Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 | Page 8

The exacerbation occurred much more frequently just
before than just after the period. There was usually some disturbance of
menstruation. Various other disorders of the skin show a similar
relationship to menstruation.
It has been asserted that masturbation is a frequent or constant cause of
acne at puberty. (See, e.g., discussion in British Medical Journal, July,

1882.) This cannot be accepted. Acne very frequently occurs without
masturbation, and masturbation is very frequently practiced without
producing acne. At the same time we may well believe that at the
period of puberty, when the pilo-sebaceous system is already in
sensitive touch with the sexual system, the shock of frequently repeated
masturbation may (in the same way as disordered menstruation) have
its repercussion on the skin. Thus, a lady has informed me that at about
the age of 18 she found that frequently repeated masturbation was
followed by the appearance of comedones.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] A. Franklin, Les Soins de Toilette, p. 81.
[3] W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 347.
[4] Numerous passages from the theologians bearing on this point are
brought together in Moechialogia, pp. 221-220.

II.
Ticklishness--Its Origin and Significance--The Psychology of
Tickling--Laughter--Laughter as a Kind of Detumescence--The Sexual
Relationships of Itching--The Pleasure of Tickling--Its Decrease with
Age and Sexual Activity.
Touch, as has already been remarked, is the least intellectual of the
senses. There is, however, one form of touch sensation--that is to say,
ticklishness--which is of so special and peculiar a nature that it has
sometimes been put aside in a class apart from all other touch
sensations. Scaliger proposed to class titillation as a sixth, or separate,
sense. Alrutz, of Upsala, regards tickling as a milder degree of itching,
and considers that the two together constitute a sensation of distinct
quality with distinct end-organs, for the mediation of that quality.[5]
However we may regard this extreme view, tickling is certainly a
specialized modification of touch and it is at the same time the most
intellectual mode of touch sensation and that with the closest

connection with the sexual sphere. To regard tickling as an intellectual
manifestation may cause surprise, more especially when it is
remembered that ticklishness is a form of sensation which reaches full
development very early in life, and it has to be admitted that, as
compared even with the messages that may be sent through smell and
taste, the intellectual element in ticklishness remains small. But its
presence here has been independently recognized by various
investigators. Groos points out the psychic factor in tickling as
evidenced by the impossibility of self-tickling.[6] Louis Robinson
considers that ticklishness "appears to be one of the simplest
developments of mechanical and automatic nervous processes in the
direction of the complex functioning of the higher centres which comes
within the scope of psychology,"[7] Stanley Hall and Allin remark that
"these minimal touch excitations represent the very oldest stratum of
psychic life in the soul."[8] Hirman Stanley, in a somewhat similar
manner, pushes the intellectual element in ticklishness very far back
and associates it with "tentacular experience." "By temporary
self-extension," he remarks, "even low amoeboid organisms have slight,
but suggestive, touch experiences that stimulate very general and
violent reactions, and in higher organisms extended touch-organs, as
tentacles, antennæ, hair, etc., become permanent and very delicately
sensitive organs, where minimal contacts have very distinct and
powerful reactions." Thus ticklishness would be the survival of long
passed ancestral tentacular experience, which, originally a stimulation
producing intense agitation and alarm, has now become merely a play
activity and a source of keen pleasure.[9]
We need not, however, go so far back in the zoölogical series to explain
the origin and significance of tickling in the human species. Sir J.Y.
Simpson suggested, in an elaborate study of the position of the child in
the womb, that the extreme excitomotory sensibility of the skin in
various regions, such as the sole of the foot, the knee, the sides, which
already exists before birth, has for its object the excitation and
preservation of the muscular movements necessary to keep the foetus in
the most favorable position in the womb.[10] It is, in fact, certainly the
case that the stimulation of all the ticklish regions in the body tends to
produce exactly that curled up position of extreme muscular flexion

and general ovoid shape which is the normal position of the foetus in
the womb. We may well believe that in this early developed reflex
activity we have the basis of that somewhat more complex ticklishness
which appears somewhat later.
The mental element in tickling is indicated by the fact that even a child,
in whom ticklishness is highly developed, cannot tickle himself; so that
tickling is not a simple reflex. This fact was long ago pointed out by
Erasmus Darwin, and he accounted for it by supposing