Masturbation and Insanity: Henry Maudsley and the

Ideology of Sexual Repression

Arthur N. Gilbert
Throughout the nineteenth century, auto-eroticism was viewed as a great
evil, a threat to the individual and to society. At one time or another, nearly
every disease which nineteenth-century doctors could not cure was blamed
on self-abuse. Summing up the relationship between masturbation and ill-
ness, French doctor Eugene Beckland wrote in 1842, "Many physicians of
high authority have maintained that two-thirds of the diseases to which the
human race is liable have had their origins in certain solitary practices
." I As to the impact of masturbation on society, Dr. Reveille Parise
observed in 1828,
In my opinion, neither plague, nor war, nor small pox, nor similar diseases, have
produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicous habit of onanism. It
is the destroying element of civilized societies, which is constantly in action and
gradually undermines the health of a nation.
2
Since 1953, when Rene Spitz published his important article on the sub-
ject, a number of scholars have tried to explain the intense concern with
masturbation in the nineteenth century. Spitz argued that the heightened in-
terest in self-abuse reflected the shift to Protestant culture with its emphasis
on individual responsibility for sin.] More recently, John and Robin Haller
used similar arguments to explain it.4 Other writers such as E. H. Hare and
Edward Shorter have argued that one reason why fear of masturbation in-
creased was that people began indulging in the solitary vice to a greater ex-
tent than ever before.' Men and women were masturbating more-and if
IEugene Beckland, M.D. Physiological Mysteries and Revelations in Love. Courtship and
Marriage (New York, 1842), p. 97.
'Quoted in Leopold Deslandes, M.D. A Treatise on the Diseases Produced by Onanism.
Masturbation. and Self Pollution and Other Excesses (Boston, 1839), p. 8. The same quota-
tion is in John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., Plain Facts for the Old and Young: Embracing the
Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life (Burlington, Iowa, 1888), and attributed to Dr.
Adam Oarke.
'Rene A. Spitz, "Authority and Masturbation," Yearbook of Psychoanalysis (1953); p. 118.
'John and Robin Haller, The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America (Urbana
Illlinois, 1974), p. 234.
'E.H. Hare, "Masturbational Insanity: The History of an Idea," The Journal of Mental
Science, 108 (1962): 1-25, and Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New
York, 1975).
Masturbation and Insanity 269
they read medical journals on the subject-enjoying it less. Hare speculated
that this was because of fear of venereal disease caused by intercourse, a
great concern in the nineteenth century. Masturbation was safer. Shorter,
who saw masturbation as part of a general increase in sexual appetite, as-
serted that it was "unlikely that masturbation ... was practiced on a wide
scale before the premarital sexual revolution."6 It is not likely that his-
torians will uncover reliable data on incidence of self-abuse to prove or dis-
prove this hypothesis.
Another approach to anti-onanism examined the question with reference
to the medical profession. Hare has argued that the conservatism of medical
men and their refusal to test the onanist hypothesis accounts, at least in
part, for their passing on misinformation.
7
I have argued elsewhere that
"status anomaly" -the gap between prestige and skill level-resulted in a
situation where doctors were driven to explain diseases of which they had
inadequate knowledge in terms of the moral failings of their patients.'
Recent efforts to explain anti-onanism have treated it as one aspect of a
general fear of sexual excess of all kinds, and as an adjunct of middle class
morality. Peter Cominos first suggested links between economic values and
sexuality. The middle class moral code based on saving, thrift and parsi-
moniousness was transferred to the sexual sphere. "A penny saved is a pen-
ny earned" had a spermatic equivalent. Sperm retention became as im-
portant as saving money for a proverbial rainy day. As Cominos put it,
The economic virtues and vices-derivations of the quality inherent in the struc-
ture and functioning of the economic system and vindicated by the political eco-
nomists-included the sexual virtues and vices on continence and incontinence.
Continence was good, attained by sublimation through industry.'
Along similar lines, Stephen Kern, drawing on Freudian theories of anali-
ty and parsimoniousness, commented that "childhood sexuality was a per-
sistent reminder of the human tendency to squander."lo
Finally, we have an attempt to combine bourgeois morality with prob-
lems of child rearing in the nineteenth century. R.P. Neuman wrote that
middle class fears of masturbation can be explained by the fact that the age
of puberty was declining, while marriage, the' 'only socially respectable sex-
ual outlet for the middle classes," was generally postponed until the late
'Shorter, The Modern Family, p. 299.
7Hare, "Masturbational Insanity," p. 16.
'Arthur N. Gilbert, "Doctor, Patient, and Onanist Diseases in the Nineteenth Century,"
Journal 0/ the History 0/ Medicine and Allied Sciences, 20 (July, 1975): 217-254.
