Word: libidos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Instead of the neat Oedipal triangle, the talk today is more likely to be about "unresolved dependency needs." Instead of "libido" disturbances there is apt to be worry about failure to "communicate." Adler's "inferiority complex" has been widely replaced in pop-psych jargon by "feelings of inadequacy," which sounds less formidable. And as a result of recent sexual emancipation, the problem no longer seems to be repression so much as living up to everyone's high hedonistic expectations...
Indeed, man's capacity for misunderstanding his neighbor seems inexhaustible. Take sex. Thomas Jefferson believed that apes raped black women as one way to climb a notch on the social scale. Even today, people like to think that apes possess a savage and unrestrained libido. Actually, they are scarcely interested in sex at all. In 466 hours of directly observing gorillas in the wild, Anthropologist George Schaller witnessed only two copulations and one unsuccessful try. Furthermore, gorilla swains are sadly underendowed by human standards: the erect male organ measures a scant...
...read with interest "The Morning-After Pill" [May 6], about the new drug ORF-3858. The similar drug diethylstilbestrol, which Yale researchers are finding equally effective, has been used by veterinarians for years to treat mismating in animals. One of the most noted side effects is the increase in libido. This sounds like the beginning of quite a vicious cycle. Anyone for tennis...
Having no curfews may seem to the College Council to be tantamount to free sex, flaunting of the libido, and tramping on the flag. Yet in effect Radcliffe has no curfew now. And no one has offered and justification for retaining all the foolish sign-out boxes and secret envelopes to which Cliffies are subjected. Why doesn't the College just scrap the whole business...
...this distorted ambiance, the words that once sheltered Spindrift shelter him no more. To his gathering surprise, the world that exists behind the word is a far more rewarding place. His liberated spirit plunges into the joys of stealing library books, winning a baldheaded contest and resurrecting his libido...