Chapter 5: Do Children NEED Sex?
Asked to comment on paedophilia and child sex, in the wake of the controversy generated by PIE, one or two 'experts' were prepared to admit that children could enjoy sex with adults. At the same time they were not prepared to concede its admissibility. Dr David Shaffer, consultant in child psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, London, provided a typical example in an interview with Time Out: 1
'PIE are ignoring a child's other interests apart from pleasure. Is the function of childhood to have a good time, or to learn how to form trusting relationships and acquire skills that will be useful later on? Hedonism comes pretty low on the list, I would have thought.'
I hope Dr Shaffer does not believe it is the function of childhood to have a rotten time. It is not so long ago that exactly such a philosophy was openly practised, if not preached, in the English public schools, with their emphasis on discipline and denial as 'character-forming' agents. But if we give him the benefit of the doubt, and accept that he is trying to say something else, we can see in this modest little quote some vital assumptions in the present conventional wisdom which are desperately in need of challenge.
The chief of these is that pleasure in childhood, particularly sexual pleasure, is somehow inimical to forming 'trusting relationships' or to the acquisition of skills. But this is simply not so. Adults, whose sexual lives are less constrained than those of children, are able to form trusting relationships and acquire skills, and we do not consider that their ability to do so is diminished by the level of their sexual activity.
Some people do, to be sure: the former Indian Prime Minister, Mr. Desai, has said that he makes a point of refraining from sex in order to preserve his 'bodily fluids' and thus, he believes, keep up his energy for other things. Much as this policy may suit Mr. Desai personally, we know that medical evidence does not support his theory. Why then do otherwise sophisticated people choose to rely on such quaint notions when the question of children's sexuality crops up?
There is no evidence that children are more incapacitated by sex than are adults. What it boils down to is simply a gut feeling that sex in childhood is wrong, or dangerous, and it doesn't matter what kind of 'argument' is pressed into service against it: the approach seems to be 'Never mind the argument, feel the conclusion.'
The fact is that children are no less likely to be able to learn maths or geography as a result of involvement in a sexual relationship. Indeed paedophiles, like parents, usually love to help 'their' children, either to do their homework, or to fix their bike, or in a thousand other ways. It makes them feel good to do so. It adds to their sense of worth. Above all, it is simply an expression of the love they feel.
It is tempting for me to write endlessly about love. If I were to write about love in paedophilic relationships, instead of merely sex, I am quite certain I would be able to tap a well of sympathy amongst otherwise hostile readers. I believe people would accept that there are those who are erotically attracted to youngsters who also feel affection and love for them.
The trouble with such an approach is that it entirely misses the point. It fails to challenge the crucial underlying premise that love for kids is OK, but that sex with them is not, – that there is something about sexual intimacy which requires justification beyond the pleasure it brings to those involved in it. In this orthodoxy, one does not express love for a child by being erotic with her or him; one does not make love in a physical act.
Quite the contrary. It may be suggested that if the adult in question really loves the child, he will refrain from the sexual act. Quite often paedophiles themselves, reflecting the guilt that has been thrust upon them by their upbringing, echo this belief. Many a time I have heard it said, 'I love him too much to do anything like that.'
John Money, of the world-renowned Gender Identity Clinic at Johns Hopkins University, has neatly summarized the destructiveness of the 'love versus lust' dichotomy:
'A man who has been taught from infancy that sexual advances are an insult to women has little choice but to seek his sexual pleasure either with men or with women he feels are degraded enough to be insulted safely. What kind of relations with women can a man have if, like many Victorians, he screws at a whorehouse and then goes home to worship his wife? The dichotomy between love and lust mandates distortions of sexuality ....
