psychologic understanding of the matter. The fantasies are heterosexual when the primary interests of the individual are heterosexual, homosexual when the individual’s overt experience or psychic reactions are homosexual. They may be alternately heterosexual and homosexual in the case of the individual who reacts definitely in both directions. The fantasies may include animal contacts for boys who have had such animal experience as some farm boys have. There are occasional sadistic or masochistic fantasies. Just as with nocturnal dreams, there may be some striking disparities between the nature of the fantasies accompanying masturbation and the overt experience of the male, and one cannot discover the history of an individual merely by finding out what he thinks about when he masturbates.

Most males fantasy in connection with most of their masturbation. Fantasies, as a matter of fact, often provide the stimulus which initiates the male’s masturbation. Memories of past experience, the anticipation of renewed experience, and the contemplation of new types of activity are such significant factors in his arousal that it is usually difficult for a male to reach orgasm in masturbation without the aid of some sort of fantasy. Consequently, the female’s ability to achieve orgasm without fantasy emphasizes her greater dependence upon physical and physiologic sources of erotic arousal.

Some 89 per cent of the males in our sample had utilized erotic fantasies as one of their sources of stimulation during masturbation. Some 72 per cent had more or less always fantasied while masturbating. Such fantasies usually turn around memories of previous sexual experience, around sexual experience that the male hopes to have in the future, or around sexual experience which he may never allow himself to have but which he anticipates might bring erotic satisfaction if the law and the social custom made it possible for him to engage in such activity. In not a few instances males develop rather elaborate fictional situations which they regularly review as they masturbate. Quite a few males, particularly among the better educated groups, may, at least on occasion, utilize erotic photographs or drawings, or make their own erotic drawings, or read erotic literature, or write their own erotic stories which they use as sources of stimulation during masturbation. Some 56 per cent of the males in the sample indicated that they observed their own genitalia at least on occasion during masturbation, and while this is more likely to be true of males with homosexual histories, it is also true of many others who give no other evidence of homosexual interests. But in any event, these males find the observation of their own genitalia an additional source of erotic stimulation. So dependent are many males on psychologic stimuli in connection with masturbation that it is probable that many of them, especially middle-aged and older males, would have difficulty in reaching orgasm if they did not fantasy while masturbating.

Fantasies during masturbation
Fantasies Present	among Females	among Males
Fantasies Present	%	%
Almost always	50	72
Sometimes	14	17
Never	36	11
Number of cases	2475	2815

Hamilton 1929:429 reports 36 per cent of females, 69 per cent of males record fantasies during masturbation.

The record shows that only 64 per cent of the females in our sample who had ever masturbated, had fantasied while masturbating. Most of the stimulation which the female secures in masturbation is physical. For more than a third (36 per cent) of the masturbating females in the sample, nothing more than physical stimulation seemed to have been involved (Table 38f). For the remaining two-thirds (64 per cent), psychologic stimulation through fantasy concerning specifically sexual situations had sometimes accompanied the physical stimulation. Only 50 per cent of the females who had masturbated, had regularly fantasied for any period of their lives. For just about half (50 per cent) of the females, fantasies had occurred in connection with most of their masturbation, at least during certain periods of their lives. For a fair number, fantasies had not begun until some years after the masturbation had begun. In consequence, fantasies were more common among the older females, and less common among the younger females. We have nearly no cases of females utilizing erotic books or pictures as sources of stimulation during masturbation.
This frequent dependence of the female on physical stimulation alone is also recognized by: Back 1910:112. Adler 1911:28, 109. Rohleder 1921:14, 48. Liepmann 1922:154. Eberhard 1924:302. Hamilton 1929:429, 430 (47 to 57 per cent). Decurtins in Hornstein and Faller 1950:136.

The data on the fantasies were essentially alike in all of the age groups and in all of the educational levels represented in the sample (Table 38f). In the male the maximum amount of fantasy is found among the better educated groups, but education does not seem to increase the female’s inclination to fantasy.