'Peter Cominos, "Late Victorian Sexual Responsibility and the Social System,"
International Review 0/ Social History, 8 (1963): p. 223.
'Stephen Kern, "Explosive Intimacy: Psychodymanics 0 f the Victorian Family," History 0/
Childhood Quorterly, 1 (Winter, 1974): p. 452.
270 Albion
twenties. II As a result, the problem of parental control over childhood sex-
uality became more acute.
All of these theories have weaknesses, and in some cases the evidence is
slim. Links between child rearing practices, middle class values, social sys-
tems, the medical profession, and anti-masturbation are plausible, but we
need a more careful analysis of nineteenth century writers who propagated
connections between disease and masturbation. In depth analysis can help
to show how anti-masturbation was linked to other personal values held by
the individual under study. Seeing anti-onanism contextually, as part of a
web of inter-related attitudes, should help our understanding of the mean-
ing of masturbation at this time in history.
This article will examine the views of Henry Madusley, a prominent psy-
chologist and longtime editor of the Journal of Mental Science. He has been
called the "father of English psychiatry," and he believed that masturba-
tion was related to insanity. Study of one anti-onanist may not prove or dis-
prove the variety of theories noted above, but it will show what Maudsley's
fears were, and this may provide important clues to fear of masturbation.
Henry Maudsley, the third son of Thomas Maudsley, was born in 1835 in
the Yorkshire village of Settle. Il His parents were Yorkshire yeoman about
whom we know little. Maudsley's early education was at Gigglesworth
School, but when he was twelve or thirteen, at the suggestion of his uncle
Dr. Bateson, he became the private pupil of a Mr. Neuth of Oundle, North-
amptonshire.
It was evidently during this period that Maudsley decided on a career in
medicine and he enrolled at the University College, London. He achieved an
outstanding record before graduating in 1856 by earning ten gold medals,
including one in surgery, and the University scholarship. In addition to his
studies, he was quite interested in sports, in particular cricket, for which he
maintained a lifelong fascination.13
Maudsley planned, after graduating, to enter the Indian Medical Service,
but training in lunacy was required for a post so he took a position at the
Essex County Asylum, a decision which determined his entire professional
career. From Essex, he went to the Wakefield Asylum for a brief period and
"R.P. Neuman, "Masturbation, Madness, and Modern Concepts of Childhood and Adoles-
cence," Journal of Social History, 8 (Spring, 1975): 7.
I2Seee G. H. Savage's obituary on Maudsley, Journal of Mental Science, 64 (April, 1918): 117-
23. Other information on Maudsley's life can be found in The Times obituary (January 25,
1918); Who Was Who, (1916-1928); William Munk, Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College
of Physicians, 1826-1925, Vol. 4, compiled by G. H. Brown, 4 vols. (London, 1955), p. 172;
F. W. Mott, "FRS Maudsley's Obituary," British Medical Journal (February 2, 1918): p.
161-162; Annual Register (1918) p. 162; and Lancet, 1 (1918): 193-194.
"Savage, Journal of Mental Science, p. 118.
Masturbation and Insanity 271
then was appointed director of the Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital, al-
though only twenty-four years old, where he remained until 1862.14
Maudsley had started writing articles on diverse subjects and one essay
"Hamlet" came to the attention of Dr. John Conolly, superintendent of
Hanwell Asylum. Maudsley became the resident physician of one of Conol-
ly's hospitals in 1859 and soon after married Conolly's youngest daughter,
Anne. Little is known about the marriage except that they had no children
and that Maudsley was devoted to his home life.
In 1862, Maudsley became the editor of the Journal oj Mental Science
and for many years he was its most regular contributor. His range of in-
terests was enormous. Among his publications in the journal were articles
on Edgar Allan Poe, phrenology, the genesis of the mind, and middle class
hospitals for the insane. From the very beginning of his career, Maudsley
was known as a medical materialist; the mind and body were intimately re-
lated and mental illness resulted from physical harm to the brain and the
nervous system. In one of his earliest essays, "The Correlation of Mental
and Physical Force: or Man, a part of Nature," Maudsley stated his views
on the unity of mind and body:
It is very unlikely that there should be two such essentially distinct orders of
phenomenon in the universe; that in fact, it is almost inconceivable that there
should be a unity and continuity throughout the mighty field of nature, that con-
tinuity extending into man's own nature, there suddenly to be broken off."
In the interplay of mind and body, Maudsley found the explanation for
the moral failings of individuals and mankind in general. "Everydayex-
perience," Maudsley observed, "will supply hundreds of examples of the
direct manner in which moral character is influenced by the physical
state."1 His fascination with Edgar Allan Poe reflected these same values.