'The difficulty of getting love and lust together again after they have been firmly severed in childhood is at the root of almost every problem of erotic relations between two people.' 2
While I agree that no one should impose his sexuality on another, I see no reason for the disavowal of mutually pleasurable acts. Like Money, I see the positive harmfulness of doing so, for the failure in childhood to develop a positive attitude to sexual pleasure is responsible for untold misery. In this regard I refer not only to that minority of children who chance upon a paedophilic relationship, but to all children. The attitudes which make for the condemnation of mutually pleasurable child-adult sex are part of the anti-sexual culture with which all our children have to cope.
Freud recognized the importance of child sexuality not only to the child, but also to the adult it would eventually become. Indeed, it was his analytic insights into the psychosexual problems of adults which led him to deduce the sexual conflicts and traumas of the earliest years. Freud may have been wrong in much of his analysis of the latter, but on one matter there can be no doubt: millions upon millions of adults suffer mental and physical anguish as a result of problems which are either directly or indirectly sexual, a fact which largely accounts for the boom industry of psychoanalysis and sex therapy. Nor is this just a bourgeois fad, as some have maintained. Dear old Wilhelm Reich has the answer to that one, in an anecdote which for me impressively brings out the sheer seriousness of sexual misery:
'The neuroses of the working population are different only in that they lack the cultural refinement of the others. They are a crude, undisguised rebellion against the psychic massacre to which they are all subjected. The well-to-do citizen carries his neurosis with dignity, or he lives it out in one or another way. In the people of the working population it shows itself as the grotesque tragedy which it really is.
'[A] patient suffered from so-called nymphomania. She was never able to achieve satisfaction. So she slept with all available men, without gratification. Finally she masturbated with a knife handle, or even with the blade, until she bled from the vagina ....
This patient, too, revealed the devastating role played by the poor, care-burdened worker's family with lots of children. In such families, the mothers have no time to bring up their children carefully. When the mother notices the child masturbating, well, she throws a knife at the child. The child associates the knife with the fear of punishment for sexual behaviour and the guilt feeling about it, does not dare to satisfy herself, and later on, with unconscious guilt feelings, tries to achieve an orgasm with the same knife.' 3Freud, Reich, and many other figures in the psychoanalytic tradition down to the present day, have been adamant in ascribing an important place in the aetiology of the neuroses and 'perversions' to the development of the child's sexuality in infancy and childhood. The tradition may be entirely wrong, of course, for very few of its hypotheses have been empirically verified. Freud himself at first laid great emphasis on the 'traumatic' effect of sexual assault in infancy, but later came to believe that many of the supposed assaults were in fact fantasies based on a desired sexual activity. 4
Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that some of Freud's observations on the relationship between sexual repression, guilt and neurosis are worth bearing in mind, even for those who are rightly sceptical about accepting the precise psychic mechanisms which he ascribes to the Oedipus complex, or to the development of the 'anal character' or whatever.
But at its most simple, it goes something like this: in infancy and early childhood, children give free rein to their sexual feelings, until such time as they are thwarted by adult prohibitions; these prohibitions carry with them the threat of punishment for transgression, and in order to avoid this the sexual impulses are inhibited; this inhibition is accompanied by the child's development of the concept of the 'wrongness' of sexual expression – he not only refrains from the sexual activity but also, believing it to be bad, represses thoughts of indulging in it; this repression, if carried too far, causes psychic stress and eventually manifests itself in neurotic symptoms.
Not everyone who experiences sexual prohibition in childhood becomes clinically neurotic, but the development of the idea of sexual 'badness', of guilt and shame, is very much the norm in our society, and the attitude of all adults to sex is coloured by it. Thus what Freud had to say about 'hysterics' is really only the experience of most people writ large:
'The character of hysterics shows a degree of sexual repression in excess of the normal quantity, an intensification of resistance against the sexual instinct (which we have already met in the form of shame, disgust and morality), and what seems like an instinctive aversion on their part to any intellectual consideration of sexual problems.' 5
A more recent psychiatric contribution, by Dr Alayne Yates, 6 draws on empirical research, from Kinsey to Masters and Johnson, that was unavailable to Freud – to say nothing of her own experience as a mother of no less than thirteen children (seven of her own and six stepchildren). Dr Yates emphasizes Masters and Johnson's estimate that half of all marriages in the United States are troubled by sexual failures, difficulties or incompatibilities. She says:
'When a woman cannot reach orgasm the trouble is almost always clearly related to her lack of early sex experience. Although the young male commonly attains a climax efficiently, he is beset by other problems. He ruminates about the size of his penis, the persistence of his erection, or his ability to satisfy his mate. He experiences a pervasive sense of inadequacy which transforms the bed into an arena or occasionally, a dunce stool. His anxiety precipitates premature ejaculation, retarded ejaculation, and impotence. His problems also emanate from childhood, especially from sexually blurred and unenthusiastic parenthood.'
