Masturbation

Masturbation, clinically termed autoeroticism, is the self-stimulation of one's own body for sexual pleasure. As a catalogued interest the term denotes a focus on solo activity as a meaningful or preferred mode of sexual expression in its own right. For most people it is a normal, healthy component of their sexuality. Some give it a particular emphasis, valued for autonomy, control over pace and fantasy, and freedom from the negotiation that partnered sex involves.

Examples

What the term covers. As a catalog entry this indexes an emphasis. It covers people for whom solo activity is a settled and valued part of sexual life alongside an active partnered one; people drawn to the control of pace, privacy and fantasy it allows; people who build routines, media or aids around it; and people for whom it is unremarkable background. Mutual masturbation (partners stimulating themselves alongside or for one another) is autoerotic in method and partnered in setting, and sits inside the same territory.

What it does not cover. Several adjacent entries name things layered on top of solo activity rather than synonyms for it. Edging is delaying climax on purpose; gooning is the prolonged, trance-like state built on edging; jerk-off instruction adds a directing partner; orgasm denial is a power-exchange dynamic in which someone else holds the permission. A handjob is the partnered case, the same physical activity performed by someone else, a social distinction rather than a physical one. Mirror and recording interests describe what accompanies the act rather than the act. Compulsive sexual behaviour is a separate clinical matter defined by distress and impairment, not by how often someone masturbates.

How the word is used. Masturbation is both the plain-English and the clinical term, which is unusual in this catalog; autoeroticism is the formal synonym used in psychiatry and onanism the dated religious-moral one, now archaic outside historical writing. Neither DSM-5-TR nor ICD-11 lists it as a disorder or a paraphilia. The diagnostic manuals dropped it generations ago, and modern clinical writing treats it as a baseline of ordinary sexual behaviour.

History & origins

The behaviour is as old as humanity and appears in art and texts from antiquity. Society's attitude toward it is what has a history, and that attitude swung from indifference to moral panic to medical normalisation.

Etymology and early framing

• The English word masturbation entered the language around 1711 (with the earlier form mastupration attested in the 1620s), derived from Modern Latin masturbari: most likely an alteration of manstuprare, combining manus ("hand") and stuprare ("to defile"), with influence from turbare ("to disturb"); a minority view derives the first element from an unattested mazdo- ("penis").
• The competing term onanism (from 1727) takes its name from the biblical figure Onan and framed the act in religious-moral terms.

The long anti-masturbation panic

• c. 1716: the anonymous London pamphlet Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution recast the practice as a grave bodily and moral danger and set off a wave of anxiety.
• 1760: the Swiss physician Samuel-Auguste Tissot published L'Onanisme, an influential medical treatise arguing that loss of semen caused "a perceptible reduction of strength, of memory and even of reason." Tissot's disease model dominated Euro-American medicine for roughly two centuries.
• 19th century: Victorian medicine pathologised "onanism", blaming it for insanity, blindness and a catalogue of ailments; Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) still treated excessive masturbation as pathological.

Normalisation in the modern era

• 1897: Havelock Ellis, in his Studies in the Psychology of Sex, concluded that moderate masturbation in healthy individuals produced no seriously harmful results, and the scientific rehabilitation of the behaviour began with him.
• 1948 & 1953: the large-scale Kinsey Reports documented that masturbation was one of the most common of all human sexual outlets. In Kinsey's data the great majority of men and a clear majority of women reported having masturbated, and the statistics undermined the disease model.
• 1968 / 1972: the DSM-II lineage dropped masturbation from its disorders and the American Medical Association affirmed it as a normal behaviour, completing the shift from sin to symptom to ordinary human sexuality.

In practice

People express the interest through private self-pleasure, often paired with fantasy, erotic media, or favoured routines and aids. Some integrate it with adjacent interests such as fantasy scenarios, sensory preferences, mirrors, or consensual recording; others keep it plain and self-contained. As a clinical, non-explicit reference the catalogue notes the focus on solo activity and leaves technique out.

Psychology

Is masturbation normal?

Yes. Clinicians regard solo sexuality as a healthy, developmentally normal behaviour across the lifespan. Researchers associate it with self-exploration, stress relief, easier sleep onset and bodily familiarity. A strong preference for it can reflect temperament, life circumstances, relationship status or individual taste, and none of those is a sign of dysfunction. The modern clinical literature treats common solo activity as normative, in line with framings such as Joyal, Cossette & Lapierre (2015).

Prevalence & culture

How common is masturbation?

Survey research ranks masturbation among the most prevalent of all human sexual behaviours. In Britain's National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal), reported masturbation in the past month rose from 73.4% to 77.5% in men and 37.0% to 40.3% in women between Natsal-2 (1999–2001) and Natsal-3 (2010–12), per Fischer and colleagues' published analysis (Journal of Sex Research, 2025). US lifetime figures are higher still: large majorities of adults of every gender report having masturbated. That places the interest near the top of the prevalence scale among catalogue entries. Cultural and religious attitudes still vary widely. The behaviour itself is near universal, and mainstream health media now discuss it openly, as lay surveys of common sexual interests reflect.

Safety, consent & law

The interest is benign, private and consensual by nature, with no safety or legal concerns of its own. Clinical attention arises only in the uncommon case where the behaviour becomes compulsive and distressing to the person or interferes with daily functioning, a pattern clinicians address under compulsive sexual behaviour.