Psychosomatic Medicine 17:172-184 (1955)
© 1955 American Psychosomatic Society

Dr. Kinsey and the Medical Profession

(Special Article)

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn., and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, New York, N. Y.

In spite of the setting of confused physiological and psychological assumptions, certain important problems emerge. For instance (pages 570-582), there is a sound challenge to psychoanalytical dogmatism about the relationship of clitoral to intravaginal orgasm. Were psychoanalysts merely to rephrase their thesis so as to indicate that the uninhibited woman can bring into action her vaginal muscles, deep pressure, leg pressure, and so on, then the authors' attitude and the analyst's would not be so far apart.

There are those who will argue that these criticisms are not fair because the purpose of the investigation was only to discover facts. This defense does not do justice to their own frank statement of their purposes. It is true that on page 3 one reads that they want only to ascertain what people do. Yet the very next point is that they want to know the facts "which account for" patterns of sexual behavior (this may mean correlate with rather than account for, but the causal term is used). It then goes on to state that their third purpose is to ascertain how these sexual experiences have affected human lives. Here again it is not clear whether this refers only to the passive early experiences of infancy or to the later reverberating effects of these early patterns. Whichever meaning is intended, the fact remains that the data provides no information about these lives. Finally, they indicate that their purpose is to ascertain the social significance of these forms of sexual behavior. These four purposes go far beyond the mere accumulation of unrelated facts.

It is wholly to the authors' credit that they no longer claim to limit themselves to the purely taxonomic task of counting. But they must then accept the consequences of this broader and more inclusive purpose which they now acknowledge. Techniques must now be scrutinized to see whether in fact they are able to illuminate the second, third, and fourth issues. The reviewer has sympathy for this growth, but regrets that the techniques and the theoretical concepts did not keep up with the broadened goals.