Poe's moral weakness led to physical indulgence, which in turn led to
"madness and horror and sin . .,n
An old friend. Dr. O. H. Savage, described Maudsley in an obituary as
"rather unfriendly," a man "who seemed to prefer solitude and contempla-
tion to social life ... Maudsley belonged to several clubs, but did not enter in-
to the social side of medical life, and he was not personally popular. Savage
recalls telling Maudsley that he was "so absorbed in his love for humanity
that he had no affection to spare for the individual." II Several men who
Ibid, p. 124.
'Maudsley, "The Correlations of Mental and Physical Force; or Man a Part l,f Nature:'
Joumtll qf Mental S c i ~ , 6 (October, 1859): 59.
'lbid, p. 60.
nMaudsley, "Edgar Allan Poe," JOIU1KII qf Mettal Scierece, 6 (October, 1859): p. 366.
"Savage, JOIU'IIQI qf Mental Science, p. 119.
272 Aibion
knew him remarked that his sympathies would have been wider and his well
known pessimism tempered had he children of his own. 19
With few familial and social responsibilities, Maudsley was free to devote
himself to work, as journal editor and later as Professor of Medical Juris-
prudence at University College. When not occupied with official duties,
Maudsley spent his time writing and his output was impressive. Although he
wrote on many subjects, his work always stressed the bodily sources of men-
tal illness and his tone was usually pessimistic. As he grew older, Maudsley
became more and more interested in medico-legal issues and an advocate of
more enlightened policies in the treatment of the insane. In 1907, he gave
30,000 to the London County Council for a mental hospital and the
Maudsley Hospital on Denmark Hill is testimony to his largess.
Maudsley was an anti-onanist. In The Pathology oj Mind, he described
the results of self-abuse in glowing terms:
When, degeneration going on, they reach the last and worst stage of degrada-
tion, they sink into an apathetic state of moody and morose self-absorption with
extreme loss of mental power. They sit or lie all day, or saunter lazily about,
muttering or smiling to themselves, lost to all healthy feeling and human in-
terests, slovenly and dirty: if they enter into any conversations, they probably re-
veal delusions of a SUSpicious or obscene nature ....
So they linger on pitiable wrecks of degradation, from year to year, becoming
weaker in mind and body until they die from complete nervous prostration or
from some inner current disease to which they fall easy victim at last.
2

The price of masturbation is clearly heavy.
Obviously, Maudsley's writings on masturbation were a product of the
1860s and 18708 when other medical men wrote in a similar vein. We can be-
gin, then, by stating that Henry Mauds1ey was a product of his time and
that he was in good company in expressing his dislike of self-abuse. In 1865,
Dr. William Acton assailed masturbation. He tied it, among other things, to
atrophy of the sexual organs, a consequence only slightly less frightening
than Maudsley's picture of decadence and death.
21
Professor S.M. Bemiss
wrote of how masturbation brought on epilepsy in The New Orleans Jour-
nal oj Medicine (1869), and Dr. Frederick Hollick claimed that masturba-
tion caused baldness and premature whitening of the hair, with psychic con-
sequences to hairless males that we can only imagine.
22
To some extent,
"Ibid, and Mott, Briti6h MediCIII JOUI'1UlI, p. 161.
'"Mawisley, The Pathology 0/ Mind (New York. 1880), p. 4S9.
"William Acton, The Functi0n8 and DiIorder8 0/ tire Reproductive Organs in Childhood,
Youth, Adult Age and AdYanad Age (Phj)adelpbia. 1865), p. S7.
HOn Bemiss lee Georre H. NapbeyJ, M.D., The Tranmrission 0/ Li/e Counsels On tire Na-
ture and Hygiene 0/ the Mt16CUIlne Function (Philadelphia, 1872), p. 92; Frederick Holick,
The Male Generative 0r,tmI1n Hetdlh and Dl8eo8e /rom In/ancy to Old Age (New York,
1849), p. 347.
Masturbation and Insanity 273
Maudsley's views on masturbation simply reflected the conventional wis-
dom of the day.
Maudsley and other psychologists had many opportunities to observe in-
mates of asylums in various states of deterioration, masturbating: that is,
there was some empirical justification. The nineteenth century saw the
growth and development of the asylum and of the scientific study of mental
illness. The sight of an insane individual masturbating had a powerful im-
pact on asylum attendants, doctors, and psychologists. ZJ It led to the easy
assumption that seminal loss had created the deteriorating mental condition.
Yet this explanation for Maudsley and others does not explain why mastur-
bation, above all other observable phenomenon in the insane, should have
assumed such importance. Nor does it explain the links between masturba-
tion and the wide variety of disease tied to self-abuse. Maudsley had ob-
served insane people masturbating, and had assumed cause and effect. Did
Hollick watch hairlines recede in direct proportion to seminal expenditure;
or conversely, did he study hairy abstentionists? No, the linkage between
masturbation and evil consequence was not a product of observation, but of
ideology. It was assumed, and it is the reasons for this assumption that
must be examined.
