Relatively few (76 per cent) of the incest offenders vs. adults had ever had nocturnal emissions; this is next to the smallest percentage reported by the various groups. By almost any age fewer had had nocturnal emissions than the members of other groups. For instance, only 30 per cent had had this experience by age sixteen as against 68 per cent of the control group, and 54 per cent by age eighteen as against 78 per cent of the controls. Because this group reached puberty considerably later than the others, the median age for the first nocturnal emission is quite late: eighteen years.
A disinclination toward sexual dreams is manifest in an examination of dream content. Sixteen per cent, the fourth largest percentage, of the incest offenders vs. adults reported their nocturnal emissions were not accompanied by dreams. All who had ever dreamed reported ordinary heterosexual dreams and only 6 per cent, the second smallest percentage, reported homosexual dreams. None had sadomasochistic dreams or dreams of animal contact, and only one had bizarre dreams. The lack of sadomasochistic dreams accords with the lack of any conscious sexual response to sadomasochistic stories and pictures. All in all, dreams played a quite minor role in the lives of the incest offenders vs. adults, which is somewhat surprising; in such an inhibited and restrained group one might have expected a compensatory increase in dreams and nocturnal emissions. Indeed, the unmarried males have essentially the lowest age-specific incidence figures of any group up until age twenty-five, when so many had married that our calculation ceases. The age-specific incidence among the married males was moderate to somewhat low in all age-periods where we have a substantial number of cases.
While we have little data on the frequency of premarital nocturnal emissions of the incest offenders vs. adults, no compensatory trend can be seen in the average (mean) frequency. True, the average (median) incest offender vs. adults is in second place in the rank-order of frequency at ages sixteen to twenty, but it is hard to view this as compensatory since the highest frequency of nocturnal emission in this age-period is displayed by the average control-group individual whose sexual outlet exceeds that of the incest offender vs. adults. Moreover, since the median frequency was but 3 to 4 orgasms per year more than the frequencies of other groups, talk of compensatory increase is almost ludicrous.
Paralleling these frequencies, a relatively large proportion of the total outlet of these offenders was from nocturnal emissions during their premarital years up to age twenty; thereafter the proportions are moderate. Among the married the proportions are large until age thirty-five (because of low frequencies of marital coitus), and thereafter become small with increasing age, when, as is usual, nocturnal emissions are rarer.
*154\161\2*
