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Self-satisfying

Autor: psiholog, mr Tatjana Stefanović Stanojević

self-satisfying

A sexuality phenomenon which has been through the course of human history most often anathematized, forbidden or treated in the context of human prejudice is self-satisfaction. Traditionally related to sin, illness or insanity, self-satisfaction is a phenomenon not being talked about, being ashamed of, causing a guilty conscience and fear of consequences.

Depending on the environment, frightening of the potential sinners had a form of: drying of the spine, losing sanity, and later being impotent.

Perhaps, such layman’s treatment of masturbation could be understood as being in the function of the survival of the species through sexual intercourse, so that the need to reduce the other ways of sexual activity, that is, to make it subordinate to this function is confusing, however, the aspects of guilty conscience, fear of insanity and shame are confusing and they lead to the fact that science has also contributed to it by supporting the existing layman’s intuition. Freud, for example, related the phenomenon of masturbation to the possibility of mental degeneration. He pointed out the fact that self-satisfaction with interrupted intercourse is one of the main etiological factors, so-called actualized neurosis.

Nowadays, about hundred years after such scientific recordings, it turns out that self-satisfaction is a normal, completely harmless phenomenon which leads to the discharge of sexual energy in the situations of strong tension.

What do sex manuals for teenagers say?

The phenomenon in the sex manuals is described in the following way:
“Self-satisfaction or onanism is achieving sexual pleasure with the direct interference of another person, that is, it is the process of satisfying oneself. The meaning of the word onania is derived from the old-biblical Onan who spilt his sperm on the ground while having intercourse with his brother’s wife in order for her not to get pregnant.

The research conducted on males, both young and adults, tells us that males self-satisfy themselves more than women. The reasons for this are the following: male sex organs are more accessible, boys get used to touching them as being very young. Besides that, men are excited faster and easier than women. On average, girls start masturbating at the end of puberty and boys much earlier.

During masturbation certain scenes are imagined which inflame sexual imagination. Men as stimulation use visual objects whereas women use imaginative stories. Men have an orgasm faster than women. Women need more time, so that they could make up a story with a meaningful point in the end.

Note: Plenty of living beings masturbate: people of your age, older people, younger people, even animals. However, nobody talks about it. Except for being done in secret, it is also in disfavour. This should be noted as well: some women have an orgasm faster when masturbating than when actually having intercourse.”

Therefore, the attitude towards the phenomenon has changed! Nowadays, we are allowed to think about it as a kind of a relaxation habit-since it is a way of releasing the tension. The beginning is usually related to puberty, and later it is no longer conditioned by the age of men or women.

The facts

Many men and women perform this activity even they already have regular sexual intercourse. This, of course, is not difficult samozadovoljavanje

to explain with the fact that the needs of a couple for intercourse do not usually match. The phenomenon itself is self-limiting. When the need for it is exhausted, masturbation stops – by which we abolish another prejudice, that is, the fear from exaggerated masturbation. Masturbation, as a form of stimulation treatment with intentionally caused sexual phantasms, is used in all programs of sexual treatment. It is considered abnormal only in the case of becoming the purpose by itself.

The data about the activity of masturbation in our population

All in all, treated through theory, but through clinical practice as well, masturbation enters science in a new way. A part of this new approach is definitely the empirical research of the phenomenon. A great number of countries, the more developed ones as well as those like ours, have already completed their national research of sexuality as well as the phenomenon of masturbation.

What interested us, of course, was what it looked like in our conditions. So, what happens with masturbation in our region, when does it start, how often, is it forbidden, is it followed by a guilty conscience… The research team of the Behavioural Theory and Practice Association, as a part of a great research project: “The Sexual Behaviour of Yugoslavs” gathered information about the masturbation activities in our population. In the following text we will present you the information that has been processed so far.

Let’s take a look at the results to two questions:

When did you start masturbating?
When (how often) do you masturbate?

The answers to these questions have been crossed with the potentially important control variables: sex, age, education.

When did you start masturbating?

We shall begin, of course, with the first question. The results say that still there is a statistical difference between men and women, considering the age when they start masturbating. Naturally, men are still in the lead. However, worth attention is the data saying that a certain (14%) percent of girls report the beginning of masturbation at the age of ten. This data do not change the attitude of the sexes towards the phenomenon, but they witness shattering some cultural prejudices.

In relation to age, the question of the beginning of masturbation, confirms that there is, not big, but a statistically important difference between the examinees of different age groups and the reports about the beginnings of the masturbation activities. Namely, the younger the examinees, the earlier the beginning. This fact is not difficult to understand in the context of earlier physical maturing and sooner entrance into puberty of the younger generations. It seems the limit moves lower and lower. However, in the category of the examinees over 50 years of age, this phenomenon suddenly stops to be valid. The examinees of this age in a great percent (significantly bigger than in the other age groups) inform about the beginning of self-satisfying at the age of 10. Either the temporal distance make us believe that the older we are, the sooner we think everything started, or this is a phenomenon which requires a new research.

Education is the third variable to cross our first question with and it informs us that the less educated inform us more often about the earlier beginnings of the activity of self-satisfying, which is statistically important. Indirectly, this is a confirmation that the scientific interpretation about the damaging effects of self-satisfaction ahs partly shaped those laymen’s prejudices. With more educated people, the inhibitions are bigger.

When (that is, how often) do you masturbate?

The second question, as we have already mentioned, was related to the frequency of this activity. Here, as well, we got a confirmation about the statistically relevant difference between sexes in relation to frequency. Of course, men masturbate more often. Women very often say that their needs for this activity are once a month, or even more rarely. If we relate this to the already mentioned information that a great number of women have an orgasm easier by means of masturbation, rather than by sexual intercourse, we must wonder what happens to female sexuality.

In relation to the age, the frequency of masturbation decreases – after the thirties. That is, when having regular sexual intercourse, most of women, but a great number of men as well, decide upon doing it once a month. Does this mean that the needs for sexual activities with the partners in our climate are almost ideally synchronized, so that self-satisfying is drastically reduced? Or, does it mean that the needs are satisfied in some other way? The answers to the questions we are going to get through a further analysis of the conducted research.

Education and the frequency of masturbation have a characteristic, statistically important relation in the sense that the less educated examinees say that they have sex more frequently. The interpretation of this information will surely be more complete when considered in the context of many other received but still unprocessed data. Still, it seems to us that based on what is familiar we can say: in Serbia, 2000, self-satisfying does not have a status of a relaxation habit, but it is not a taboo either.