SEX AND SCIENCE
primarily because it has insufficient outlet through heterosexual coitus.
This is, to a degree, an escape from reality, and the effect upon
the ultimate personality of the individual is something that needs
consideration." The question is of course a real one, yet the Report
strenuously refuses to extend the principle of it to any other sexual
activity.
It
summarily rejects the conclusions of psychoanalysis which
make the sexual conduct an important clue to, even the crux of,
character. It finds the psychoanalytical view unacceptable for two
reasons: ( 1) The psychiatric practitioner misconceives the relation
between sexual aberrancy and psychic illness because only those
sexually aberrant people who are
ill
seek out the practitioner, who
never learns about the large incidence of health among the aberrant.
(2) The emotional illness which sends the sexually aberrant person
to find psychiatric help is the result of no flaw in the psyche itself
that is connected with the aberrancy, but is only the result of the
fear of social disapproval of his sexual conduct. And the Report
instances the many men who are well adjusted socially and who
yet show, among them, the whole range of taboo conduct.
The quality of the argument which the Report advances is as
significant as the wrong conclusions it reaches. "It is not possible,"
the Report says, "to insist that any departure from the sexual mores,
or any participation in socially taboo activities, always, or even usually,
involves a neurosis or psychosis, for the case histories abundantly
demonstrate that most individuals who engage in taboo activities
make satisfactory social adjustments." In this context either "neuroses
and psychoses" are too loosely used to stand for all psychic malad–
justment, or "social adjustment" is too loosely used to stand for emo–
tional peace and psychic stability. When the Report goes on to cite
the "socially and intellectually significant persons," the "successful
scientists, educators, physicians," etc., who have among them "ac–
cepted the whole range of the so-called abnormalities," we must keep
in mind that very intense emotional disturbance, known only to
the sufferer, can go along with the efficient discharge of social duties;
and that the psychoanalyst could counter with as long a list of
distinguished and efficient people who consult him.
Then no one except a straw man would insist that
any
departure
from sexual mores, or
any
participation in sexually taboo activities,
involves a neurosis or a psychosis. It is just at this point that distinc-
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