Masturbation in Western society has always been a taboo topic.  A century ago, a good mother made sure her sons aimed higher than their groin by purchasing gadgets to place around the penis, so that her son couldn't grasp it.  Or enjoy it.  Mothers would caught their sons en flagrante delicto were known to threaten them with castration.   See Freud's "Little Hans" for more details.  His little hands went to his little man.   Daughters were harder to catch in the act.  Of course, there was the chastity belt, which ensured UTI, as well as chastity.  Self-pleasuring may have been a possibility, albeit one requiring dexterity.

In "Portnoy's Complaint," Roth writes of circle jerks and chicken stuffing.  "Fear of Flying" mentions it, but with few details.  "Fear of Flying" was more preoccupied with the women making sure they had a "mature" orgasm, not an immature one.  Again, the whole  concept of gradations of orgasm dates to Freud.  One type, the mature, makes it easier for the male to reach climax.  The other makes it longer for the male but better for the female.  Guess which one is more mature.  Guess how much empirical reality the whole concept has.  Spoiler alert--little to none. 

When I first stumbled upon this new sensation, I was lying on my stomach, watching MASTERPIECE THEATER.  I was 12.  I was alone in my bedroom.  I couldn't believe how intense the pleasure was, how insanely alive I felt.  I wanted to repeat the experience.  I didn't know what to call the experience, but I guessed it wasn't something to speak of in polite society.  I wanted so much to ask people, but I was a shy child with no real friends.  Who could I ask?  How would I phrase it?  I grokked that asking my mother was probably out of the question.  Learning, via Jong, about the two types of orgasm, I briefly worried if feeling "great" would ruin my ability for an interpersonal experience.  Then I felt the surge of "greatness" and just like that, figured, I'd cross that bridge.  If necessary, I'd have intercourse and then finish myself off.  Feeling that surge was that empowering.  

I figured out exactly what I was doing a few years later.  And thought myself wise in my silence.  And kept it up.  All by myself, of course.  What else could I do?  I felt ashamed.  Females were not supposed to pleasure themselves, but to give pleasure to others.  They were not supposed to be a solo act but to pair off.  

Being shy and awkward doesn't help a girl to get a date on Saturday night.  And I sincerely believed until I went to college that the first time is the wedding night.  Love, marriage, baby carriage.  I believed that would be my path, that somehow the lightning bolt would strike.

And we still don't talk about it.  In college, we talked about everything--menstruation, birth control, abortions.  But not masturbation.  But I kept my hand in. 

I read "Our Bodies, Ourselves."  I inspected my cervix.  I compared it to the paradigms in the text.  My cervix was one of the more adorable types.  And with whom do I share that? 

When I became a psychologist, I listened to my patients.  While they were all sexually active, they didn't seem to be sensually active.  As long as it was good for him.  They seemed to get a release, a reassurance of their value.  But they did not speak of pleasure or fun.  

When I worked at a senile center, it struck me how unfair it was that men were delivered to the psychologist for the behavior problem of "exhibitionism."  The men there are oldest-old, have the residual  IQ of a placemat, and are at the stage of life where they still have some nerve endings from which they derive pleasure.  What is the crime here?  Why can't they just wheel them off into a private area--after all, why do you think they call them private parts?  No, it is a behavioral problem.  It is a behavioral problem which starts in  the uterus.  One can view sonograms of male fetuses reaching for their ding-dong and ringing it.  Surely they do so because even then, it is an area rich in nerve endings.  

And females.  Why do we think of our elders as asexual?  Surely it is a better cure for depression than all the mood elevators in the pharmacy.  Even if they are not capable of orgasm, it is a reassuring feeling to rub down there.  To feel once again like a natural woman.  

What can be a curative factor is instead viewed as a behavioral problem.  And psychologists are dispatched to deal with it, as if they were errant schoolchildren, and not humans searching once more for an electrical spark.  

Above:  Old City of Budapest, Jewish quarter