The centre of the painting has a distorted human face in profile looking downwards, based on the shape of a natural rock formation at Cap de Creus along the sea-shore of Catalonia.

A nude female figure (resembling Dalí's then-new muse, Gala) rises from the back of the head; this may be the masturbatory fantasy suggested by the title.

In Dalí's youth, his father had left out a book with explicit photos of people suffering advanced untreated venereal diseases to "educate" the boy.

The photos of grotesquely damaged diseased genitalia fascinated and horrified young Dalí, and he continued to associate sex with putrefaction and decay into his adulthood.

The Great Masturbator is similar to an image on the right side of the left panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights composed of rocks, bushes and little animals resembling a face with a prominent nose and long eyelashes.