ABSTRACT
In 1888, the year after Sigmund Freud wrote his last paper on cocaine, he published an article called Hysteria. This chapter presents the addiction of gambling to masturbation. The first time Freud wrote about masturbation in the context of addiction was towards the end of 1897, a year in which he had made some of the most important discoveries in psychoanalysis through his self-analysis, such as unconscious fantasies being the falsification of the truth. The importance of these remarks about self-relief and masturbation lies in their clear hints at the possible connection between an "artificial" production of pleasure and something unpleasant or dangerous against which this pleasure forms a protection. Freud related the addictions to drugs, alcohol and other substances to neurasthenia via the "primary" addiction to masturbation. Masturbation and addiction have in common the fact that both activities are able to produce a pleasure which is completely independent of others.