Masturbatory fantasies may concern heterosexual, homosexual, animal, sado-masochistic, or still other sorts of sexual contacts. With some of the females in the sample the fantasies had been confined to a single one of these categories. With other individuals, two or more types of fantasy had occurred, and with some, different sorts of fantasies had occurred during different periods of their lives.

The fantasies were heterosexual, at least on occasion, for about 60 per cent of those females who had ever masturbated (Table 38f). Some 10 per cent of them, on occasion, and some of them regularly, had had homosexual fantasies. Reflecting the limited occurrence of overt sexual relationships between human females and animals of other species, only about 1 per cent of the females had had fantasies of such relationships. Over 4 per cent of the females had fantasied, at least on occasion, some sort of sado-masochistic situation.
Practically all males who are not exclusively homosexual may be erotically aroused by thinking of certain females, or of females in general. Fewer males of the lower educational levels are aroused by such fantasies, and older males sometimes lose their capacity to be stimulated by fantasies, and males who are exclusively homosexual may not fantasy concerning females. But most of the males in our sample (84 per cent) indicated that they were at least sometimes, and in most instances often aroused by thinking of sexual relations with females — by thinking of the sexual relations that they had previously had, or by thinking of the sexual relations that they anticipated they might have or would like to have. Such erotic stimulation probably occurs more often than any other single type of psychologic stimulation among males.

A smaller percentage (69 per cent) of the females in the sample reported that they had ever had erotic fantasies about males, and nearly a third (31 per cent) insisted that they had never been aroused by thinking about males or of sexual relations with them. They had not even been aroused by thinking of their husbands or of their boy friends. Most of the females who were not aroused by the contemplation of males were heterosexual, and most of them had had sexual relations with males in which they had regularly responded to the point of orgasm; but even some of the females who were most responsive in physical relationships had never been aroused by fantasies about males..

The specific data showing these differences between the females and males in the sample are as follows:

Fantasies concerning opposite sex
Erotic Response	by Females	by Males
Erotic Response	%	%
Definite and/or frequent	22	37
Some response	47	47
Never	31	16
Number of cases	5772	4214

These differences between females and males have a great deal to do with the fact that more males search for overt sexual experience, and fewer females search for such experience. These differences provide one explanation of the fact that males are usually aroused and often intensely aroused before the beginning of a sexual relationship and before they have made any physical contact with the female partner. These differences account for the male’s desire for frequent sexual contact, his difficulty in getting along without regular sexual contact, and his disturbance when he fails to secure the contact which he has sought. The differences often account for the female’s inability to comprehend why her husband finds it difficult to get along with less frequent sexual contacts, or to abandon his plans for coitus when household duties or social activities interfere.

Too many husbands, on the other hand, fail to comprehend that their wives are not aroused as they are in the anticipation of a sexual relationship, and fail to comprehend that their wives may need general physical stimulation before they are sufficiently aroused to want a genital union or completed coitus. Too often the male considers the wife’s lesser interest at the beginning of a sexual relationship as evidence that she has lost her affection for him. Sexual adjustments between husbands and wives could be worked out more often if males more often understood that the reactions of their particular wives represent characteristics which are typical of females in general, and if females more often understood that the sexual interests shown by their particular husbands represent qualities which are typical of most males.

Sexual arousal from fantasies about other males, or of sexual relations with other males, is as frequent among homosexual males as heterosexual fantasies are among heterosexual males. Such erotic fantasies during masturbation are less frequent among homosexual females, but they do occur in as high or a higher percentage of the homosexual females (74 per cent) as heterosexual fantasies occur among heterosexual females. The specific data are as follows:

Fantasies concerning own sex
Erotic Response	by Females
Erotic Response	%
Definite and/or frequent	28
Some response	46
Never	26
Cases with homosexual history	194

Three or four adult males, out of the more than 5000 in the present study, have been able to ejaculate by deliberately concentrating on sexual fantasies, without any genital manipulation. In such a case the psychic stimulation is entirely responsible for the result. Spontaneous ejaculation occurs most often among young adolescent boys. A list of situations which bring spontaneous ejaculation in the younger male has already been given (Chapter 5). Some of the climaces reached in heterosexual petting may amount to spontaneous ejaculation without genital stimulation. Orgasm from purely psychic sources may occur more often in the female.