By focusing on Maudsley's fears, his conception of evil, certain common
themes emerge which link together sexuality, insanity, and criminaiity. For
example, Maudsley wrote extensively about the causes of crime with special
emphasis on criminal types.
In 1888, Maudsley wrote an article in The Journal 0/ Mental Science titl-
ed, "Remarks on Crime and Criminals," in which he divided criminals into
two categories.
24
Occasional criminals committed crimes because of their
social situation and perhaps because of temptation. Nurture, not nature,
was the prime mover. Natural criminals, the category which most interested
Maudsley, were victims of heredity or some form of physical, moral, and
mental degeneracy. Natural criminals were endowed with attributes which
programmed them for a life of crime.
The natural criminal was first and foremost a product of deficient moral
sensibility, reflecting a kind of mental backsliding to a lower stage on the
evolutionary scale. As Maudsley put it,
The sense of moral relations or so-c:aIled moral fedina, and the rme qualities of
reason and conduct that are correlates with it are the latest and the hiahest pro-
ducts of mental evolution; being the least stable, therefore they are the rust to
disappear in mental deaeneration, which is in the literal sense of IIlfkiltding or
undoing of mind; and when they are stripped off the more primitive and more
"For example, see S. G. Howe. On the Causes o/Idiocy (reprinted, New Yark. 1972),
.o77le JowNll Q/ Melttai Scierrce. 35 (1888): p. 162.
274 Albion
stable passions are exposed-naked and not ashamed, just as they were in the
premoral ages of animals and human life on earth."
There are a number of related themes in this partial portrait of the natural
criminal. Underneath the thin veneer of civilization there lurks the primitive
savagery of a lower evolutionary state. Take away this veneer from the indi-
vidual or the society and we are back to "premoral ages." Further, this
moral veneer is unstable. When degeneration sets in, it is the first to go. The
metaphor used to describe potential criminality is also interesting. Morality
is "stripped off" and passions are "exposed-naked and not ashamed."
Maudsley notes that natural criminals may still be intellectually acute, but
they are "engaged almost exclusively in the narrow sphere of their imme-
diate interests" and "are sometimes sharpened by continual exercise there
to a fine edge of low, fox-like cunning."26
His portrait of the degenerate natural criminal noted the growth "of sim-
ple and coarse anti-social impulses" and that the "moral treachery" of one
generation "may come out in the criminality of the next":that is, natural
criminals are born, not made, for they are the products of genetic defi-
ciencies.
27
Maudsley's portrait of the natural criminal emphasizes imme-
diate, narrow interests; it is self interest at the expense of a moral code that
embraces social responsibility.
Ties between criminality and madness in Maudsley's work are explicit. In
The Pathology of Mind. he stated unequivocally that "crime and madness
are the active outcome of anti-social tendencies," adding, "It is well known
how hard a thing it is sometimes to distinguish between these two forms of
human degeneracy. "21 As with the natural criminal, Maudsley placed heavy
emphasis on heredity. "No training in the world will avail to elicit grapes
from thorns or figs from thistles," he wrote in Responsibility in Mental
Disease. "and it will ever be impossible to raise a stable superstructure of in-
tellect and character on bad natural foundations. "29 Although Maudsley
never used the term, it is clear that he believed that there was a "natural"
madman who resembled the natural criminal.
Like the natural criminal, the natural madman is characterized by an in-
ability to reach a higher stage of mental and moral development. He re-
mains in a halfway house where animality overwhelms those higher faculties
that are the essence of civilization. Maudsley observed,
"Ibid.
"Ibid.
"Ibid.
"Maudsley, The Pathology of Mind, p. 100.
"Maudsley, Responsibility in Mental Disease (New York, 1900) p. 21.
Masturbation and Insanity 275
With the progress of mankind to a higher stage of evolution, there are correlative
possibilities of retrograde change; the weaker members who cannot bear the
strain of progress will fall by the wayside; and an increased quantity as well as an
increased variety of mental derangement will bear witness that the individual
perishes, while the race grows more and more.'
