An End to
Shame: Shaping Our Next Sexual Revolution,
Book by Ira L. Reiss, Harriet M. Reiss; Prometheus Books, 1990
Introduction
Time is running
out for our society. A flood of sexual problems is on the verge of breaking
through the porous dam of our present-day sexual customs. If we are to keep
from being overwhelmed, we must make dramatic changes in our way of thinking
about sexuality. I was persuaded to write this book by repeatedly hearing
people hailing the causes of our sexual crisis as the cure! Many politicians,
ministers, educators, and parents maintain that if only we were less tolerant
of sexual choice, if only we taught "just say no," then we would be
more "decent" and our sexual crisis would fade away. I believe that
this intolerant, self-righteous, dogmatic approach to sexuality is precisely
what has made us the world leader in all major sexual problems. And it is
exactly what we must reject.
As a
sociologist who has devoted his career to the study of sexuality, I cannot
remain silent while our sexual problems in AIDS, teenage pregnancy, rape, and
child sexual abuse continue to plague us. I want to get beyond scientifically
describing and explaining this sexual crisis and to start suggesting ways of
alleviating our society's pain. Increasingly over the years, I began to realize
that the "pure" science approach was not helping us to resolve our
sexual problems, despite good research being reported in our scientific
journals and books. Social science was not getting through to our politicians,
ministers, educators, and parents. If social science was to communicate to the
public, it would have to do so in plain English prose and with relevance to
resolving the major sexual crisis our country is facing.
In the area of
sexuality, the so-called pure scientific stance is buttressed by the
scientist's fear of public criticism. Few people will criticize a scientist who
simply reports that teenage sexuality is increasing. But if that scientist goes
further and suggests that we try to cope with that by encouraging contraceptive
usage among high-school students, then public criticism will
An Analysis of
the Kinsey Reports on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Female,
Book by Donald Porter Geddes; Dutton, 1954
Incisive Comment
"The
purpose of this book can be easily stated. Kinsey has looked at sex. This book
looks at Kinsey."
HERE IS A
PERCEPTIVE, provocative review of what thoughtful men and women of authority
have to say about the most talked-of books of the decade -The Kinsey Reports.
These challenging analyses reflect the opinions of sixteen experts who consider
the Kinsey Reports of vast importance. A sociologist, doctor, teacher,
theologian, newspaper editor and others, chosen for eminence, in their fields,
tell you in this volume what the Reports really mean to this generation
and to those that are to follow.
THIS LUCID
COMMENTARY has been edited by Donald Porter Geddes who has had a distinguished
career as author, editor and publisher. Mr. Geddes conceived and edited Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, A Memorial, the first posthumous book about
President Roosevelt. Mr. Geddes' commentary on the first Kinsey Report
was one of the earliest analyses to be published on that controversial book.
Introduction
Intellectual Behavior in the Human Male and Female
Many have
objected to Kinsey * because he has applied to the study of sexual
behavior in what he calls human males and human females the method -- taxonomic
-- that he applied to gall wasps.
Many more will
doubtless object because this Editor uses the same method in considering the
intellectual behavior of those who have expressed themselves about Kinsey.
Numerous as are
the objections to Kinsey's findings, there are few claims that what he is
revealing is not so. There are, as mentioned above, objections to his method,
and especially are there objections to such conclusions as he draws, and such
implications as people infer he implies, and even objections that he should
make such a study at all. But there is no objection about one thing, and that
is that human beings, male and female, do have a wide range of sexual behavior.
We may not like
some of that behavior, we may not approve of it, we may think it should be
condemned or even punished, we may think that information about it should be
printed privately in old Latin, but the fact remains that human beings do
do these things and have, according to recorded history, done them ever since
man learned how to record his impressions of things seen, done, and heard.
How wide is
this range? It may begin with masturbation to orgasm at two, and end with
heterosexual intercourse to orgasm, at ninety-two.
This, you must
admit, is a wide range, but it is not wider than the intellectual outlets used
in reacting to Kinsey himself.
____________________
|
*
|
Reference
is made throughout this volume to Kinsey and to the Kinsey Reports,
the Kinsey findings, to the Female Kinsey, and to the Male
Kinsey. This is not disrespect; on the contrary, it is the inevitable
compliment that comes to people of fame. We refer to The Marshall Plan,
The Einstein Theory, and similarly, as noun, name, adjective or
symbol, to Kinsey. In so doing, full credit is assumed for his colleagues and
associates, especially Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin and Paul H.