Tables 38f. Fantasy in Masturbation among females
with masturbatory experience

Fantasy Presence	Total Sample	Educational Level
	Total Sample	0-8	9-12	13-16	17+
	%
None, ever	36	32	35	38	32
At least sometimes	64	68	65	62	68
Sometimes none	14	12	13	14	15
Almost always	50	56	52	48	53
Fantasy Content
Heterosexual Any Kind	60	63	61	58	64
Homosexual	10	20	10	8	10
Animal contacts	1	0	—	1	1
Sado-masochistic	4	0	2	4	7
Other content	3	0	1	5	3
Number of cases	2475	60	441	1230	694
“Educ. level 0-8” are those who had never gone beyond grade school. “9-12” are those who had gone into high school, but never beyond. “13-16” are those who had gone into college, but had not had more than four years of college. “17+” are those who had gone beyond college into post-graduate or professional training.
Totals in portion of table showing content of fantasy exceed incidences of fantasy shown in first part of table, because many individuals fantasy more than one type of situation.

Some 2 per cent of the females in the sample had reached orgasm by fantasying erotic situations, without tactilely stimulating their genitalia or other parts of their bodies (Table 37f). Exceedingly few males are capable of reaching orgasm in this fashion while they are awake, although orgasm from psychic stimulation while asleep is a common enough phenomenon among males. Since less than two-thirds of the females fantasy while they are masturbating (Table 38f), the individuals who achieve orgasm through fantasy alone represent an extreme among females.
The ability to reach orgasm through fantasy alone is variously termed idealized coitus, mental cohabitation, moral or psychic masturbation, the mental vulva, and erotic day dreaming. It is recorded in: Bloch 1903:299-300 (gazing at pictiues, statues). Kisch 1907:108-109. Back 1910:117. Hirschfeld 1916:129. Stekel 1920:18; 1950:31. Havelock Ellis in Moll 1921:611-612. Rohleder 1921:31-32 (‘‘most noxious”). Hoyer 1929:227. Blanchard in Calverton and Schmalhausen 1929:559. Blanchard and Manasses 1930:35. Robinson 1931: 142. Dickinson and Beam 1934:230 (the physical stigmata of the “mental vulva”). Bleuler 1949:406. Klumbies and Kleinsorge 1950b:61. Several of these express the curious and certainly unfounded opinion that this is the “most noxious’' of all forms of masturbation.

The masturbatory fantasies were usually in accord with the overt experience of the individual. Males not infrequently have fantasies of unfulfilled or repressed desires, but the fantasies among the females had less often concerned activities of a sort which they had not had: if kissing had been the limit of the female’s petting experience, it was the limit of her fantasies; it was only after the petting had included genital manipulations that the fantasies went that far. The fantasies had rarely included coitus unless the female had had coital experience. On the other hand, many of the females who had had overt sexual contacts had never fantasied about them while they were masturbating.

Whether sexual responses originate through the physical stimulation of some body surface, or through some psychologic stimulation by way of the cerebrum, they are mediated primarily through lower spinal centers and the autonomic nervous system. Ultimately all parts of the nervous system become involved; and all parts of the body which are nervously controlled, especially those which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system, may be affected. Whenever there is sexual arousal the muscles of the body respond, as we have already noted, with a rhythmic, involuntary flow of movement which is one of the most characteristic aspects of sexual behavior, and at orgasm the body may be thrown into localized or more general spasms or convulsions. All of this seems to be as true of sexual responses and orgasm reached during sleep as it is of sexual responses and orgasm reached while one is awake.
Muscular movements in nocturnal orgasm are also noted in: Krafft-Ebing and Kisch acc. to Rohleder 1907(1):231. Heyn 1924:60-64.

