10
PARTISAN REVIEW
taken over many of the socializing functions of the home and have
brought the ones that remain under the direction of modern science
and technology.
While glorifying domestic life as the last haven of intimacy,
these agencies of mass tuition have propagated the view that the
family cannot provide for its own needs without outside assistance.
The advertising industry insists that the health and safety of the
young, the satisfaction of their daily nutritional requirements, their
emotional and intellectual development, and their ability to compete
with their peers for popularity and success all depend on consumption
of vitamins, band-aids, cavity-preventing toothpaste, cereals,
mouthwashes, and laxatives . "Domestic science" urges the housewife
and mother to systematize housekeeping and to give up the rule-of–
thumb procedures ofearlier generations. Modern medicine orders the
abandonment of home remedies. The mental health movement
teaches that maternal "instinct" cannot be trusted in childrearing.
Even the sex instinct has come to be surrounded by a growing body of
scientific analysis and commentary, according to which sexual en–
joyment depends on study , technique, discipline , and control.
While endlessly extolling the joy of sex, the therapeutic community
stresses the need for technique, planning, and study . Satisfaction
"does not occur automatically but must be striven for." "Sexual
relations are something to be worked at and developed." "Sex is often
something to be worked and strained at." The couple must not rely
on their natural proclivities. Sex should be studied. "The technique
of the sexual relation has to be learned in order to develop a satisfac–
tory sex life." " ...The average woman of our time and clime must
learn
to develop specific sexual enjoyment, and only gradually attains
to the orgasm in coitus .... They have to learn how to feel both
voluptuous pleasure and actual orgasm ." Sex requires "study, train–
ing , and conscious effort." The sex act must be scheduled: "Hus–
bands and wives should rarely presume to begin love-play that may
lead to coitus unless they can have an hour free from interruptions."
In a word, sex, supervised by trained experts, is assimilated to the
model of industrial discipline. The growth of advertising and the
helping professions has obliterated the distinction between work and
play and thus vitiated the privacy or "privatism" they have done so
much
to
celebrate .
