ABSTRACT
Apart from the psychic consequences, the unconscious onanism cannot be held to be quite innocuous. Although or, indeed, because it never issues in full orgasm, but always only in frustrated excitement, it can play a part in the development of an anxiety neurosis. There are cases, however, where this continual excitement is accompanied by very frequent even if minimal orgasms, and ultimately makes these people neurasthenic and diminishes their potency. Normal potency is only possessed by those who preserve and store up the libidinal impulses for a considerable latent period, and who can discharge them powerfully along genital channels on the occurrence of suitable sexual aims and objects. In the analysis of anxiety hysterias—Freud had recourse to the method of directing the patients to seek just those critical situations which usually caused them an attack of anxiety; not with the idea of ‘accustoming’ them to these situations, but in order to free the wrongly anchored affects from their connections.
