Basic Types of Sexual  Behavior

1. Sexual Self-stimulation

Orgasm During Sleep

It has always been well known that human beings are capable of experiencing sexual responses while they are asleep. In certain cultures and historical periods, however, people ascribed this capacity only to males. For example, the Bible tells us that, among the ancient Hebrews, a man who had an orgasm in his sleep was required to take a ritual bath for purification. His involuntary ejaculation of semen was called a "pollution" which made him "unclean" (Leviticus 15; Deuteronomy 23). There was no comparable requirement for women. Since women do not ejaculate anything, nobody paid any attention to their spontaneous orgasms.
However, this changed somewhat in the Middle Ages with a revival of ancient beliefs in nightly demons. Sexual dreams could now be ascribed to visits by the devil who appeared either in the form of a woman, lying under a man (a so-called succubus) or as a man, lying on a woman (an incubus). This idea later played an important role in the “discovery” and persecution of “witches” in the 15th - 17th centuries, one of the most depressing episodes of mass hysteria and human folly.

Incubus Medieval book illustration