KINSEY REPORT
Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2012, Kinsey Reports, BOOKS ON KINSEY REPORT
Alfred Kinsey's massive studies Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female appeared in 1948 and 1953
Kinsey reports are two highly influential but controversial volumes on the Sexual Behavior of the Human Male (1948) and the Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (1953) by researcher Alfred C. Kinsey (1894-1956).
The Kinsey reports stirred a storm of criticism as the results about the frequency of sexual activity such as premarital intercourse and masturbation were seen as alarming.
The Kinsey reports provided what was the first scientific enumeration of homosexual activity and suggested that this sexual preference was very common and must be regarded as normal.
The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and
Reproduction, Inc.
The Institute was founded in 1947 by zoology professor Alfred Charles Kinsey as a
not-for-profit corporation affiliated with Indiana University. As the instructor for a new
marriage course on the Indiana University campus, Kinsey had begun to collect sexual
histories. The Institute was founded as a means to guarantee absolute confidentiality to
individuals interviewed and to provide a secure, permanent location for the growing
collection of interview data and other materials on human sexuality. Originally named the
Institute for Sex Research, the name was changed in 1981 to the Kinsey Institute for Sex
Research in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Dr. Kinsey's death. In 1982, the name
was amended to the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction to
reflect its broadened research mission.
28 Stories About Alfred Kinsey - Indianapolis Monthly - Branigin, John
Abstract: The article presents information about Alfred Charles Kinsey, a professor.
Nearly 50 years after his death, America and the world are still trying to decide what
Kinsey’s work means for our morals, our laws and our behavior. The liberal view is
that his books on human sexual behavior revealed the hypocrisy of a generation, forcing
Americans to acknowledge that homosexuality, masturbation, extramarital affairs and other
"deviant" sexual practices were a lot more common than most people believed, or
at least were willing to admit. The conservative view is that Kinsey was a sexual
psychopath who deliberately published distorted statistics as fact in order to legitimize
pedophilia and other illegal and immoral behaviors.
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Bill & Al’s excellent adventure - Advocate
- Steele, Bruce C
Abstract: The article presents an interview with Bill Condon, writer and director of the
film, Kinsey. According to him, it was very important for him as a gay filmmaker that
Kinsey not be a movie that could be typed exclusively as a gay film. At the same time, he
is truly one of the fathers of the gay movement.
When Kinsey was in Chicago with a colleague, he was collecting sexual histories from gay
men and was overwhelmed by how much activity there was.
He also went to tea rooms and parks, and there is some sense that those were his first gay
sexual encounters. But his first full-on homosexual love affair was with Clyde Martin, the
colleague who played in the film by Peter Sarsgaard.
Condon said that it was not known that Kinsey had had homosexual experiences. He
cultivated this image of the conservative family man. He was, at the same time,
surprisingly reckless. He got involved with one of the more well-known gay couples of the
period, Glenway Wescott and Monroe Wheeler.
Condon said that one of the things I learned from Gods and Monsters is how careful one has
to be in choosing the subject of a true-life picture. The thing that made openly gay
director James Whale a suitable subject was that deep connection between his personal life
and the work for which he is famous. It turned out the same was true of Kinsey: The drive
to investigate what people are actually doing sexually came from a deeply personal need.
And when he discovered things, he would apply it to his personal life, so the film could
give equal weight to his life and the work.
Psychiatric Implications of the Kinsey Report - LAWRENCE S. KUBIE
M.D. - Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Mental Hygiene, Yale University School of
Medicine
If this report by Dr. Kinsey and his co-workers does no more than present us with
incontrovertible statistics concerning the incidence of manifest infantile sexuality and
of manifest adult polymorphous sexual tendencies, it will be a major contribution to our
understanding of human development and of human culture. Psychiatry and psychology will
always be in their debt for this. Nevertheless, two of the basic implications of their
report must be rejected. One is that the overt manifestations of sexual patterns are all
that we need to know about human sexuality. The other unacceptable implication is that
where any behavior pattern is widespread among human beings, it is superfluous to attempt
to explain it. The physiologist does not feel that he does not have to explain the
mechanism of the heart beat merely because everybody's heart beats. Nor does the
epidemiologist dismiss the problem of the common cold merely because everybody catches
cold. Universality is not synonymous with normality; and our obligation to explain every
variety of sexual activity, whether heterosexual, homosexual, or anything else, is not
lessened in any way by the fact that every form of sexual behavior is widespread.
Nevertheless I want to restate my conviction that this report is a significant
contribution and that in balance it will undoubtedly do more good than harm in spite of
its errors and its exaggerations. Thus, almost all of the statistics on the incidence of
various patterns of sexual behavior are probably somewhat excessive, because of errors in
sampling, errors in interviewing, and errors in the treatment of the statistics.