Dr Yates says children need to be given sexual confidence by their parents; sexual dysfunction is nearly always attributable to the failure of parents to take a positive attitude to their child's capacity for sexual pleasure. Sometimes this failure has crippling effects even in childhood itself. Dr Yates cites many impressive case studies. I propose to relate one of these, about a six-year-old boy called David, because it shows how even good parents can, so to speak, traumatize their children by default – and incidentally, the references to David's school performance give a very different slant on 'the acquisition of skills' to that advanced by Dr Shaffer above:
'David was the youngest of five boys born to stable, intelligent parents who were both college graduates. Although the parents had moved away from a literal interpretation of the Bible, they attended church regularly and taught their children responsibility, patience, and good work habits. The older boys were successful and productive members of the community.
'David was a "late blessing", the youngest by ten years. He received more attention and had fewer responsibilities than his brothers. When he was three years old he enjoyed rubbing and pulling at his penis while sitting on the toilet. His mother observed this and hastened to zip his trousers up.
After that she made certain he had a book or toy to occupy his time while on the lavatory. She was careful not to leave him there too long. About a year later David observed one dog mount another and ran to ask his father what they were doing. The father threw a stick and shouted so that the dogs ran off. By the age of five David's sex education consisted of his Sunday school teacher's comments on certain Bible stories. He knew that adults were upset if he opened doors without knocking, but the most he had ever witnessed was his mother in bra and panties.
'When he was six, his favourite older brother eloped with a girl of a different faith. David missed his brother. He sensed the family turmoil and his father's anger. He overheard his father say that this was "the worst thing that could ever happen".
At the age of seven, David related a joke he had heard at school about a little boy who took a bath with his mother. The same tale that had evoked uproarious laughter from classmates was greeted by stony silence at home. His mother said it was not a nice joke and not to tell any more like that. Shortly before this incident, David had begun playing with his penis again, this time carefully concealed under the bed-covers at night.
After the joke fiasco he stopped pleasuring and wondered if dirty thoughts had made him bad, like his favourite brother who had never returned home. Overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and worthlessness, David spent long hours alone and exhibited some puzzling behaviour. He neglected his chores and was reprimanded; he forgot to take a pencil to school until his teacher sent home a note. Although he had been an excellent student, the letters and syllables seemed hopelessly mixed and he began to fail in reading. Every type of remediation was ineffective. David's parents were frustrated, angry, and concerned.
'Finally, David was brought for psychiatric treatment. During the first months of therapy, he played listlessly and remained aloof. He filled a pail with sand and dumped it again and again. He worried that his hands were soiled, and often visited the bathroom. In the third month, he smiled spontaneously and began to use a variety of playthings – puppets, paints, plasticine, and dart guns.
Now he enjoyed our sessions "a lot". One day we talked about how babies were born. David was silent and picked at his ear. Suddenly he asked if babies would die from "dirty things". Even with my assurance he refused to elaborate – instead he struck the long-nosed alligator puppet again and again against the sink. In the next session David was sullen and distrustful. Once more he poured the sand from one vessel to the next.
