In 1905, Sigmund Freud addressed masturbation in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and associated it with addictive substances.
By 1930, Dr. F. W. W. Griffin, editor of The Scouter, had written in a book for Rover Scouts stating that the temptation to masturbate was "a quite natural stage of development" and, citing Ellis' work, held that "the effort to achieve complete abstinence was a very serious error."