Similarities between criminality and insanity extend beyond heredity and
descriptions of drop-outs from evolutionary progress. Over and over again
Maudsley finds two characteristics of insanity, of the insane temperament,
which are in effect his definition of madness. The first is passion: insanity is
caused by "sensual indulgence and the exhaustion consequent thereupon. "
It was this fear of passion of all kinds that turned Maudsley into an ardent
foe of religious enthusiasm. According to him, religious organizations that
stressed "emotional excitement" were adding to mental instability and,
therefore, to the number of insane people in society. In a long article titled
"Delusions" Maudsley added, "It is well that devotion should be calm and
sober at all times; it is necessary that it be so if there is any innate or tempo-
rary susceptibility to disturbing mental cause."31 Along with anger and reli-
gious enthusiasm as debilitating passions, Maudsley put love. "The ardor
of love is a temporary insanity," Maudsley wrote in 1863, adding that "In a
lunatic asylum some are found who are under a permanent passion of
love .... " Returning to suspect religious enthusiasm, he argued that some
Christian saints suffered from an excess of love directed towards imaginary
rather than real beings.
There are several aspects of Maudsley's conception of passion that are
noteworthy. Passion is not only emotional enthusiasm but also
monomania. For the passionate individual cannot escape from forever
dwelling on the all consuming idee fIXe. It is a product of the lack of intel-
lectual and moral self-control which causes overconcentration of the incor-
poreal, the spiritual, and the imaginary. Maudsley felt that some madmen
"under the sway of a permanent passion" were unable to discern "objective
realities," while the passionate lover "worships an ideal of his imagination
rather than an actual being." Lovers in asylums, Maudsley added "con-
verse in words of endearing affection with lovers whom no one can see but
themselves . . . ." The enemies of sanity are enthusiasm, spirituality and
monomania. It was the last-monomania-which most frightened Mauds-
ley.
Appearing in virtually every article and book Maudsley wrote on insanity
are innumerable references to the individual who has cut himself off from
larger societal concerns to wallow in intense preoccupation with himself. In
.OMaudsley, Th Pathology oj Mind, pp. 130-131.
"Ibid, p. 46.
276 Albion
The Pathology of Mind, Maudsley made this concern explicit.
Separated from the social organism of which he is element or unit, the whole
working in him and he in it, the individual could no more live and function than
an organ or a structural element of the body which, dreaming itself self-sufficing
should forget its dependence on the whole and start life on its own account. The
essence of mad and of bad wrong doing, that which makes the one disease and
the other crime, is that it is anti-social: the individual being very much in the
social what a diseased organ is in the physiological organism, something sepa-
rate, out of harmony and unity with it, alienated from it, in fact too individual."
In describing the insane temperament, Maudsley speaks of "great self-feel-
ing and vanity" and being "engrossed in the affectations of self." The
morally insane individual sees everything "from the standpoint of the nar-
rowest selftshness." 33
This theme is well illustrated in Maudsley's essays on Edgar Allen Poe
and Emmanuel Swedenborg. Poe clearly fascinated Maudsley and he was
not unsympathetic to the American writer in whom he recognized uncom-
mon qualities, an authentic literary genius, yet Maudsley was mainly in-
terested in showing how passion, and most importantly, self-indulgence had
led him to unhappiness and death. Poe, according to Maudsley, never learn-
ed self-control.
There are men who, like Poe have such intense self-feeling, cannot realize the
fact of a not-self; they seem to look upon the world as a place created for them to
play their pranks in .... "
As a counterpoint to Poe's disastrous life, Maudsley asserted that "man al-
ways is in reality happiest when he is under some restraint," when he is
"forced into self-denial, and made a reasonable creature."H
Emanuel Swedenborg was for Maudsley a similar case for he lacked "in-
tellectual self-restraint." In the end he displayed "a self-sufficiency know-
ing no bounds" as well as "preposterous pretensions of monomania, and
an imagination habitually running riot that at last ran mad."36
F or both Swedenborg and Poe the consequences of moral and intellectual
monomania was madness. In effect, the man who lacked self restraint was
on the road to suicide and, as one might guess, Maudsley viewed suicide as
the ultimate form of selftshness. Only cowards commit suicide, Maudsley
once noted. They were guilty of "shirking duty, generated in a monstrous
feeling of self, and accomplished in the most sinful, because willful ignor-
ance."J1
"Maudsley, "Delusions," Journal of Mental Science, 9 (1863): 21.
"Maudsley, The Pathology of Mind, pp. 23, 298, 345.
"Maudsley, "Edpr Allen Poe," Journal of Mental Science, 6 (1859-60): 356.
"Ibid, p. 344.
"Mauds1ey, "Emanuel Swedenbora." Journal 0/ Mental Scimce, 15 (1869): p. 185.
"Mauds1ey, "On Love of Ufe," Journal 0/ Mental Science. 7 (1860): 208.
Masturbation and Insanity 277
Paralleling Maudsley's dislike of religious enthusiasm was a profound
distaste for religious asceticism. As we have seen, enthusiasm leads to pas-
sion and insanity. Asceticism on the other hand, leads to "an exaggerated
selfhood ... something like madness."JI For Maudsley, this fear of reli-
gious asceticism as a kind of madness had its modern counterpart in the
acquisitive grasping businessman who loses all sense of social responsibility.