Nearly all males have nocturnal sex dreams which are erotically stimulating to them. Ultimately some 75 per cent of the females may have such nocturnal dreams. About one per cent of the females in the sample reported nocturnal orgasms without dreams (Table 41f).
Nocturnal orgasms without the recall of dreams are also noted by: Heyn 1924: 64. Hamilton 1929:315. Confusion of the dream with reality, especially in the female, is stressed in: Havelock Ellis and Moll in Moll 1911, 1921:615. Havelock Ellis 1936 (1,1): 200-205.

To judge from our sample, approximately 83 per cent of the males (the accumulative incidence figure) ultimately have sex dreams which are erotically stimulating enough to bring them to orgasm during sleep. The corresponding figure for the females in the sample was 37 per cent.
Hamilton 1929:318-319 reports 66 per cent of females, 42 per cent of males without nocturnal sex dreams.

The frequencies of sex dreams show similar differences between males and females. Among those males in the sample who were having any sex dreams (the active sample), the median frequencies averaged about 10 times per year in the younger age groups, and about 5 times per year in the older age groups. The median female in the sample had had sex dreams which were sufficiently erotic to bring her to orgasm with frequencies of 3 to 4 per year. For perhaps 25 per cent of the females who had had any dreams which had resulted in orgasm, the experience had not occurred more often than 1 to 6 times in their lives. These differences depend, again, on differences in the significance of psychologic stimulation for the average female and the average male.

One of the most characteristic aspects of nocturnal sex dreams is the speed with which they carry the individual to orgasm, even though he or she may be quite slow in response while awake. An occasional female who finds it difficult to release her inhibitions and reach orgasm while awake may be able to reach it in sleep. There are some females (5 per cent), just as there are some males, who experience nocturnal dreams to orgasm before they have ever experienced orgasm from any other source while they are awake.
The occurrence of orgasm in the nocturnal dreams of the female, before it occurs in any other sort of experience, is also noted in: Kisch 1907:576-577. Moll 1909:86; 1912:95. Heyn 1924:62-63. Robie 1925:205. Blanchard and Manasses 1930:32. Havelock Ellis 1936(I,1):197. Stekel 1950:158-159. See p. 213.

We are inclined to agree with most psychologists and psychiatrists in believing that the dreams are not only necessary factors in the great majority of cases, but the prime precipitating factors of most nocturnal orgasms; but the physiology of the matter is still poorly understood, and further studies must be made before we can be certain of the extent to which the dreams may actually dominate the situation. The elucidation of this problem should further our understanding of the psychology of female sexuality in general.

Table 41f. Incidence of Nocturnal Sex Dreams among Females
by Age at Reporting

Nature of Experience	Total Sample	Age at Reporting
	Total Sample	Adol.-30	31-40	41 +
	Percent
Never dreams, no nocturnal orgasms	34	38	24	26
Nocturnal orgasms, never dreams	1	1	2	2
Dreams, with or without orgasm	65	61	74	12
Dreams to orgasm, ever	20	12	34	39
Dreams, never to orgasm	45	49	40	33
Number of cases	5628	3706	1059	863
Table based on total sample, including single, married and previously married females

One of the most characteristic aspects of the orgasms which occur while an individual sleeps is the fact that they are almost always accompanied by dreams, even among females who are rarely or never given to sexual fantasy while they masturbate or engage in any other type of daytime sexual activity. The amount of nocturnal orgasm which occurs in the female without any consciously remembered dream is small. It involved something like one per cent of the females in the sample, and there is some reason to doubt whether the failure to recall dreams is sufficient evidence that they did not occur. For 20 per cent of the females in the sample (Table 41f) the dreams had proceeded to the point of orgasm, although these same individuals had sometimes had sex dreams without orgasm. Some 45 per cent reported having sex dreams which, however, had never reached orgasm. As with the male, the dreams often had a distressing way of stopping just short of the climax of the activity.
Dreams stopping short of orgasm are also noted in: Heyn 1924:65. Marcuse in Moll 1926(2):861 (in specifically neurotic females).

