BOOKS
A NATION OF LAWBREAKERS AND MENTAL PATIENTS
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR, edited by Albert Ellis, Ph.D., and Albert Abarbanel, Ph.D. Hawthorn Books. 2 volumes, 1059 pp., $30.00. Reviewed by Earl Holbrook.
It was inevitable that one day a scientific and definitive sex text-as complete as is possible in the allotted space-would conclude unequivocally that every resident of this country over age 12 is confronted with the choice of becoming a lawbreaker or a mental patient. Those born to rational parents usually become lawbreakers without being concerned or uncomfortable about it.
They do not need to read this encyclopedia, but would enjoy doing so and profit thereby. Those not so fortunate-those who are guilty lawbreakers or frustrated conformers-do need to read it, and it is entirely possible that by doing so they may come a considerable distance out of their quagmires of guilt, fear, anxiety, repression, and general misery.
The beautiful people of the world are those who have and enjoy much sex. The ugly are those who do not.
The concept of lawbreaker vs. neurotic is nothing new. Freud discovered it and was forced at one juncture he had sufficient persuasion-to equivocate and endorse the fable that sex energy can be misdirected into activities foreign to its nature. Dr. Ellis, of course, has been the most insistent and outspoken contemporary sexologist in support of the axiom that sex freedom is the chief component of human ability, stability, and tranquillity. Indeed, one editor remarked that Dr. Ellis' definition of a neurotic is anyone who does not agree with Dr. Ellis.
That, sir, is everybody's definition of a neurotic.
Most writers and editors of weighty works labor to be ponderous and obscure, hoping that their lucubrations may become the bible of the art or science of which they treat. Not so with the Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior. Brilliantly written and edited to delight the most punctilious grammarian and semanticist, the volume calls a spade a shovel and not a disinterment utinsil.
The editors scrupulously have abstained from permitting any direct attack upon those who hold views contrary to sense, reason, and science. Only by inference must it be concluded that the church and its religious superstition
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are so enormously guilty of contributing to the general madness. The reader is not told-but scarcely can escape the conclusion-that the authoritarian, the censor, and the moralist are miserable psychopaths and dangerous nitwits.
The encyclopedia generously and impartially includes arguments in favor of such. lunacy as chastity and censorship, but the best efforts of the proponents come off cold and weak beside the beauty in the cases against them. A priceless contribution toward understanding is made by Robert Anton Wilson in a chapter on Modern Attitudes Toward Sex. The writer shows how, through use of the poetic metaphor, the unsuspecting have been trapped hypnotically into the fallacy that sex is at the very best an evil necessity.
But it is too much to expect that the blind can be made to see simply by showing them something. The greatest benefit will be derived from this work by the fence-sitter, pulled one way by natural inclination and the other by exhortations for abstinence. The sex fascist won't expose his dirty mind to these essays, and the permissive individual really doesn't need to. Those who are yet unconvinced either way, however, are sure to be drawn to the side where the fun lies.
No department of sex-a vast and complex stratum-is ignored by the editors. An excellent chapter on education reviews the fallacy of trying to correct conditioning by lectures and the folly of integrating sex instruction into such courses as "family life" with stress on "wholesome" sex, whatever that may be. A definite and workable method is outlined and advocated. Clear explanations result in clear conclusions on the part of the reader. A history of sex superstitions clarifies causes of today's discomforts. The ancient gods were. believed appeased by abstinence during certain conditions. Oddly, the number of gods has been reduced to the same total as the conditions under which sex is legally permissible-a conclusion of no sig nificance, probably, on the part of this reviewer.
The few detectable omissions reflect the great consideration that had to be given to the vast wealth of material in the encyclopedia. Dr. Ellis, in a chapter on Coitus, alludes to a beggarly half-dozen methods in a field of procedure restricted only by the imagination of the participants. Withal, he had the grace to include the basic (horizontal) 69 for those so unfortunate as to have been bypassed by the inspiration.
The Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior should be included in the education of anyone who intends to live. It should be recommended to legislators and the judiciary, for laws against sex are crimes against nature.
On chastity, Hugo G. Beigel declares, "Sexual abstinence runs counter to human nature and therefore upsets the normal functioning of the organism.” On pornography (covered in their customary incisive style by the Drs. Kronhausen), Dr. Ellis observes, "In a perfectly mature and permissive
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