Gebhard. |
KINSEY AND THE
MORAL PROBLEM OF MAN'S SEXUAL LIFE
Reinhold
Niebuhr, D.D.
REINHOLD
NIEBUHR, Professor of Applied Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in New
York City, is probably the one man in the country best qualified to comment on
the Kinsey Reports from the viewpoint of religion. Dr. Niebuhr's leadership in
a great many religious and social activities has brought his name into constant
prominence in both theological and liberal political circles. He was one of the
five members of the U.S. delegation to the fourth session of the General
Conference of UNESCO, held in Paris in 1949.
Dr. Niebuhr is
well known as an author and a lecturer. His books on a variety of subjects
related to the philosophy of religion include Faith and History ( 1948),
Discerning the Signs of the Times ( 1946), The Children of Light and
the Children of Darkness ( 1944), An Interpretation of Christian Ethics
( 1935), and Moral Man and Immoral Society ( 1932). In 1939 he became
the fifth American to be invited to deliver the Gifford lectures at Edinburgh
University, where he drew the biggest crowds in Gifford history.
For the past
twenty-five years Dr. Niebuhr has been teaching at the Seminary, having been
appointed to the professorship in 1989. He was born in Wright City, Missouri in
1892, the son of a German pastor. In 1915 he was ordained in the Evangelical
Synod of North America, and for the next thirteen years was pastor of the
Bethel Evangelical Church in industrial Detroit.
Conclusion
We emphasized
at the outset that it is not easy to give a simple answer to such questions as:
How good is Kinsey's survey? Does his Report present a true picture of female
sexual behavior? How valid are his conclusions? We hope the reader now realizes
that Kinsey's Report has a monumental stature in the literature on sexual
behavior, but that, like any other investigation, and especially a pioneering
investigation in a field which has hitherto been largely impenetrable, it has
its limitations and weaknesses. Certainly one cannot, for some of the reasons
we have mentioned, accept Kinsey's findings as
Pull the
sheet and snuff the candle
A MOST IMPORTANT
BOOK, BUT...
Ashley Montagu,
Ph.D.
ASHLEY MONTAGU,
Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey,
is probably best known to the lay reader as the author of the current
best-seller, The Natural Superiority of Women ( Macmillan, 1953). And
during recent months his personality and his ideas have become familiar to an
even bigger audience, for he has achieved success as a lecturer on the history
of man on a nationwide educational television program.
Besides his
writings for the layman, which also include On Being Human ( 1950), On
Being Intelligent ( 1952), and Darwin, Competition and Cooperation (
1952), Dr. Montagu has written a number of more specialized scientific books,
including Adolescent Sterility ( 1946), Introduction to Physical
Anthropology ( 1951), Coming Into Being Among the Australian Aborigines
( 1937), and several others, the latest being The Meaning of Love (
1946). In addition to his teaching at the university, he lectures at the New
School for Social Research and for the Veterans' Administration Postgraduate
Training Program in Psychiatry, and is Director of Research for the New Jersey
Committee for Health and Physical Development.
Dr. Montagu is
English by birth, has studied in London, Florence and New York, and has also
done anthropological field work in the bush countries. He has been married for
more than twenty years, and his three children have grown up in a home where
there is no mercy for anyone who casts aspersions on women, inadvertently or
otherwise.
Let's talk
about sex
IMPLICATIONS FOR
MARRIAGE AND SEXUAL ADJUSTMENT
Emily Mudd,
Ph.D.
EMILY
HARTSHORNE MUDD, who took an active part in the Kinsey studies as one of the
five consulting editors for the Report on Women, is one of the country's
outstanding marriage counselors. She is director of the Marriage Council of
Philadelphia, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry of the
University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and President of the American
Association of Marriage Counselors.
Dr. Mudd is
married to Dr. Stuart Mudd, the eminent microbiologist, one of whose
discoveries led to the development of blood plasma, and they have four
children. It was after her marriage, when she became active as a part-time
worker in agencies like the YWCA, maternal health centers, parents' councils,
etc., that Emily Mudd began her career in the social work field. Then she got
together with community leaders in Philadelphia who were interested in forming
a marriage counseling service. Later it turned out that, as an outstanding wife
and mother, Dr. Mudd was chosen for the job of director, instead of a
professional social worker. She returned to college as she approached middle
age, and didn't actually become Dr. Mudd until recently, when she got her
doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Today she works full time,
running the marriage council, lecturing, and teaching at the University.
Portrayers of
human weakness
"I AM
CONCERNED..."