There are many nocturnal sex dreams which do not result in orgasm for the male. There are some males who may have sex dreams with considerable frequency, even every night, without ever experiencing orgasm, unless it be in their early years. On the other hand, there are some who regularly have nocturnal emissions but are unable to recall that such experiences were ever accompanied by dreams. If the absence of the dreams could be absolutely established in these cases, they would be perfect instances of orgasm from physical or physiologic stimulation alone. Most psychologists and psychiatrists, however, hesitate to believe that emissions ever result from internal forces which do not have psychosexual backgrounds. Generally such emissions are considered to be products of dreams that are forgotten by their author, and we incline to this interpretation. Proving that an emission could occur without a psychic accompaniment would, however, be of such great importance that a series of experiments should be devised for testing these unusual individuals.

Often the actual experience of orgasm is not realized in a dream. Even when the subject wakes to find himself ejaculating, he may not have reached the fulfillment of his activity in the dream itself. Most individuals wake up when there is an orgasm, but there are some who continue to sleep through it. Even in those cases, however, the dream may not include any realization of the activity which produced the orgasm.

Sex dreams, whether they occur in the female or the male, are often a reflection of experience which the individual has actually had. On the other hand, some 13 per cent of the females in the sample (Negro and white) who had ever dreamed, had had sex dreams which went beyond their actual experience. The specific record is as follows:

Table 55f. Content of Nocturnal Sex Dreams among Females
Percentage with experience prior to interview

Dreams Content		Fantasy					Nocturnal Dreams
		in Masturbation					Without Overt Experience			Without Orgasm				With Orgasm
		Total Sample	Educational Level				With Any Dream	With Orgasm	Without Orgasm	Total Sample	Educational Level			Total Sample	Educational Level
		Total Sample	0-8	9-12	13-16	17+	With Any Dream	With Orgasm	Without Orgasm	Total Sample	9-12	13-16	17+	Total Sample	9-12	13-16	17+
		%
Heterosexual	Any Kind	60	63	61	58	64				90	90	91	89	85	87	85	80
	Coitus						46	36	10	30	44	26	28	39	48	38	31
	Petting						7	6	1	38	41	38	32	17	24	19	11
	Other									39	31	40	43	39	34	40	42
	Rape						6	4	2
Homosexual		10	20	10	8	10	23	16	7	8	6	7	12	10	8	8	13
Animal contacts		1	0	—	1	1	6	2	4	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	2
Sado-masochistic		4	0	2	4	7	3	2	1	2	2	1	2	1	2	1	1
Pregnancy or childbirth							15	13	2	3	5	3	4	1	1	1	1
Other content		3	0	1	5	3				3	3	3	3	4	4	3	6
Not specified										6	5	6	6	9	9	9	11
Number of cases		*2475*	60	441	1230	694	622			*2957*	500	1749	601	*1146*	251	515	332
“Educ. level 0-8” are those who had never gone beyond grade school. “9-12” are those who had gone into high school, but never beyond. “13-16” are those who had gone into college, but had not had more than four years of college. “17+” are those who had gone beyond college into post-graduate or professional training.
Totals in portion of table showing content of fantasy exceed incidences of fantasy shown in first part of table, because many individuals fantasy more than one type of situation.
The totals of the various types of dreams always exceed 100 per cent because some individuals dream of more than one type of experience. Some individuals appear in both portions of the table, dreaming sometimes with and sometimes without orgasm.