Maudsley addressed the Medical Psychological Association in 1871 about
the 'deterioration of character" produced "by a life of mean and petty de-
ceit and grasping selfishness in business," and attacked the "single minded
pursuit of riches as a cause of moral and mental degeneracy."3' Maudsley
had earlier made the point even more explicit by advising men that marriage
to the daughter of an insane person was better than marriage to "the
daughter of one who had lived a life of hard selfishness, without thought or
care of others .... "40 To Maudsley, the nineteenth century capitalist's pur-
suit of wealth was similar to the early Christian's pursuit of salvation.
Those who rolled in thorns and retreated into deserts had their modern day
equivalent in businessmen who rolled in money and sought personal salva-
tion in riches. Both types were anti-social, both were selfish, and ultimately,
both were mad.
Once we understand Maudsley's fear of passion and selfishness which can
lead to criminality, madness, or both, not only for the individual but for his
descendants, it is easy to understand his hatred of masturbation. It was the
one sexual act that symbolized passion, a characteristic of all sexual acti-
vity, and intense self-absorption. It profoundly threatened both the indivi-
dual and society. It was the pathway to crime and insanity and threatened
not only the individual's own body but the social body as well. One quota-
tion from Maudsley on the subject of the insanity of self-abuse will illus-
trate this common theme.
The most striking features in this variety of mental derangement are the intense
selfishness of self-conceit that are shoWn. The patient is completely wrapped up
in self, insensible of the claims of others upon him and of his duties
to them, IIypocllondrillctJlly occupied with IIis senstltions and IIis bodily func-
tions, abandoned to indolent and solitary seU-brooding. he displays a wz"ity and
quite unbecoming his qe and position; exacts the constant indul-
gence of others without the least thouaht of obliaation or aratitude, and is apt, if
"Maudsley, TIte htltology of MiItd. p. 20.
"Maudsley, "Insanity and Its Treatment," Address at the Annual General Meeting of the
Medico-PsycholQlical Assoc:iatiOll, 3 Auaust, 1871, Royal CoUeae of Physicians, in JOfU1ttlI
of Mmtlll Scietce. 17 (1871): p . 319.
4IMaudsley, "On Some of the Causes of Insanity, It JOfIIftIII of Metllll ScieIce, 12 (1867): p.
495.
278 Albion
he gets not the consideration which he claims, to declare that his family are un-
feeling and do not understand him, or are actually hostile to him.' (italics mine)
Masturbation, Maudsley believed, was evil because it symbolized anti-
social behavior. It was the supreme narcissistic act, the retreat into selfish
enjoyment of one's own body without reference to the social order, and a
heinous sin against the body politic. The masturbator was a sexual hermit, a
nineteenth-century equivalent of Simon Stylites.
42
Taking solace in his own
body and fmding gratification in orgasm and fantasy rather than in society
and useful work, the Onanist was dangerous. It should be emphasized that
there was no casual relation between masturbation and madness: for
Maudsley, it was madness. The insane person withdrew from the world and
lost himself in delusion and anti-social behavior; the Onanist withdrew
from the world and lost himself in self-love and illusion-and that was mad-
ness. Most significant in Maudsley's writing is the common source of mas-
turbation and insanity. They were linked because they were solitary vices. It
was no accident that Maudsley and other nineteenth-century anti-onanists
emphasized the dangers of solitude and found the symptoms of madness-
masturbator's face-in the shy, retiring, or scholarly individual who re-
treated from social intercourse.
Maudsley's own life probably influenced his views on the dangers of anti-
social behavior. Personally a loner who had difficulties making friends and
fmding popularity, his fear of solitary vices may have reflected fear of the
very life style to which his personality and his social experiences had con-
demned him. Concern with madness, crime, and masturbation as self-
absorption and self-abuse might have been Maudsley's way of doing battle
with the concerns of his own life.
While a discussion of other nineteenth-century anti-onanist doctors is
beyond the scope of this essay, it should be noted that Maudsley's fears
were not unique. William Acton described masturbational insanity in words
reminiscent of Maudsley: "Engaged in no social diversion, the patients of
this group live alone in the midst of many .... They work alone or they sit
alone."J
Maudsley, The Pathology of Mind. pp.452-53.
"See Maudsley's unflattering discussion of Simon Stylites in "Delusions," Jou"",1 of Mental
Science, p. 18.