Millicent C.
Mclntosh, Ph.D.
MILLICENT CAREY
MCINTOSH, president of Barnard College, Columbia University, is a leader in the
field of women's education. At Barnard, Mrs. McIntosh has been most interested
in bridging the gap between learning and living, which she feels to be the
chief responsibility of a college education, and in helping to remove the
obstacles in the way of college-educated women who wish to combine motherhood
with a career.
Mrs. McIntosh
herself is a unique example of a remarkable combination of marriage and a
career, for in private life she is the wife of Dr. Rustin McIntosh, Carpentier
Professor of Diseases of Children at the College of Physicians and Surgeons,
Columbia University, and Director of Pediatrics at Presbyterian Hospital. They
have been married for thirty-two years and have a daughter and four sons; their
eldest sons, who are twins, are now at Harvard.
Mrs. McIntosh
went to Barnard as Dean in 1947 from the Brearley School in New York City,
where she was headmistress for seventeen years. Born in Baltimore, one of six
children of a Quaker family, she took her doctorate in English at Johns
Hopkins, taught English at Bryn Mawr, and was also acting Dean of that college.
She has been honored with a number of honorary degrees and other awards. In
1948 she was awarded the Roosevelt Medal for leadership of youth and
development of character, and in 1949, the Hundred Year Association Medal for
"outstanding achievement in the interests of the City of New York,
particularly in the field of education."
Healing the human sore
DR. KINSEY'S SUMMUM
BONUM
Dorothy Dunbar
Bromley, A.B.
DOROTHY DUNBAR
BROMLEY, a leading journalist and radio commentator, is noted for her writings
on problems connected with sex, maternity, marriage and divorce. With Florence
Haxton Britten she was co-author of one of the first important books which
systematically analyzed and gathered data on sexual behavior -Youth and Sex
( Harper and Brothers, 1938), a questionnaire and interview study of 1300 male
and female college students. Another book by Mrs. Bromley, Birth Control,
Its Use and Misuse, ( Harper and Brothers, 1935), which included an
introduction by Dr. Robert L. Dickinson, America's foremost pioneer in sexual
matters, was read widely in the United States and England, and was translated
into Spanish for South America. She has also written numerous articles on
marriage and divorce, from the legal, religious and social viewpoints, which
have appeared in England, France and the Scandinavian countries as well as in
the United States.
Mrs. Bromley
began her career in book publishing, and her first magazine article, exposing
the high maternal mortality rate at the time, appeared in Harper's Magazine
in 1927. Since then she has published frequently in Harper's, the
women's magazines and other journals, has written daily columns for the New
York WorldTelegram and the New York Post, and has been a feature
writer, and editor of a Sunday page, for the New York Herald Tribune.
Since 1952, she has been conducting a weekly half-hour program on a wide
variety of social and political subjects for radio station WMCA.
Love isn't
lacking in Kinsey
ONE FAMILY'S VIEW
Mrs. W.
OF ALL THE
CONTRIBUTORS to this volume, Mrs. W. is the only one who is not an expert, at
least in the ordinary sense of the word. She speaks her views on Kinsey as an
ordinary mother, though in this sense she can certainly be considered an
expert, being the mother of four, all in their teens. And in the matter of the
education of her children on sexual matters she has taken a scientific
approach, and the results, from all reports, qualify her as an expert, at least
in this sphere.
Mrs. W.'s views
on the Kinsey studies are significant in another respect, for in many ways she
can be considered representative of the women interviewed by Kinsey. She is
college-educated, in her early forties, and has been a city-dweller for a good
part of her life, though now she lives with her husband, who is a lawyer, and
her children in a rural community not far from New York City. She was born a
Quaker, has taught school, and has been active in such groups as the League of
Women Voters, parents' associations, local youth centers.
We have asked
Mrs. W. how the Kinsey Report on Women affected her and her children, if she
learned from it or found it useful in terms of their sexual education, and also
how her children reacted if and when they read "reports" on the
Report. To these questions Mrs. W. has come up with a number of pertinent
answers -- among them, that her children and their friends did not have an
"extraordinary" interest in the Report, and that is probably typical
of children who have received adequate sex information in their homes; that the
Kinsey Report has been reassuring on problems such as masturbation; that one of
her daughters provided her with the distinction between "petting" and
"necking," not found in the Report. One thing emphasized by Mrs. W.
has already been pointed out by some of our experts -- that one of the main
problems of sex education is the emotional reactions of parents. And she
concludes -- though on this point at least some of our experts would disagree
-- that consideration of love isn't llacking in Kinsey, that every page,
carefully read, makes one wonder about it, that in fact the whole Report
emphasizes the importance of love.
