Concerning Specific Forms of Masturbation

Part of a series of articles on
Psychoanalysis
Concepts Psychosexual development Psychosocial development (Erikson) Unconscious Preconscious Consciousness Psychic apparatus Id, ego and superego Ego defenses Projection Introjection Libido Drive Transference Countertransference Resistance Denial Dreamwork Cathexis
Important figures Abraham Adler Balint Bion Breuer Chodorow Erikson Fairbairn Ferenczi Freud (Anna) Freud (Sigmund) Fromm Guattari Horney Irigaray Jacobson Jones Jung Kohut Klein Kristeva Lacan Laing Laplanche Mahler Rank Reich Spielrein Stekel Strachey Sullivan Winnicott Žižek
Important works The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Psychology of the Unconscious (1912) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) The Ego and the Id (1923) Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964) Anti-Oedipus (1972) The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Schools of thought Adlerian Ego psychology Jungian Lacanian Interpersonal Intersubjective Marxist Object relations Reichian Relational Self psychology
Training Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis British Psychoanalytic Council British Psychoanalytical Society Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research International Psychoanalytical Association World Association of Psychoanalysis List of schools of psychoanalysis
See also Child psychoanalysis Depth psychology Psychodynamics Psychoanalytic theory
Psychology portal
v t e

"Concerning Specific Forms of Masturbation" (originally published as Über Spezifität der Onanieformen) is a 1922 essay by Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. It was written while he led the Vienna Outpatient Clinic for sexually-related problems and is an early work in his career which was to develop around the subject of human sexuality.

In the seven and a half page essay Reich accepts the prevalent notions on the roles of unconscious fantasy and the subsequent emerging guilt feelings which he saw as originating from the act itself. Reich built on papers written by other professionals of his time; however, he decided to probe deeper into the myriad variations of both female and male masturbation.

The essay was presented to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society on October 10, 1922 and was published in the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse in 1922. It formed the basis for Reich's later views on the role of genitality in the therapy of neuroses.^[1]