Furthermore the important role of chronic compulsive inflation of instinctual needs and of
their phobic inhibition is scarcely recognized. This oversight is particularly serious in
the case of compulsive sexual athleticism, because in the report one finds the implication
that we should remake our culture and our laws to conform to "high scores," as
though such compulsive exaggerations of sexual need constituted the ideal for all men.
This is just as misleading as are the pseudo-moralistic restrictions which are placed on
our sexual mores by unrecognized phobic inhibitions. My fear is that the overstatement of
Kinsey's case will lessen the effectiveness of the report in freeing our sexual mores and
our laws from the domination of neurotic anxiety and neurotic guilt.
Freud related the universality of deviant sexual trends to the development of the
neurosis, indicating that it is neither the latent nor the overt trend which in itself
produces the neurosis, but rather the conflict between these trends and the intrapsychic
forces which oppose them. I believe that it would help to bring into harmony the
observations of the biologist and of the psychoanalyst if we could agree that it is never
the deviant drive as such which is abnormal, but 1) the conflict which arises around it
and 2) the compulsive and obligatory quality which may attach itself to the drive. Thus an
obsessional furor can manifest itself in heterosexual activity just as readily as in
masturbation or in homosexuality or in any other deviant form of sexual conduct. It is
this obsessional furor plus the phobic exclusion of alternative outlets which is the mark
of abnormality, rather than the specific pattern of sexual behavior itself.
The failure of Kinsey and his co-authors to give full and consistent consideration to the
powerful psychologic forces which influence the objects, the aims, and the quantity of
sexual activity is a source of errors in many conclusions which they draw from their data.
It would add immensely to the value of all of the observations made by Dr. Kinsey and his
co-workers if we could know more about the physiologic and psychologic setting of the
various forms of sexual behavior whose incidence they have determined. To this end it
would be essential to make intensive individual physiologic, anatomic, psychiatric, and
social studies of individuals who would constitute a statistically adequate random sample
of each form of sexual behavior. This would give us vital additional information as to
their general life adjustments and the ways in which they handle instinctual processes
other than sex, particularly those having to do with food and fluid intake, with
excretion, with exercise, and with sleep. The addition of such information as this would
be of great importance for our understanding of human nature in general and of sexual
nature in particular.
I hope that I have succeeded in making several points clear:
We need a detailed study of enough individuals to constitute a statistically adequate
sample of each of the many subgroups which are here described.
Dr. Kinsey and his co-workers were wise not to allow themselves to characterize any
individual as good or bad, as sick or well, as neurotic, psychotic, or psychopathic.
Certainly from the point of view of establishing their contacts and gathering their
material this was essential.
On the other hand, from a social and scientific viewpoint the work must not stop at the
gathering of this raw material. Not for the purpose of pigeon-holing individuals, but in
order to learn more about the significance in human life of all variations in patterns of
sexual behavior, representative individuals should be studied in great detail so that we
may learn more about their personality make-up and general life adjustment. We must know
what variations there are in each sexual pattern and what different kinds of people
manifest the same or different types of sexual deviations, so as to establish what
correlations there may be between such deviations and all other aspects of human nature.
For this purpose it will be essential to bring to this work a mature understanding of
fundamental principles of dynamic psychopathology, both conscious and unconscious, latent
and overt. This will require the cooperative effort of teams of psychoanalysts, clinical
psychologists, neurophysiologists, endocrinologists, cultural anthropologists, and
psychiatric social workers, as well as biologic taxonomists. That such a study will
present formidable difficulties is evident; but that it is essential is equally true. -
psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/abstract/10/2/95
The Secret Life of Alfred Kinsey - Commentary - Epstein, Joseph
Abstract: Features Alfred C. Kinsey, author of the book ‘Sexual Behavior in Human
Male.’ Comment on Kinsey’s work at the Institute for Sex Research at the
University of Indiana; Background on Kinsey’s personal life; Kinsey as a teacher at
Indiana University; How Kinsey did his sex research.
A Sociologist Looks at the "Kinsey Report" - jstor.org
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde
E. Martin
Review author[s]: Herbert Blumer, Ecology, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct., 1948), pp. 522-524
How Many Gays? - National Review
Abstract: Focuses on the actual percentage of gays in the military compared to
the percentage in the general population. Where the statistics come from; Problems with
the 10 percent figure; Surveys and studies; Articles that received media attention; Kinsey
Institute estimates from 1948 to the present.
A PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION OF THE KINSEY REPORT - Norman Q. Brill
Abstract: In Kinsey's investigations there seems to be a tendency to study human sexuality
from a biological point of view and to neglect the psychological with which sexuality is
intimately involved. He does not sufficiently differentiate between sexual behavior in
animals and humans which appear to be similar but which are really very different. His
sociological conclusions suffer from this limited approach. Experience with patients
strongly suggests that his statistics on women may include gross distortion. From a
clinical psychiatric standpoint his concept of perversions is oversimplified. To Kinsey,
all sexual activity represents the expression of sexual desire whereas it not uncommonly
may be used to relieve tensions which are not of sexual origin. -
pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1532031
Kinsey, Alfred C.,Pomeroy, Wardell R., Martin, Clyde E. Sexual Behavior in the
Human Male - American Journal of Public Health
Abstract: The article focuses on sexual behavior in the human male. Considerable portion
of the population, perhaps the major portion of the male population, has at least some
homosexual experience between adolescence and old age. The social significance of the
homosexual is considerably emphasized by the fact that both Jewish and Christian churches
have considered this aspect of human sexuality to be abnormal and immoral. Social custom
and the Anglo-American law are sometimes very severe in penalizing one who is discovered
to have had homosexual relations. For nearly a century the term homosexual in connection
with human behavior has been applied to sexual relations, either overt or psychic, between
individuals of the same sex. Social reactions to the homosexual have obviously been based
on the general belief that a deviant individual is unique and as such needs special
onsideration. The homosexual has been a significant part of human sexual activity ever
since the dawn of history, primarily because it is an expression of capacities that are
basic in the human animals.
Astrology and the Kinsey Report on Female Sexual Behavior
Dane Rudhyar's 1954 Article, Astrology and the Kinsey Report. "The
tremendous nation-wide publicity given freely to the Kinsey Report on women's sexual
behavior is in itself a remarkable indication of the change which has taken place in the
American mind concerning all matters related to sex. It is significant too, that Dr.
Kinsey and his assistants could gather this type of intimate information from some 6000
women."
"Scorpio is usually considered to be related to sexual activity and to all passions
connected with sex (for instance, jealousy). But actually we must differentiate clearly
between two aspects of sex. Sex as a strictly biological and procreative function of the
human animal is expressed in the zodiacal sign, Taurus — the sign of fertility. The
sign, Scorpio (its opposite in the zodiac) refers, on the other hand, to what I might call
"personalized" sex. And it is with this latter that Freudian theories and the
Kinsey Report deal primarily." -
khaldea.com/rudhyar/astroarticles/kinseyreport.php
Kinsey: High Priest of Perversion - Human Events - Reisman, Judith
Abstract:Focuses on the influence of sexologist Alfred Kinsey on the revival of sexual
perversion in the society. Issues arising from the screening of the motion picture
"Kinsey," starring Liam Neeson; Information on the article "Dr.
Strangelove: Alfred Kinsey, Liberator or Pervert," which focused on the effort of
Kinsey to encourage child abuse for his books; Connection of Kinsey with Nazi pedophile
Fritz von Balluseck.
BOOKS ON KINSEY REPORT
American
Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports
Miriam G. Reumann
When Alfred Kinsey's massive studies Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior
in the Human Female appeared in 1948 and 1953, their detailed data spurred an
unprecedented public discussion of the nation's sexual practices and ideologies. As they
debated what behaviors were normal or average, abnormal or deviant, Cold War Americans
also celebrated and scrutinized the state of their nation, relating apparent changes in
sexuality to shifts in its political structure, economy, and people. American Sexual
Character employs the studies and the myriad responses they evoked to examine national
debates about sexuality, gender, and Americanness after World War II. Focusing on the
mutual construction of postwar ideas about national identity and sexual life, this
wide-ranging, shrewd, and lively analysis explores the many uses to which these sex
surveys were put at a time of extreme anxiety about sexual behavior and its effects on the
nation. Looking at real and perceived changes in masculinity, female sexuality, marriage,
and homosexuality, Miriam G. Reumann develops the notion of "American sexual
character," sexual patterns and attitudes that were understood to be uniquely
American and to reflect contemporary transformations in politics, social life, gender
roles, and culture. She considers how apparent shifts in sexual behavior shaped the
nation's workplaces, homes, and families, and how these might be linked to racial and
class differences. Illustrations: 17 b/w photographs
The
Kinsey Corruption - Susan Brinkman
Since the sexual revolution began forty years ago, morality in America has been in a state
of rapid decline. In only four decades, we have gone from a country of traditional family
values to a nation of widespread promiscuity, cohabitation, soaring divorce rates, and an
explosion of sexual crime committed against women and children. How could things have gone
so wrong so fast?
Many experts answer this question with two words: ALFRED KINSEY.
This book will expose:
* How Alfred Kinsey presented as "normal" data he collected from incarcerated
sex offenders, criminals, and prostitutes.
* Which of today's popular notions about sex are based on Kinsey's flawed conclusions,
such as 10 percent of the population is homosexual and sexual promiscuity is normal.
* That Kinsey engaged in criminal experimentation on children and used "data" he
collected from some of the world's most notorious pedophiles to arrive at his conclusions.
Identity in the Kinsey Reports