Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror (Hardcover)

by Jean Stengers (Author), Anne Van Neck (Author), Kathryn Hoffmann (Translator) "There is no need for us to describe here an act which is unfortunately as well known as it is shameful": it is with these..." (more)
Key Phrases: anticonceptionnelles dans, livre sans titre, sur les dangers, United States, Havelock Ellis, English Onania (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"The victims of genital ardor," that is, people who masturbate, are subject to tuberculosis, consumption, loss of sight and hearing, lesions of the heart, melancholia, hysteria, death and numerous other dangers, according to texts from various ages. In Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror (trans. by Kathryn Hoffman), Jean Stengers and the late Anne Van Neck, Belgian scholars, attribute Western society's long-standing antimasturbatory fervor to "certain ideas... launched by several men" not, like many cultural phenomena, to broad social tendencies. The earliest opponent was the anonymous English author of a widely distributed pamphlet; the Swiss Dr. Samuel-August Tissot was the next loud voice. The authors follow a string of successors in this rigorous, well-turned and enlightening study.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was fired for suggesting that schools teach about masturbation. Why? The story goes back to 1700 and a quack's tome titled Onania. The ensuing snowball of medical and social horror about solo sex reached its greatest mass about 1800-80 then slowly began to melt in reaction to medical and sociological evidence. Yet traces of the terror remain. Belgian historians Stengers and Van Neck tell the story with relish and exhaustive references, attempting to make some sense of what may have been a historical fluke. While the history of masturbation has been updated somewhat since the 1984 original publication of this work in French, Stengers and Van Neck's chronicle draws together many sources unavailable in English. It's also a good read. This work belongs in academic and large public libraries, necessarily those with collections in the history of science and medicine. Smaller public libraries and lay readers might consider Edward Rowan's The Joy of Self-Pleasuring (LJ 5/1/00), which covers historical aspects of masturbation in much less detail. Martha Cornog, Philadelphia
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition, First Printing edition (July 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312224435
• ISBN-13: 978-0312224431
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #602,938 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Masturbation Terror., June 9, 2004

By	zonaras (Jimbo's House of Pie) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

_Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror_ is an odd book about a collective medical, moral and religious fear from the 1700s until the second half of the 20th century. Before the 18th century, masturbation was more or less ignored in moral debate by philosophers and theologians. The Greek Cynic Diognes practiced masturbation in order to relieve himself of semen, not for sensual pleasure. The authors cite a tract about Diognes by the physician Galen who noted that Diognes arranged to meet with a courtesan but then sent her away because his "hand was faster than you [the courtesan] in celebrating the bridal night." However, masturbation stands officially condemned as a mortal sin in the Roman Catholic catechism and moral theology because it uses the sex organs for self-gratification rather than procreation. The 1723 publication of a pamphlet in England, "Onania," ascribed numerous moral and physiological disorders associated with masturbation. The author likened masturbation to the sin of Onan in Genesis. Onan "spilled his seed" on the ground when he was to impregnate his dead brother's wife, which refers more to a violation of the levirate marriage arrangement and coitus interruptus than actual self-stimulation. "Onania's" influence was expanded in decades afterward in the work of the Swiss physician Tissot. Tissot wrote at length of the supposed medical dangers of masturbation and his ideas were expounded upon later in the Victorian Era. The Victorians were notoriously uptight about sexual matters and quack doctors invented a plethora of anti-masturbatory devices such as penis rings, electric shockers and alarms to forcefully discourage the practice. By the middle of the twentieth century the masturbation scare died off, as the authors note, as suddenly as it began. I recommend this book, despite its liberal and anti-religious bias, as a strange read on a quack medical phenomenon.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Enlightenment of the Rather Shadowed Enlightenment Era, November 20, 2008

By	Bonam Pak (Berlin) - See all my reviews

I read the 2001 translated edition into English of the French original of 1998, "Histoire d'une grande, la masturbation". The unusual thing is that one of the co-authors, Anne Van Neck had passed on in 1982 already. A long time in the making...

Everybody knows about the reservations, past generations had about masturbation. In fact, hardly does anybody TODAY brag about how well they masturbated last night, and rarely do we watch a non-comedic, non-perverted masturbation scene made in Hollywood. But do we really know the different reasons in different epochs? How far our ancestors went to thwart any self-pleasuring attempt? How recent they did so?

In classic Greece masturbators were merely considered losers. In medieval times, masturbation took the place of today's fundamentalists' wrath of homosexuality. The former - and not necessarily the latter - was called a violation of the laws of the Creator, dead to the feelings for family, country and humanity, a sin against nature. The penance was the same as for murder. All that changed around 1712, when a quack sought to sell his "medicine" against the ficticious ailments caused by masturbation. At first, no civil authorities, no Church and no academics had anything to do with what should become the greatest medical fear in Western civilisation for two centuries. After the quack a real doctor jumped on the bandwagon, then a much-read author and the fate of self-pleasuring was sealed. There was no difference among political parties, denominations and even so-called free thinkers.

Some examples of the hysteria which ensued: infibulation (artificial foreskin closure) at the end of the 18th century, children's hands tied to the bed in 1827, repeated cauterization of boys' urethras in Paris to prevent any thought of nice feelings down there. Celebrities outed as masturbators in 1910. Babies' night gowns pinned to the crib in the US in 1914. And well, usually the last to change: Condemnation of masturbation by the Vatican in 1976. During those times of masturbation prohibition men weren't even allowed to touch themselves during urination. Instead shaking was en vogue. Ah, do I wish for a comedy of history instead of the American Pie - Unrated (Widescreen Collector's Edition) nonsense continuing the anti-masturbatory tradition!

A somewhat more recent (2003) and more elaborate scholarly work is Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation. Even though there are some intersections, both books may be read in tandem. If you want to go one step bolder, read the quite recently filled gap of masturbation accounts in the compilation First Person Sexual: Women & Men Write About Self-Pleasuring. If you like a coffee-table book about the subject, don't be afraid of Sex Machines: Photographs and Interviews: It doesn't show the artificial "masturbation" aids in action. If you want to do something medically BENEFICIAL, while you are at it, get informed via Prostate Orgasm, Prostate Cure.. But read AYOR, I only recommend this booklet for current lack of anything better. Oh, by the way: Modern science has found out that if you are male, the more you do it, the better for your health. The same is true for females, I presume...