The parallel between the content of the nocturnal dream and one’s overt daytime experience has been recognized by all peoples, primitive and civilized, since the dawn of history. The present study confirms the usual interpretations, although it has nothing to contribute on the question of symbolism in dreams. The dream is usually a reflection of the individual’s overt experience or of his desire for experience. It often involves other persons, usually persons who are obscure and unidentifiable. Sometimes the actors are engaged in non-sexual daytime activities, more often they are about to make sexual contacts, or to engage in actual coitus or other relations. Sometimes the dreamer is a participant in the activities, and sometimes the dreamer does not participate but merely observes. The dream situations are most often heterosexual when the overt experience or daytime reactions of the individual are heterosexual, and the dreams are most often homosexual when the overt experience of the individual is homosexual. Persons who have both things in their histories have dreams that are sometimes homosexual, sometimes heterosexual, and sometimes both homosexual and heterosexual in the same event. In such cases, the predominance of heterosexual or homosexual dreams may reflect the individual’s preference for one or the other sort of experience, but this is not always so.
The relation of the dreams to actual experience or the lack of experience is discussed in: Havelock Ellis and Moll in Moll 1911, 1921:615. Kelly 1930:163 (dreams can occur in inexperienced girls, but are more common in older women with masturbatory or coital experience). Dickinson and Beam 1934: 136. The following authors deny (incorrectly) that virgins are capable of reaching orgasm in nocturnal dreams: Rohleder 1907(1):231; 1918(1):135. Adler 1911:129. Loewenfeld 1911b: 161. Reisinger 1916:344. Kahn 1937:346; 1939:404.

Of the females who had had sex dreams, whether with or without orgasm, something between 85 and 90 per cent had had heterosexual dreams (Table 55f). This closely matched the extent of the overt heterosexual activity in the same histories. Between 30 and 39 per cent of the females had dreamed, at least on occasion, of actual coitus, while 17 to 38 per cent had dreamed on occasion of heterosexual petting which did not involve coitus.
Hamilton 1929:314-15 says 22 per cent of first dreams were of coitus. Our data range from 26 to 48 per cent in various groups. Petting in the dream content is also noted in: Heyn 1924:64. Hamilton 1929:314 (records only a few cases).

The sexual partners in these dreams were usually obscure and unidentifiable—an epitomization of some general type of person; and even the actor in the dream was not always the dreamer, but a person who combined the capacities of an observer and a participant in the activity. More precise data are needed on this matter. Many of the heterosexual dreams had an indefinitely affectionate or generally social content which did not include overtly physical contacts. While such dreams may in actuality be sexual in significance, they are quite different from the overtly sexual dreams which males usually have.
That the dream partner is not the real lover and is often unidentified, is also noted in: Heyn 1924:64. Krafft-Ebing 1924:98 (no concrete persons). Hamilton 1929:318-319 (identifiable partner in about 50 per cent).

Some 8 to 10 per cent of the females having dreams had had homosexual dreams. This again, was very close to the number who had had overt homosexual experience.
Homosexual content of the dreams is also noted in: Krafft-Ebing 1901:26-27. Hirschfeld 1920:73, 317. Heyn 1924:65. Moraglia in Heyn 1924:65. Hamilton 1929:317. Kelly 1930:136.

About 1 per cent of the females had dreamed of sexual relations with animals of other species. About 1.5 per cent had dreamed of sadomasochistic situations. Various other types of sex dreams had occurred in still other cases (Table 55f).

There are a few males who dream of masturbation, but this is not common. Boys who have had animal contacts, or thought about having them, quite regularly dream of such experiences. There are occasional sadistic or masochistic dreams which may reflect some phase of the thinking of the individual, or of his actual experience.

Something between 1 and 3 per cent of the females had dreamed that they were pregnant or that they were giving birth to a child (Table 55f). It is notable that these were reported as “sex dreams.” For nine out of every ten of the females who had had such dreams, the dreams had not led to orgasm. Such dreams need further consideration, because the connection between the reproductive function and erotic arousal is probably not as well established as biologists and psychologists ordinarily assume. By association, many males and apparently some females may become erotically aroused when they contemplate any reproductive or excretory function, probably because it depends at least in part on genital anatomy, and this may explain why some females consider dreams of pregnancy as sexual. It is more likely they consider their pregnancy dreams as sexual simply because they know, intellectually, that there is a relationship between sexual behavior and reproduction. There are still other possible explanations in psychiatric theory.