Silently I modelled a large red plasticine penis on a baby doll. He stared at it intently for several moments. Abruptly, he flew at the doll and smashed the penis with his fist. "I know what that is!" he screamed. In the weeks that followed, more organs were constructed and demolished. I asked if he ever wanted to do that to himself. There followed a torrent of words interspersed with tears. His penis was "dirty, rotten, evil, and it stinks." This was because he had played with himself even though he knew it was bad. He said, "If you did that God would hate you and kick you out of your house."
'David's parents were astonished. They had never punished David or told him that sex was evil. Fortunately, they understood, and reassured David that he was not bad and would not be sent away. His father gave him permission to masturbate by relating his own early pleasures and concerns. David again read fluently and remembered to take pencils to class.
'Because David had little positive information or experience, he grossly misinterpreted events. Ashamed and miserable, he attempted to deny all erotic feelings, engaging only in clean respectable activities. This was all too much for him and so he began to show the symptoms he did. If he had had reassurance, encouragement, and permission to engage in sex play, therapy would have been unnecessary.'
David was rescued from his sexual shame. Others are less fortunate, hence the need for sex therapy in later life. As Dr Yates points out, the highly effective sex therapy devised in recent years, following the pioneering work of Masters and Johnson, owes its success not to lengthy and expensive psychotherapy, but to introducing adults to very elementary, childish sex play, in which 'performance anxiety' is avoided and shame, with the therapist's encouragement, is gradually banished. 'Our more fortunate children,' says Dr Yates, 'are astutely completing the same tasks, and many more – in the garden shed, behind the bush, and up in the tree house.' And, one might add, in the company of paedophiles.
Those who escape the neurotic's aversion from sex are liable to fall foul of perversion – and by this I mean a sex life based on hostility to the sex object. 7 There is no shortage of such hostility:
'Murder that sexually excites, mutilation for excitement, rape, sadism with precise physical punishments such as whipping or cutting, enchaining and binding games, defecating or urinating on one's subject – all are on a lessening scale of conscious rage toward one's sex object, in which an essential purpose is for one to be superior to, harmful to, triumphant over another.' 8
Thus Robert Stoller, who also believes that such phenomena as dirty phone calls, and even various forms of promiscuity are motivated by hostility. To me, his analysis seems plausible, at the very least, when he writes:
'Think of the Don Juan, that paradigm of promiscuity, who reveals his hatred of women so innocently and unwittingly to the audience he must gather to vouch for his performance: his interests are in seduction, not love, and in recounting for friends how many women he has had and how they degraded themselves in the needfulness of the passion he induced.
His excitement and gratification do not come from the sensual pleasures of the sexual act or the intimacy that he might have established with another person; in fact, he shows little interest in intercourse, his concentration being on overcoming the resistance of an apparently reluctant woman. Easy women do not attract him .... So, we ought not to generalize, when we see a promiscuous person, that he is simply a free soul, expressing the natural sexual exuberance inherent in the species ....' 9In resurrecting the rather passé and pejorative term 'perversion', as distinct from 'deviation' or 'variant', Stoller seeks to re-emphasize the role of morality and personal responsibility – of the concept of sin in sex – to which as a believer in free will he has a deep philosophical commitment. I would take issue with him on the value of 'sin' as a concept, but the important aspect of his contribution is that
(a) he has clarified what it is about certain sexual expression – the underlying motive of hostility – which gives rise to justifiable alarm as to what a society of unbridled 'perversion' might be like, and
(b) in concentrating on people's sexual motives he has made an invaluable distinction between the origin in early life of true perversions on the one hand, and non-hostile aberrations (into which category I would put my own paedophilic feelings) on the other.
He writes:
'From Freud on, it has been said that precocious excitement contributes to perversion. I would agree, but only – as must usually be the case – when there has been too much stimulation and too little discharge or severe guilt. These will be sensed as traumatic and will need to be transformed via the magic of the perverse ritual into a successful venture. With much gratification and little guilt at too young an age, on the other hand, I think the result is not perversion but aberration, a holding on, into adult life to that deviant way of getting pleasure, which is not driven, as is perversion, by the need to harm an object.' 10
Personally, I can see no harm in 'hanging on' to deviant behaviour which is not motivated by hostility. On the other hand, the absence of guilt, and the successful discharge of stimulation in 'precocious' sexual life, would on Stoller's admission dissipate the circumstances in which a hostile sex life originates.
