Word: sexualism
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...sexologists these days, the new frontier is inhibited sexual desire (ISD). The problem accounts for 30% to 50% of the case load for many therapists. "We didn't look for excitement problems in the mid-'70s," says Therapist Stephen Sloan in Atlanta. "It was assumed that everyone desires sex." Some therapists, accustomed to reporting 75% to 90% success rates in treating other sexual difficulties, report a 10% to 30% success rate in treating ISD. Philadelphia Sexologist Harold Lief has estimated that 20% of all adult Americans are afflicted with ISD. "It is clear that we are talking about enormous numbers...
Most therapists believe that these sexually apathetic people are not casualties of the revolution. They are simply showing up for help now because the new freedom, besides raising expectations, has made it easier for people to admit to sexual problems. Sexologist Caplan is not so sure; he thinks that the sexual revolution has been a highly significant factor in the spread of ISD. Because of boredom, satiation and the elimination of taboos, he says, "it is becoming increasingly clear that the excitement value of average sexual practices is diminishing." Psychologist C.A. Tripp argues that sexual excitement depends on obstacles...
America has been through it all before. In the '20s another generation shaken by war, disillusioned with authority and fueled by easy affluence conducted its sexual revolution. The flapper symbolized a sharp break with prewar Victorian morals. In one poll of 2,200 women, taken during the '20s, more than half said they regularly masturbated. By the end of the decade, a prominent gynecologist said, "sexual experience in some form has been known by 100%" of his unmarried patients. The divorce rate soared, and according to one estimate, up to 1 million illegal abortions took place each year during...
Rapid urbanization, the growing intellectual and economic independence of women and the dislocations of World War I had all helped loosen traditional morals. As Americans read Sigmund Freud's dark warning about the effects of suppressed desire, writes Historian Geoffrey Perrett, "sexual freedom appeared to be scientific, more or less." By 1926 F. Scott Fitzgerald testily complained that "the universal preoccupation with sex had become a nuisance...
Though some researchers say the sexual spree of the '20s was confined to big cities and campuses, the famous study, Middletown, by Robert and Helen Lynd, found otherwise. By the middle of the decade, their typical American town (Muncie, Ind.) was in full sexual bloom. The change came with erotic fashions, literature and movies, and an unsuspected sexual aid, the automobile. A team of sociologists, reassessing Middletown from 1976 to 1978, concluded: "The Middletown studied by the Lynds during the 1920s was in the throes of a sexual revolution as far-reaching as the one we have experienced during...