"Quoted in Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians (New York, 1964), p. 20. Acton, however
did stress evils other than the solitary nature of the act. He showed far greater concern with
the impact of mastlD'bation on children than did Maudsley. He also stressed that masturba-
tion ruined men for leXuai activity in marriage and most importantly, referred to the physical
dangers of spendiDl sperm in a proflipte manner. Acton's work gives credence to many of
the current theories about mastlD'bation phobia in the nineteenth century. At the very least,
this study of Maudlley Ibows that an in-depth analysis of many writers on onanistn is neces-
sary before any final c:oadlllioa on fear of telf abuse can be reached.
Masturbation and Insanity 279
In America, Dr. James Jackson also stressed the dangers of masturbation
as a solitary act: "The solitarily vicious person is like the solitary villain, so
circumstanced as to almost inevitably be ruined . . . . Alone and uncom-
panioned, he broods over his habitudes and pursues his courses until he is
incurably diseased or depraved .... " Once again, insanity, criminality, or
onanism are viewed as evil because they are selfish and anti-social. In a re-
markable statement on the subject of masturbation, Jackson congratulated
those boys who were social enough to masturbate together: "It is not, there-
fore, to be deplored that boys who are in the habit of masturbating perform
the act in each other's presence, but is rather considered as a favorable
symptom in their cases. "44
The Maudsley case, while not disproving current theories of the reasons
for concern with masturbation in the nineteenth century does, nonetheless,
call them into question. There is no evidence, for example, that Maudsley
felt that nineteenth-century men and women were manipulating their sexual
organs more frequently than in previous centuries. He did discuss the ques-
tion of the increase in insanity in a number of articles, but not the growth of
auto-eroticism. There is, in Maudsley's writing, the usual nineteenth-cen-
tury concern with the effect of masturbation on young people; and it is pos-
sible that he was responding to extended adolescence and enforced sexual
abstinence. Still, his focus was not youth centered. Maudsley had no chil-
dren, and while he had great respect for home and family, his concerns were
largely with the masturbatory sins of one generation causing decay and de-
generation in the next.
Also problematic is the spending and saving hypothesis, with its link be-
tween middle class attitudes toward financial and sexual thrift. Maudsley
attacked those businessmen who relentlessly pursued wealth. His portrait of
the miser who cuts himself off from larger social concerns is not favorable.
If the sexual and economic saving hypothesis holds true for Maudsley, he
should have emphasized the virtues of both economic and seminal thrift.
Maudsley believed in seminal saving, but his attitude towards money was
ambigious. In any case, as Charles Rosenberg has pointed out, those
theories which link sexual repression with middle class values present
"grave chronological problems. "45 By the mid-nineteenth century, the mid-
dle class had been around for a long time, yet sexual control and fear of
masturbation were of much less concern for everyone in earlier centuries.
The Protestant ethic and individual responsibility were an important part
of Maudsley's thinking, but these values predate intense concern with
"James Jackson, The Sexual Organism and its Hetlltliful Management (Boston, 1862), p. 60.
"Charles Rosenberg, "Sexuality, Cass and R o l ~ in 19th Century America," American
Quarterly, 2S (May, 1973): 152.
280 Albion
masturbation. As E. H. Hare has pointed out, Catholic Frenchmen were as
concerned with masturbation as their Protestant neighbors across the En-
glish Channel. 06 Status anomaly does not surface in Maudsley's work.
Maudsley's writings suggest that it might be more fruitful to concentrate
on the fear of passion and selfishness that permeated views of sexual de-
pravity, criminality, and mental deterioration in the mid- and late-nine-
teenth century. For Maudsley, these were all cut from the same cloth. Mary
Douglas has argued that the human body is a symbol of society, and bodily
control is a symbol of social control. Interest in bodily apertures, Professor
Douglas notes, "depends on the preoccupation with social exits and en-
trances, escape routes and invasions."47 We might add that modes of
sexuality, as one of the most intimate of all bodily activities, have high sym-
bolic content, and that forbidden modes of sexuality reflect larger societal
concerns. This seems to have been true for Maudsley.
Maudsley's work, like other Victorian writers, reflected the decline of tra-
ditional society and the rise of urbanization and industrialization, a condi-
tion unique to England, America, and Europe in the nineteenth century.
Richard Altick has summed up the conditions spawned by urbanization in
the following description of city life.
Perhaps worst of all, it was crowded with rootless, anonymous strangers, indif-
ferent to their fellows' fate, bent only on surviving the competitive turmoil ....
Paradoxically, the closer people were brought together physically, as in mill or
slum, the farther apart they drifted in any social or spiritual sense; in the midst of
crowds they were alone."
Walter Houghton agrees in his description of Victorian England as foster-
ing "the feeling of isolation and loneliness, so characteristic of modern
man. "49 Altick's phrase "competitive turmoil" is particularly reminiscent
of Maudsley, who saw in competition the seeds of selfishness and anti-social
behavior, and in turmoil the passion that could destroy man and society.
