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This book deals with the manifold clinical, psychological, physiological, ethical, and social aspects of sexual abstinence, a problem to which modern psychiatry has given many and well-founded answers. These, however, are far from being integrated and still farther from constructive prophylactic applicability. The author underscores the surprising phenomenon that in our culture sexual (coital) abstinence is almost normal until many years after biological maturity. Dr. Fajrajzen discusses both 'relative' abstinence, wherein sexual tension is relieved by masturbation, pollution or spermatorrhea, and 'partial' abstinence, in which the course of the sexual act is curtailed, as in coitus interruptus. Another classification takes into account differences in sexual maturation which permit the division between sexually mature and sexually immature ('paraphilic') abstinent individuals.
The pathological consequences of sexual abstinence are presented as negligible in hyposexual individuals and an attempt is made to correlate sexual with physical constitution. The author shares Sheldon's opinion about the greater strength of sexual drives in individuals of the longilineal or leptosomic type, which seems questionable to this reviewer. The hypothesis is made that persistent sexual abstinence may, besides having psychic repercussions,