SEX AND SCIENCE
what principles of evidence they draw their conclusions about at–
titudes.
We are led to see that their whole definition of a sexual exper–
ience
is
comprised by the physical act and that their principles of
evidence are entirely quantitative. Quality
is
not integral to what they
mean by experience.
As
I have suggested, the Report
is
partisan
with sex, it wants people to have a good sexuality. But by good it
means nothing else but frequent. "It seems safe to assume that daily
orgasm would be within the capacity of the average human male and
that the more than daily rates which have been observed for some
primate species could be matched by a large portion of the human
population
if
sexual activity were unrestricted." The Report never
suggests that a sexual experience
is
anything but the discharge of
specifically sexual tension and therefore seems to conclude that fre–
quency is always the sign of a robust sexuality. Yet masturbation in
children .may be and often is the expression not of sexuality only, but
of anxiety. In the same way, adult intercourse may be the expression
of anxiety, its frequency may not be so much robust .as compulsive.
The Report is by no means unaware of the psychic conditions of
sexuality, yet it uses the concept almost always under the influence
of its quantitative assumption. In a summary passage (p. 159) it
describes the different intensities of orgasm and the various de–
grees of satisfaction, but disclaims any intention of taking these
variations into account in its record of behavior. The Report holds
out the hope to respectable males that they might
be
as frequent in
performance as underworld characters if they were as unrestrained
as this group. But before the respectable males aspire to this unwonted
freedom they had better ascertain in how far the underworld charac–
ters are ridden by anxiety and in how far their sexuality
is
to be
correlated with other ways of dealing with anxiety, such as dope,
and
in
how far it is actually enjoyable. The Report's own data sug–
gest that there may be no direct connection between, on the one
hand, lack of restraint and frequency, and, on the other hand, psychic
health; they tell us of men in the lower social levels who in their
sexual careers have intercourse with many hundreds of girls but who
despise their sexual partners and cannot endure relations with the
same girl more than once.
But the Report, as we shall see, is most resistant to the possibility
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