COMMENT BY THE AUTHOR OF

"MUST YOU CONFORM?" AND

"REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE"

"In the time of their demise, it has been characteristic of all peoples that they have surrendered to pressures put upon them by their power-mad leaders, by their insane religions, and by their misguided philosophies to conform.

"Protest becomes outlawed, submission the chief of the virtues, and the expression of individuality by word or act a cardinal sin. But because it is not in the nature of man to submit, because it violates his instinct to forego protest, an intolerable tension arises within him.

"Forced from without to conform, and from within to rebei, he makes a compromise: he rebels within the confines of conformity, he discharges his protest within the limits set by the social order he has by now permitted to be erected around him. Just so does he become transformed into storm-trooper, black-shirt, NKVD inquisitor, guard on the long march from Corregidor, or burner of the fiery cross."

-Robert Lindner

The Independent

Published monthly by Expose, Inc., LYLE STUART, Editor THE INDEPENDENT contains facts and significant opinion about many controversial subjects in modern America... Sex, Censorship, Racial Integration, Economics and Business. Available on many newsstands or by subscription. Subscription: $3 for 12 issues Single copies by mail: 250

6 copies of 1 issue: $1

The Independent

225 Lafayette Street

New York 12, N. Y.

mattachine REVIEW

A book editor compiling a symposium on sexual subjects and the editor of a foriegn sexological journal each thought the following article by Marriage Counselor Albert Ellis of New York "too hot to handle." But not so, decided Editor Lyle Stuart of the INDEPENDENT, an outspoken monthly in New York (see preceding page). Reprinted here in full is the controversial article, by permission of Mr. Stuart.

new light on MASTURBATION

By ALBERT ELLİŞ, Ph.D.

Although attitudes toward masturbation have become enormously more liberal during the past decade or two, it is still rare for writers on sex to take a wholly unequivocal stand on autoerotism. The point is continually made that masturbation is not as bad as it was once said to be; but the concomitant point that it is actually good and beneficial is rarely stated.

Censorship of outspoken articles on the subject is especially rife: so much so in fact that the original version of this article was refused admittance in a book which I edited and a scientific journal of which I am an associate editor; and when it was given as part of an important. symposium on religion and sex, the entire symposium was never published.

At this same symposium, several prominent psychologists and psychiatrists objected strenuously to my statement that masturbation is quite harmless by pointing out that it is sometimes accompanied by neurotic or perverted fantasies. The fact that, quite frequently, -heterosexual coitus is also accompanied by neurotic or perverted fantasies they did not, of course, stress.

Now that the first two com; to see it in a more objective prehensive Kinsey volumes light than that which is usually have appeared, together with shed on it. relevant anthropological material by Clellan Ford and Frank Beach, historical and sociological information by Lester Dearborn, and psychoanalytic data by Rene Spitz and others, we might do well to take another look at the problem of autoerotism, to try

It should come as, no surprise, of course, that Dr. Kinsey and his associates find that about 93 per cent of their male and 62 per cent of their female subjects masturbate at some time during their lives.

(Continued on page 46)