As the twig is
bent
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN
THE YOUNG HUMAN FEMALE AND MALE
Frank J.
Curran, M.D.
FRANKJ. CURRAN
is Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical
School, and Director of the Children's Service Center of Charlottesville and
Albemarle County, Virginia. Most of his career as a psychiatrist has been
devoted to working with children and adolescents.
Dr. Curran was
on the faculty of New York University Medical School for many years, and
organized and directed the adolescent ward in Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. A
graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School, he has studied at
Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Bellevue Hospital, the New York Psychoanalytic
Institute and the Louisville Mental Hygiene Clinic. He is secretary of the
American Academy of Child Psychiatry, President of the American Association of
Psychiatric Clinics for Children, and a member of the Council of the American
Psychiatric Association.
The effect of
the future on the present
SEX AND THE FEMALE
CHARACTER
Eli Ginzberg,
Ph.D.
ELI GINZBERG is
Professor of Economics in the Graduate School of Business of Columbia
University and Director of the University's "Conservation of Human
Resources" Project. He has always had a special interest in the
relationship between sexual behavior and economics, and in his opinion a
knowledge of the facts of sexual behavior is of great importance to the
formulators of economic theory and policy.
At present Dr.
Ginzberg is also Director of Research of the National Manpower Council of
Columbia University, consultant to the Secretary of the Army and to the U.S.
Surgeon General's Office, and economic adviser to various professional groups.
In the course of his distinguished career as-an economist he has held such
positions as U.S. Representative to the Five Power Conference on Reparations
for Non-Repatriable Refugees, Medical Consultant to the Hoover Commission, and
Director of the Resources Analysis Division of the U.S. Surgeon General's
Office. During the summer of 1953 he was a consultant to the Technical
Cooperation Administration of the U.S. State Department in Israel.
Among Dr.
Ginzberg's numerous books are Psychiatry and Military Manpower Policy (
1953), The Uneducated ( 1953), Occupational Choice ( 1951), Agenda
for American Jews ( 1950), The Unemployed ( 1943), and Grass on
the Slag Heaps ( 1942).
A fresh
approach...
THE READING OF
KINSEY AS A MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCE
Edward S.
Tauber, M.D.
EDWARD S.
TAUBER is chairman of the faculty of the William Alanson White Institute in New
York City. This is the school of psychoanalysis in which the important ideas of
Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm have shown their broadening influence on
the already monumental contribution of Freud.
Dr. Tauber is
adjunct clinical professor of psychology at New York University Graduate School
of Arts and Sciences, associate attending psychiatrist at the Vanderbilt Clinic
of Columbia University, associate psychiatrist at Columbia, and panel
psychiatrist for the New York City Board of Education. During World War II he
served as a -division psychiatrist in the European theater, and also at the
Darnell General Hospital in Kentucky. He was a Rockefeller Sex Biology Gift
Fellow and a Josiah H. Macy Foundation fellow at Columbia University, and has
also been connected with the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins
University. Dr. Tauber writes frequently for professional journals, is a fellow
of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and a member of other professional
societies. He is a graduate of Yale and of Johns Hopkins Medical School.
Sex sublimation
and social consequences
THE MARQUIS DE SADE
AND THE FIRST PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS
Robert E.
Taylor, Ph.D.
ROBERT E.
TAYLOR, who is an assistant professor of French at New York University and also
assistant editor of the Modern Language Association of America, began his
serious research on the Marquis de Sade in 1946 while studying for his
master's degree at Columbia University. In the course of his research since
then he has spent much time in public and private libraries in France and the
United States, has had access to manuscripts not generally seen, and has become
acquainted with several descendents of Sade.
Dr. Taylor was
graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and took his doctorate at
Columbia University. He has spent some time in government service, and during
the war he taught aerial navigation and flew combat missions in the Pacific as
a navigator. Dr. Taylor is the author of a recent article on Sade which
appeared in the Yale French Studies, and wrote all the items on Sade in A
Critical Bibliography of French Literature ( Syracuse University Press,
1951). At present he is at work on a book, and several articles on French
literature of the eighteenth century.
THE CLASSIC ESSAY
ON KINSEY
Perhaps the
most universal approach to Kinsey, and certainly one of the most widely quoted,
was Lionel Trilling's critical and interpretative review of the Male volume.
