Revolutionary Against his Will: Sigmund Freud's Theories on Masturbation Against the Background of the Modern Fight Against Onanism

The article gives an overview of Sigmund Freud's changing theories on masturbation and autoeroticism. After outlining the historical background, i.e. the medical, psychiatric and pedagogical fight against masturbation in Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the article traces four basic lines of Freud's theoretical development: (1) the establishment of the concept of masturbatory neurasthenia and the decreasing adherence to this concept; (2) the replacement of the seduction theory with a theory of endogenous sexual development based on autoeroticism; (3) the successive recognition of infantile alloeroticism; and (4) the continuing ambivalences with regard to sexual education and their ultimate answer through the theorem of the castration complex. Finally, it will be discussed how Freud takes up the complexes of the modern fight against onanism and transforms them with great cultural impact. Since Freud had reservations about the assumption that masturbation was harmless, but paved the way for a new conception of child masturbation with his theory, he can be seen as a revolutionary against his will.