Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror Book

You have probably heard that masturbating will make you go blind. Ever wonder where that idea came from? Masturbation: the history of a great terror is a scholarly attempt to trace when and how masturbation--also known as self-pollution or onanism after Onan, Judah's son in Genesis--became vilified and partially exonerated. The trail starts at the end of the sixteenth century and leaves off at the end of the twentieth, but stays in Western Europe, winding through the thoughts of famous figures such as Rosseau, Voltaire, Kant, and Freud. There is nothing titillating here, but the jargon-free prose (translated from the French by Kathryn Hoffman) is clear enough for a quick read. However, the author's approach--meticulous research through historical documents, mostly medical texts--paints at best an incomplete picture of how masturbation was considered by the public at large. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating and cautionary tale in the history of science and ideas, of how causation can be wrongly attributed, and its subsequent effect on countless psyches.

originally posted at PBS