Even apart from actual swinging of the whole body, a swinging movement may suffice to arouse sexual excitement, and may,--at all events, in women,--constitute an essential part of methods of attaining solitary sexual gratification. Kiernan thus describes the habitual auto-erotic procedure of a young American woman: "The patient knelt before a chair, let her elbows drop on its seat, grasping the arms with a firm grip, then commenced a swinging, writhing motion, seeming to fix her pelvis, and moving her trunk and limbs. The muscles were rigid, the face took on a passionate expression; the features were contorted, the eyes rolled, the teeth were set, and the lips compressed, while the cheeks were purple. The condition bore a striking resemblance to the passional stage of grand hysteria. The reveling took only a moment to commence, but lasted a long time. Swaying induced a pleasurable sensation, accompanied with a feeling of suction upon the clitoris. Almost immediately after, a sensation of bursting, caused by discharge from the vulvo-vaginal glands, occurs, followed by a rapture prolonged for an indefinite time." The accompanying sexual imagery is so vivid as almost to become hallucinatory. (J.G. Kiernan, "Sex Transformation and Psychic Impotence," _American Journal of Dermatology_, vol. ix, No. 2.) Somewhat similarly sensations of sexual character are sometimes experienced by boys when climbing up a pole. It is not even necessary that there should be direct external contact with the sexual organs, and Howe states that gymnastic swinging poles around which boys swing while supporting the whole weight on the hands, may suffice to produce sexual excitement.