One further word is called for on perversion, because I do not want it to be thought that I am trying to exonerate my own particular 'perversion' at the expense of those of others. Too often in the past others have done exactly this: those homosexual men who feel at home in a lifestyle of conventional dress and social behaviour have denounced the 'screaming queens' – the flamboyant, painted ones – who give them 'a bad name'; heterosexual transvestites likewise tend to 'put down' gays; gays, generally, protest that they are not child molesters, and denounce paedophilia.
All the sexual minorities, in seeking the esteem of the majority, point the finger at others. It is tempting for us paedophiles to do the same. I think most of us – certainly the ones I know – behave towards children in a way which no reasonable interpretation could attribute to some dark, hostile motive; quite the reverse, in fact – benevolent feelings are pronounced. It is tempting therefore to gleefully rub one's hands and push off all the blame onto the sadists: for these, we can say (as Stoller does), are a minority who are truly perverted. They are hostile towards their sexual partners. They are sinful. At extremes they are rapacious and murderous.
Murder, and rape, and all non-consensual acts, can of course only be condemned in the strongest terms. At the same time, it should not be overlooked that those who feel a 'perverted' desire to degrade and hurt their real, or fantasy, sexual object are usually moral people. They are not responsible for their sexual inclinations: only for the way in which they are discharged. This being the case, the sadist's convenient and mutually acceptable relationship with the masochist enables him to discharge his otherwise unacceptable desires in a morally acceptable way, which no one has any right to condemn. Let it not be said that I am trying to put down S/M enthusiasts: all consensual sexual activity is acceptable.
To return to the subject of body pleasure in early life, and the effects of its deprivation: James Prescott, an American neuropathologist, has gone so far as to suggest that sexual satisfaction early in life, and sensual – specifically, tactile – pleasuring in infancy, are a direct antidote to violence in adulthood. 11 His theory is based on correlations between levels of violence in forty-nine pre-literate cultures for which data were available, and certain variables reflecting physical affection – such as the extent in each of the cultures to which infants were cuddled, caressed and played with, and the permitted levels of pre-marital and extramarital sex.
The method of measuring levels of 'affection' or 'violence' in any particular culture will of course always be open to dispute, but it is worthwhile pointing out that the scales used by Prescott were developed independently, by anthropologists. 12 The results show that societies high in physical affection towards their infants are characterized by low levels of violence. Levels of adult physical violence were accurately predicted in thirty-six cultures (73 per cent).
Six societies, apparent exceptions, were characterized by both high infant affection and high violence. But in five of these cultures a high value was placed on virginity and pre-marital sexual repression was the rule. On the other hand, seven societies were characterized by both low infant physical affection and low adult physical violence. All of these were permissive towards early sexual behaviour – which tends to confirm the therapeutic value noted by some observers of the hugging and caressing of otherwise emotionally deprived children in paedophilic relationships.
Prescott's work throws an interesting light on the common assumption that sex and violence always go together, an inseparable double act, like Laurel and Hardy. Prescott points to laboratory experiments with animals which are consistent with his theory. 'A raging, violent animal,' he says, 'will abruptly calm down when electrodes stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain. Likewise, stimulating the violence centres of the brain can terminate the animal's sensual pleasure and peaceful behaviour.'