There were dreams of pregnancies resulting from the homosexual relations.
Dreams of pregnancies resulting from homosexual contacts are also noted in Hirschfeld 1920:74. This is what the Negro vernacular identifies as a jelly baby.

Sexual responses in sleep may differ, however, from the responses which one makes when awake, in the fact that the learned controls and inhibitions which an individual has acquired in the course of his or her lifetime are less likely to operate in sleep. The content of the dream, the speed of the response, and the abandon of the activity in orgasm may be less obstructed by rational controls. The dreams, particularly in the male, may include socially taboo types of behavior, unconventional sexual techniques, contacts with children and with relatives (incestuous relations), exhibitionistic performances, group activity, fantastic and physically impossible techniques, and still other types of activity and partners which the individual certainly would not accept if he or she were awake.
The inclusion of things in dreams which are not accepted when awake is elaborately discussed in Freud 1938:208 ff., and noted in Hamilton 1929:317-318, and Havelock Ellis 1936(1,1):195-196.

A number of males dream of females who have male genitalia, and this is particularly interesting in the light of the fact that most of these males have not heard of the classic Greek concept of the hermaphrodite (Licht 1925-1928), nor are they acquainted with the psychoanalytic treatments of such combinations of male and female characters. Sometimes dreams of hermaphrodites occur among males who have had neither heterosexual nor homosexual experience, and we are inclined to interpret them as primarily heterosexual (as also in Näcke 1908, Ellis 1936). The maleness of the genitalia in the dream may depend upon the fact that an individual who has not actually seen female genitalia may have some difficulty in imagining an anatomy or a genital performance which is different from that which he has experienced in his own person.

Finally, it must be emphasized that there are some dreams which simply do not correlate with any overt experience. Such dreams are not frequent, but they do seem to occur, for they are sometimes reported under circumstances which make one feel that the record is thoroughly reliable. For instance, a male who reports an extensive homosexual history would appear to have little reason for distorting the fact when he says that all of his dreams are heterosexual. He may emphasize that he wishes they were not so, because he has no use for the heterosexual, and would enjoy the experience of having homosexual dreams. On the other hand, some of these dreams represent activities, like rape, which the individual may not desire and of which she may actually be afraid. It seems reasonable to believe that some of these dreams are nightmares rather than anything which the females would welcome either in or out of sleep.

The dreams which antedate experience may represent some desire to participate in an activity which has not yet been accepted in actual life, or which the female has not yet had the opportunity to engage in, or which she would always avoid in overt relationships. Freud and other psychoanalysts believe that the dream content is often a record of repressed desires. Not a few individuals derive considerable pleasure from vicariously participating, through these dreams, in activities which, for one reason or another, are unattainable in actual life. Explanations of such contradictory dreams should be based on more detail than anyone seems yet to have obtained. It is difficult to believe that suppressed desires are always involved. It is not at all impossible that familiarity with the experiences of other persons would be sufficient to generate a dream, even though it included events which were totally distasteful to the individual and in which he had no desire to participate.
The Freudian opinion on the nature of nocturnal dreams is summarized, for instance, in Freud 1935:116, 120; 1949:48 (dreams are sometimes an unconscious wish-fulfillment, sometimes represent unsatisfied conscious desires, but “the satisfaction in a pollution-dream Can be real”). Heterosexual dreams among males who are completely homosexual are noted in Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin.

The records which we have in the present study do not provide any original data for a discussion of the sexual symbolism of dreams.

The great majority of the females in the sample had accepted their nocturnal sex dreams without any disturbance. A smaller percentage had worried about the moral significance of their sex dreams. However, fewer females than males ever worry over their dreams, probably because some males are disturbed by their seminal emissions. In most instances the females had taken their experience as pleasurable, and had attached little other importance to it.
The wide acceptance by females of sex dreams without worry is also noted in: Heyn 1924:66. Hamilton 1929:316 (says 19 per cent worry).

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