ase of children; and even though imaginative activity
may often be in abeyance when the masturbatory act is begun, during the
progress of the act the imagination usually comes into operation. None
the less, masturbation of a purely mechanical kind, in which the
imagination plays no part, is comparatively more common during childhood
than it is during youth. The peripheral processes of the detumescence
impulse and the central processes of the contrectation impulse are not
at this early age so intimately associated as they are later in life.
Even when the contrectation impulse is already awakened, as usually
happens before the detumescence impulse becomes active, when the
detumescence impulse finally manifests itself, its gratification by
means of masturbation without any imaginative activity is comparatively
common in children. In such cases artificial stimulation of the genital
organs is effected quite independently of the longing for intimate
physical contact with and the embraces of another individual.

In an earlier chapter (pp. 31, 32) I have explained that in the adult
the voluptuous sensation is closely associated with the psychosexual
perceptions, associated, that is to say, with the mode of the
contrectation impulse; I stated that as a rule the voluptuous sensation
was experienced to the full in those cases only in which the sexual act
was one adequate to the contrectation impulse of the person concerned.
But when the association between the processes of detumescence and those
of contrectation has not yet occurred, the voluptuous sensation is
independent of the contrectation impulse. This explains the fact that in
the child both the peripheral voluptuous sensation, and also the
voluptuous acme and the sense of satisfaction, are more frequently
independent of the processes of contrectation than is the case in the
adult Gradually the two groups of processes become associated with one
another; and, as we have learned, this association frequently occurs
even in childhood. In the latter case, the voluptuous acme and the
subjective sense of satisfaction ensue only when the sexual act or the
sexual idea is adequate. But we must always remember that in the child
more often than in the adult the voluptuous acme and the sense of
satisfaction occur independently of the processes of contrectation.

An ejaculation of fluid secretions does not invariably occur when
masturbation is practised. Whereas in the adult masturbation