Originally published in Partisan Review, it has been included in a
volume of his essays -- The Liberal Imagination -- published by the
Viking Press, and this volume, in turn, has been reprinted in a papercovered
volume by Anchor Books. In addition, Trilling on Kinsey has been published in the
Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic.
Professor
Trillingconsiders Kinsey as a cultural phenomenon -- the tremendous response
by the general public to what is really a scientific treatise, a response the
like of which the world has hardly ever seen. This article serves a double
function. It serves as a commentary to the Male volume, and as an advantageous
point of departure for considering the Female book.
AN ESSAY ON THE
RELATION OF SCIENCE TO HUMAN VALUES
More than any
other person, perhaps, Kinsey has been responsible for the raising of the
question of the validity of using the scientific method in connection with
complex human and social situations where behavior is related to values. There
are many who think that science cannot cope with values, and especially with
love, where sex is involved.
Sir Charles
Sherrington is famous the world over for his physiological contributions, and
also for his examination of the value problem. Nowhere to the Editor's
knowledge is there a finer or more persuasive statement of the nature of
science and its understanding and dependency upon values than in Sir Charles'
chapter, on "Altruism," taken from Man on His Nature.
-230-
REACTIONS TO THE
MALE VOLUME
Whatever may
be said about the publicity build-up for Sexual Behavior in the Human
Female, it was the American public, not Kinsey, or his publishers, who
made the first volume -- Sexual Behavior in the Human Male -- the
talk of every town in the country.
Published
early in 1948, the Male volume was issued under circumstances and conditions no
publisher could prescribe for a book he hoped might become a best seller. The
volume was expensive, heavy, full of tables, charts and diagrams. It was
weighted down with clinical tables and a bibliography. There wasn't a picture in
the book, and the text was monotonous.
Worst of
all, though, was the discount. Novels, and the general run of books, are sold
by the publisher to the bookseller at a discount of forty percent, and more,
depending on quantity. As a rule, it would be easier for a reader to get into a
public library at midnight, than for a publisher to get books into a bookstore
when the discount is not at least forty percent. The first Kinsey book carried
a discount of twenty percent. The reason for this discount was obvious. Its
publishers did not expect this book to be bought by the general public, nor did
they try to get booksellers to buy copies for stock and display.
The public
knew nothing of this situation. All it knew was that there was a book by a man
named Kinsey that told more about man and his sexual behavior than had ever
been revealed, or known, before. What has become known in publishing as
"The Word of the Mouth Club" had selected Kinsey for general
conversation. Though the booksellers protested the small discount, there was
little they could do. The public demanded the book, and got it. The booksellers
sought a larger discount and didn't get it. Even so, the booksellers succeeded
in selling a quarter of a million copies.
Kinsey
became both a by-word, and a buy-word. He also became the subject of one of the
greatest controversies of the twentieth century. The answers were not long in
appearing. Among the earliest of them was the book -- About the Kinsey
Report -- to which this present volume is companion. The Introduction to
that volume follows.
The most
frequent favorable reaction of all was for changing many of our attitudes and
laws regarding sexual behavior.The time is ripe for the end of the era of hush
and pretend. ( 22a
<97553117>)The Kinsey survey shows how hypocritical and
self-righteous the American people are. ( 60 <97553119>)Kinsey's
findings show that 95 percent of the male population engage with some
regularity, or have done so, in sexual practices that are at the same time
criminal offenses. If this is true, something is radically wrong somewhere. ( 22k <97553117>)In
conclusion, it is evident that basic revisions are necessary in sex crime
legislation. ( 14e
<97553116>)However, the most frequent unfavorable
reaction was against changing our attitudes or laws, or against changing them
too fast or too far. Two articles in the Readers' Digest which were
symposiums of many authorities' and readers' opinions were entirely devoted to
discussing why we should not "change our sex standards." ( 55 <97553119>,
56
<97553119>) However, a large part of such reactions was
against changing our attitudes too rapidly or to too great an extent, whereas
most advocates of change seemed to be proposing change of only our most
unrealistic attitudes and laws. Table 2 <97553114>summarizes the
number of favorable and unfavorable reactions to various aspects of the Kinsey
Report.To summarize, the vast majority of the published reactions to the Kinsey
Report seem to agree that it is an important work, perhaps the best of its kind
that has yet been attempted, but a work with many weaknesses which is only a
start toward exploring what Albert Deutsch calls "that last great area of
mystery -- the mystery of human sex behavior." ( 14b <97553116>)
Bibliography
|
1. |
American
Association for the Advancement of Science, "Kinsey Report Lauded and
Criticised," New York Times, Dec. 31, 1949, 26:5. |
|
2. |
------.
