Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

January 28, 1969. TESTICULAR AND SCROTAL MASTURBATION. Jules Glenn, M.D.

Dr. Glenn feels that most analysts have neglected the importance of sensations arising from stimulation of the testicles and scrotum. Testicular and scrotal masturbation is of clinical significance in some individuals. After a review of recent literature on the subject, he presented clinical material from the cases of one adult and two children.

Fantasies accompanied by wishes for mastery or gratification are connected with testicular and scrotal masturbation. An eight-year-old boy not only tickled his testicles to produce pleasurable sensations but squeezed them, which caused pain. The painful act gratified masochistic fantasies of being a victim (related to alternating identifications with his combative mother and father): he became the one inflicting pain instead of the passive victim. It also represented an attempt to cope with a past trauma (an injury to his testicles) and a current threat of castration posed by a planned circumcision. To ward off penile castration, he displaced masturbation from the penis to the scrotum. Other patients reported the fantasy that the testicles produce urine. Bisexual symbolism was prominent in the clinical material; passivity and femininity were often equated.

Glenn discussed variations in the cathexis of the penis and the testicles and the castration anxiety related to both genitals. In most men anxiety related to penile castration is greater because of the association of the penis with activity and masculinity, and the association of the testicles with passivity and femininity. Several factors contributing to greater cathexis of the testicles and scrotum by some males, and their employment of those organs for masturbation, include displacement of cathexis from the penis, threats to the testicles in childhood or later, testicular stimulation in early life, threats to organs such as the eyes which are symbolically associated with the testicles, co