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The author throws doubt on the widely accepted theory of the dominance of the clitoris in infantile female sexual development. She thinks the equation of clitoris with penis may be a male 'projection' in the field of feminine psychology. She puts three questions:—
1Is clitoral onanism universal; is it a necessary phase in female sexual development?
2Is the clitoris to be regarded as an erogenous zone comparable to the mouth earlier or the vagina later?
3Does penis-envy exist and is it universal?
Freud, Abraham, Deutsch and de Groot would answer these questions in the affirmative. Clinical evidence from the author's cases, from Balint, Josine Muller, Harnik, Jones and others, testifies, however, to the very early occurrence of vaginal onanism. Four cases quoted by the author never practised clitoral masturbation at all, and where extra-vaginal onanism did occur, it was labial and vestibular. Ethnological evidence is scanty, but Felix Bryck's observations of negro women and children show that vaginal onanism (coitus with the finger), is the rule among them, and that customs prevail among them, such as excision of the clitoris and enlargement (lengthening) of the labiæ, which aim at increasing the pleasure of both man and woman in coitus, i.e. at increasing vaginal and para-vaginal sensitivity in the woman. Roheim's observations on Australian tribes are too few to carry much weight, and are capable of alternative interpretations. Further, evidence exists which denies the commonly accepted anatomical parallelism between penis and clitoris. The author prints a table, compiled from Brauses Anatomie des Menschen, according to which the clitoris corresponds developmentally only with the corpora cavernosum penis, the glans clitoridis has no genetic affinity with the glans penis, but the labiæ and the prepuce and glans have a common origin. On these grounds the author inclines to answer her questions in the negative. She does not consider clitoral onanism an inevitable