Self-satisfaction (masturbation, onanism) is a self-arousal with the help of hands which is concluded with ejaculation by men and orgasm by representatives of both sexes. First of all it is onanism which is one of the manifestations of puberty by the youth. This type of self-satisfaction is conditioned by physiological and social factors. The physiological factors are
nervous-hormonal passionate shifts happening at pubertal period. In this period the quantity of the testosterone, which is a man’s sexual hormone , increases by stimulating self-satisfaction in two ways. This increase first of all accelerates the development of male sexual glands and the process of sperm production. Quickly accumulating seminal fluid generates tension in the sperm- containing ways by pressing the mechanoreceptors situated in the walls of these ways. This pressure is considered as a situation of physiological discomfort, and the aspiration of getting rid of it at all costs becomes an important motivation. On the other hand, the testosterone, having an influence on the centers located in the central nervous system which are responsible for a sexual behavior, manifests an eroticizing property. It finds its expression both in the growth of a sexual sensitivity and in a sexual fantasy. Social factors, which encourage the self-satisfaction, are high age-specific indices formed in a family and twofold standards of our society in a moral norm, so one for women, another one for men. The young man can neither marry because he hasn’t matured socially yet, nor have a sexual intercourse with the girls of the same age because they must keep the virginity before a marriage. So the only way of freeing himself from the passionate hormonal processes of a sexual discomfort is the self-satisfaction. That’s to say, from medical point of view the teenage sexual self-satisfaction has no pathological effect on the health. It has a temporary character and is over in the finishing period of puberty, as a rule, to 25 years old.
But we must say that under the influence of a religious imagination the onanism is, as a rule, considered to be sinful. In the Old Testament this phenomenon is given an extremely negative estimation by considering it as a terrible sin. Such kind of imagination and estimation we also meet in the New Testament, and so they deprive the young men and Christians of the only safe physiological opportunity to free themselves from the sexual discomfort.