Less direct forms of stimulation, however, mediated by the senses, seem to produce an entirely different result, in which sexual arousal and aggressive feelings are linked positively, not negatively – as one rises, so the other tends to rise, and as one falls, so does the other. A biological basis for such a link has been suggested in a number of studies. Maclean, for instance, 13 found evidence that the neural systems for sexual and aggressive behaviour are in close proximity to each other within the limbic system of the brain, and they may partly overlap or be directly linked. In human males, a biological link has been found by Professor Michael Sheard, a psychiatrist at Yale University, between the presence of high levels of the male sex hormone testosterone and a tendency to violence. 14
Also at Yale University, Andrew Barclay has conducted a series of experiments 15 which examined the aggressive and sexual fantasies of college students. He recorded fantasy imagery produced in stories written by the students after they had been deliberately made angry by being insulted and humiliated in various ways. In comparison with a control group who were not aggressively aroused, the students – both men and women – produced not only more aggressive imagery, as might be expected, but more sexual imagery too.
Predictably, studies such as these have been seized upon in a simplistic way and cited as evidence that a sexually free society (whether free for children or anyone else) would inevitably be bound up with rape, muggings, murder and all kinds of mayhem. A visit to the Trobriand Islands, or perhaps to one of the cultures described by Prescott, would quickly scotch that idea, but the sex/aggression link, if there is any, obviously deserves some comment. In this connection I feel there are three points worth making:
Firstly, such a link admittedly corresponds to what we know on a 'common-sense' level. Sexual competitiveness appears to be responsible for such familiar happenings as dance-floor brawls: most species engage in fighting or threatening behaviour to establish mating privileges and humans are no exception.
Secondly, the link also fits in with the hostile, perverted sexual feelings described by Stoller. (Incidentally, it would only need a small number of 'perverted' subjects in experiments like Barclay's for a considerable impact to be made on the overall strength of the correlation between sexual and aggressive feelings.)
Thirdly, having accepted the possibility of such a link, one cautionary word should be put in about the nature of 'aggression'. Aggressive imagery is not necessarily to be equated with hostile, sadistic or destructive impulses. The pop song Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick which became a big seller in the UK, illustrates the problem: its imagery was undoubtedly aggressive; yet it expressed a view (admittedly a man's view!) of what women all over the world invite their men to do: 'Hit me with your rhythm stick/Das ist gut, c'est fantastique.' 16 In other words, for 'hit me', read 'excite me', or 'sock it to me', but not 'hurt me'; pleasure is implied in the sought-for contact, not pain or humiliation. Violent imagery in this context is a healthy enough expression of enthusiastic passion, not of hostility or sadism.
None of the above factors does anything to suggest to me that a pro-sexual society will inevitably be a selfish, grabbing, violent one. Such a response presupposes that humans behave in society, where restraint is expected of them, in the same way as they do in laboratory experiments, where it is not. It also presupposes a deterministic role for biologic factors way in excess of that which is justified in the case of human beings; unlike other species, the behaviour patterns of humans are not completely coded in their genes: they are highly subject to social influences, particularly in relation to the early years of development, when the broad foundations of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour are learnt.
At this stage there is the opportunity for children to learn a proper sense of restraint – a boy who learns not to fight over a coveted toy will later find it easier to control his primitive inclination to grab a coveted woman. Similarly, a child whose sexuality is encouraged by his parents, and who as a result comes to associate sexual feelings with warmth, affection and gentleness, can hardly help but grow up with sexual enthusiasm (not excluding the robust sort of enthusiasm encountered in Rhythm Stick) and a non-violent approach to sexual relations.
The sexual conservatives are also great believers in the social moulding of character, particularly within the family, but they feel they are realists in knowing the limitations of such influences: deep down, they believe that people are inevitably selfish and 'sinful' and the only way to deal with these tendencies is to stamp on them hard, from infancy onwards – to 'break the child's will' as it was starkly put in an even harsher era than our own.
What the conservatives never seem to do is to attempt an evaluation of their own approach: after all, there is no shortage of rape, murder and so on in many societies dominated by traditional, sexually repressive values. It is instructive in this connection to consider the attitudes of our own society's most crippled casualties: the criminally insane. In Hans Eysenck's book Sex and Personality, 17 there appears a fascinating study of 186 patients at Broadmoor, Britain's leading institution for the criminally insane: 3 per cent of these were admitted under the Mental Health Act, Section 26, and the rest had convictions as follows:
16 per cent sex offences,
11 per cent arson,
26 per cent murder or manslaughter,
28 per cent attempted murder and wounding,
16 per cent other violent assault and property offences.