"The Kinsey Report and its Contributions to Related Fields," Scientific
Monthly, 70 ( May 1950), pp. 279-294. |
|
a. |
Ernst,
Morris L., The Kinsey Report and Law. |
|
b. |
Linton,
Ralph, An Anthropologist Views the Kinsey Report. |
|
c. |
Murdock,
George P., Comments. |
|
d. |
Parry,
Hugh J., Impact of the Kinsey Report on Opinion and Attitude Research.
|
THE 20TH OF AUGUST
Throughout
the years '49, '50, and '51, the country was abuzz with expectation and
anticipation. Woman was next. Kinsey was going to draw the curtain on the sex
life of the American female. Excitement mounted. Fifty-two came, but no Kinsey.
If the delay caused disappointment, it did not result in any diminution of
curiosity. In the meantime, all kinds of rumors explaining the delay, the
postponement, even the cancellation of plans for publication, ran around the
country. There were thousands of explanations.
Early
in '53, though, all the ghosts and rumors were laid to rest when word came from
Bloomington that accredited representatives of the press and magazines would be
given an opportunity to preview the new book, to be published in the fall.
Commenting on this, Dr. Sol Ginsburg said, "...the establishment by the
authors of a kind of secret conclave at which the facts of the Report would be
given only to reporters who signed a written statement swearing that they would
not release the material before a certain date [ August 20th ] increased the
almost hysterical curiosity in the press (even, in part, the more responsible
press). This obviously cultivated aura of secrecy, of imminent and earth
shaking truths about to be revealed, was greater than ever. I do not mean to
say that the authors of this book were themselves actually responsible for
creating this hysteria, but they certainly cannot escape a good deal of
responsibility for the kind of public appeal which was made on behalf of the
book and for the efforts to stir up entirely unjustified, morbid curiosity and
concern among the laity."
In
fairness to Dr. Kinsey, it must be admitted that he had a bear by the tail. The
public had created the demand for the book in the first place: certainly the
publishers had not done so. And in the second place, the press very rightly
insists upon a no-special-privilege arrangement for the dissemination of
advance notice about news. If Kinsey had given this information to one paper,
and not another, it would have resulted in the sort of hassle that would ensue
if the White House showed favoritism for one paper against all others. Granting
the necessity for being fair to all, the only question was how, and where, the
information should be released. Kinsey made them come to him because obviously
he could not go to them, except
ANALYSES OF THE
FIRST FOUR IMPORTANT REVIEWS OF THE FEMALE VOLUME
Four of the
first and foremost authorities to weigh the Female Kinsey on their particular
kinds of scales were Clyde Kluckhohn, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard
University, Professor John Dollard of The Institute of Human Relations at Yale
University, Dr. Karl Menninger of The Menninger Clinic and Foundation at
Topeka, and Professor Hadley Cantril, head of the Department of Psychology and
Director of the Office of Opinion Research of Princeton University. The findings
of these scholars appeared, respectively, in The New York Times Book Review,
The Herald-Tribune Book Review, The Saturday Review of Literature,
and The Nation.
It is apparent
that the search for truth, or good or bad, becomes more and more intensified as
time goes on. In the daily press, people look at things with the naked eye of
the reporter; in the weeklies, magnifying glasses are used. But by the time the
critical reviews and commentaries come in, highpowered microscopes are brought
into play, with more and more attention being paid to specific aspects of the
Report. That is why a book of this sort benefits from a quantity of
contributing authors who are experts in their fields. Kinsey himself has listed
more than thirty-three scholarly disciplines that are related to his research.
This detracts in no way, however, from the breadth and depth of experience and
wisdom that Kluckhohn, Dollard, Menninger, and Cantril have contributed.
Briefly, their
reactions were as follows:
A
distinguished anthropologist, Professor Clyde Kluckhohn of Harvard University,
said this about the second Kinsey Report in the New York Times Book Review,
* September
13, 1953: "This book makes an enormous contribution of fact not only to
our knowledge of sexual behavior and sexual biology but also to our information
on the social organization and cultural patterns of large sectors of our
population." According to Professor Kluckhohn, Dr. Kinsey and his
associates did a
____________________
|
*
|
Material
from Professor Kluckhohn's review in the September 13, 1953 New York Times
Book Review is reprinted herewith by permission of the New York Times
and Professor Kluckhohn. |