Although Maudsley spent most of his life writing about insanity as a
medical doctor and a scientist, he operated within the confines of an
ideology which permeated his views of criminality, insanity, and sexuality.
His early writings show the enormous influence of Thomas Carlyle, for like
Carlyle he was greatly concerned with the evils of industrialization in Vic-
torian England. It was Carlyle who observed, "Men cannot live isolated: we
are all bound together, for mutual good or else for mutual misery. as living
"Hare, "Masturbational Insanity," p. 12.
"Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explanations in Cosmology (New York, 1970), p. 70.
"Richard Altick, Victorian People and Ideas (New York, 1973), p. i7.
"Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind. 1830-1870 (New Haven, 1957), pp. I,
77.
Masturbation and Insanity 281
nerves in the same body," and Maudsley who concurred in his essay on
Swedenborg: "But no man is self-sufficing in this universe, and it is an irre-
mediable misfortune to him who imagines that he is .... "50 Like Carlyle,
Ruskin, and other foes of nineteenth-century capitalism, Maudsley was
deeply distressed by laissez-Iaire practices which he believed had contri-
buted to the alienation and the selfishness of modern life. He shared with
Carlyle a deep pessimism about the condition and the fate of man. The only
way out for the individual was altruism and emotional detachment which
conquered seltbood. Altruism was the antidote to chaos and madness.
With his organic view of society and his hostility to selfishness, Maudsley
was in opposition to those Social Darwinists who praised the competitive
struggle for existence and equated combat with progress. Yet in many re-
spects, his views on society were not far removed from those of Darwin,
Huxley and even Herbert Spencer. While there is ambiguity in Darwin, as
Howard Gruber has argued, "Cooperation among members of the same
species and symbiotic relationships among members of different species
were as much a part of D.arwin's thinking as direct competition.'
T. H. Huxley had also been greatly influenced by Carlyle and he shared
with Maudsley a devotion to the ideal of hard work and the same pessimistic
view of mankind. 52 Both men stressed the benefits of cooperation within
society albeit for different reasons. For Huxley the struggle for existence
stopped at the water's edge because human society depended on coopera-
tion not conflict. He wrote in "Evolution and Ethics": "Let us understand
... that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic
process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it."53 For
Maudsley the size of the universe, the age of the earth and the tiny place of a
single human being in the order of things was a constant reminder of man's
insignificance. It was for him a call for humility and altruism: "The scien-
tific spirit of the present age preaches self renunciation.'''4
Maudsley's call for cooperation brought him close to at least one side of
Herbert Spencer's views on man's relationship to society. While best known
as an apostle of lassiez faire, there is in Spencer an organic view of society
"'Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (New York, 1927), p. 296; and Maudsley, "Emanuel
Swedenborg," Journal 0/ Mental Science, p. 186.
"Howard E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study 0/ Scientific Creativity (New
York, 1964), p. S4.
nOn Huxley's pessimism see William Irvine Apes, Angels, and Victorians (New York, 19S5),
p.42S.
''T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays, (New York, 19(3), p. 83.
"Maudsley, "Delusions," Journal 0/ Mental Science, p. 22.
282 Albion
that was very similar to MaudsleY's.!5 Indeed Spencer, ruminating on the
future of mankind wrote that the requirements of the social state must take
precendence in the future before "crimes, excesses, diseases, improprieties,
dishonesties, and cruelties ... can cease.""
Unlike Spencer, Huxley, and other eminent Victorians there was no
ambiguity in Maudsley when the evil of selfhood was the issue. He was a
clear-cut representative of what Gertrude Himmelfarb has labeled the Vic-
torian Angst: "The ultimate abnegation beyond food, dress, pleasure, even
sex, was the abnegation of self .... "" For Maudsley, this abnegation was
the road of sanity and whether criminality, insanity, suicide, or masturba-
tion were involved, the fear remained the same: Society must be protected
from passion and selfishness-from atomization. The individual's choice
was clear,
To live for others or to live for self, that is the question: -whether the actions
shall be excited by the altruistic feeling for the welfare of others, or whether they
shall be prompted by the egoistic passions for the gratification of self?"
For Maudsley, the lonely, furtive, selfish onanist was a symbol of
catastrophe.
"See Stanislaw Andreski, ed., Herbert Spencer: Structure. Function. and Evolution (London,
1971), and Robert L. Carniero, Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of Society (Chicago, 1967).
"Herbert Spencer, "A Theory of Population Deduced from the General Law of Animal fer-
tility," The Westminister Review. n.s. 1 (1852): pp. 485-86.
"Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds (New York, 1968), p. 309.
"Maudsiey, "Delusions," Journal of Mental Science. p. 23.