ABSTRACT
'Thrill', cognate with 'thirl', meant to pierce, to penetrate, to bore something, again causing a high-pitched sound. Corresponding to these highly aggressive meanings, philobatic people are usually imagined as robust, upstanding, conquering heroes, enjoying their independence, unflinchingly facing dangers, and defiantly going their own way. Auto-erotic activities, in fact all sexual activities as well as thrills, have a good deal in common. The grammatical forms—middle voice, reflexive or intransitive forms—are also used for the expression of another most important relationship, the field of auto-erotic activities, from scratching to masturbation. It has long been known that over-indulgently brought up children masturbate on the whole much more intensely than the average child. If the environment is greatly indifferent right from the start and the neglected child hardly ever experiences loving human contact, both his object relationships and his auto-erotic activities will become stunted, as was clearly demonstrated by R. Spitz's films on severely deprived children.