It might be expected that the sexual attitudes revealed among such a group would show something that the sexual conservatives would immediately recognize as drastically wrong, a failure to learn the traditional values. Not a bit of it. Rather it appears they learnt only too well:
'Broadmoor patients are on the whole much more inhibited sexually than are the "normal" group. Thus they are less easily excited sexually; conditions have to be just right; they think only rarely about sex; they consciously try to keep sex thoughts out of their mind; when they have strong sex feelings they cannot express them; they don't think about sex every day; they say that they do not get excited very easily; they look upon sex as being only for reproduction and not for pleasure; sex is not all that important to them; they are not excited by the thought of an illicit relationship; they can take sex or leave it alone.
They draw sharp lines between what is right and what is not in sexual conduct; they find it disgusting to see animals having sexual intercourse; there are some things they would not do with anyone; they find the thought of a sex orgy disgusting; they don't think that sometimes a woman should be sexually aggressive; they prefer intercourse under bedcovers and in the dark; they do not feel like scratching and biting their sex partners; they object to four-letter swear words in mixed company; they find wife-swapping distasteful; and they find some forms of love-making disgusting.
They hold rather conservative views on sexual matters: virginity is a girl's most valuable possession; seeing a person nude does not interest them; they would protect their children from contact with sex; they would not take a chance to watch people making love; they are against pornographic writing being freely published; they believe in a sexual censorship; they do not uphold the dual standard of morality; they think that sexual permissiveness undermines society; they do not consider sex play among young children harmless; and they think it right that the man should be dominant.' 18
It is tempting at this point to simply say 'I rest my case,' and move on with a fine rhetorical flourish. And move on I must, but not without reminding readers that the case presented in this chapter is not exclusively a paedophilic one at all: it is just one small contribution to a manifesto for all of society – a manifesto to which thinking people everywhere, the overwhelming majority of whom are presumably not paedophiles, are increasingly beginning to contribute.
Ch 5 - Notes and References
1. Tim Gopsill and Duncan Campbell, 'Untouchable subject', Time Out, 9 September, 1977. ^
2. J. Money and P. Tucker, Sexual Signatures, op. cit., p. 216. ^
3. Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm, 2nd ed., Orgone Institute Press, New York, 1948, p. 93. ^
4. The development of Freud's thinking on this question is discussed by Joseph J. Peters in 'Children who are victims of sexual assault and the psychology of offenders', American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 30, 1976, pp. 399-402. ^
5. S. Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, The Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 7, 'On Sexuality', p. 78 ^
6. Alan Yates, Sex Without Shame, op. cit., pp. 40-42. ^
7. This is the meaning given to the word in Robert Stoller's useful book, Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred, Quartet, London, 1977. ^
8. Ibid., p. 56. ^
9. Ibid., p. 57. ^
10. Ibid., p. 7. ^
11. James W. Prescott, 'Body pleasure and the origins of violence', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November 1975, pp. 10-20. ^
12. The research tool was R.B. Textor's A Cross-Cultural Summary, which gives some 20,000 statistically significant correlations of anthropological data. ^
13. Quoted in H. Eysenck and D. Nias, Sex, Violence and the Media, Temple Smith, London, 1978, p. 249. ^
14. Reported on Science Now, BBC Radio 4, 12 December, 1978. ^
15. See especially A.M. Barclay and R.N. Haber, 'The relation of aggressive to sexual motivation', Journal of Personality, Vol. 33, 1965, pp. 462-75. ^
16. Rhythm Stick, by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Stiff Records, 1978. ^
17. H. Eysenck, Sex and Personality, Open Books, London, 1976, pp. 177-91. ^
18. Ibid., pp. 179-80. ^
Chapter 4 : Home : Chapter 6
