Sex and the doctors: The medicalization of sexuality as a two-way process in early to mid-twentieth-century Britain

Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine: Mediating Medicine in Early Modern and Modern Europe

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 192-211

  Cook, Hera ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85008594050     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1057/9780230287594     Document Type: Chapter

References (155)

1. R. G. Parker and J. H. Gagnon (eds), 'Introduction', in Conceiving Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 3
2. J. Weeks, Sexuality and its Discontents (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 78.
3. E.g. Weeks, Sexuality, pp. 94-5.
4. A. P. Pillay, 'Editor's Introduction', Marriage Hygiene, 1 (1947), 2.
5. H. Wright's The Sex Factor in Marriage, 3rd edn (London: Williams & Norgate, 1930), 58 000 by 1940
6. G. C. Beale [pseud.], Wise Wedlock: the Whole Truth (London: Health Promotion, [1922]), 100000 by 1939
7. Rev L. D. Weatherhead, The Mastery of Sex: Through Psychology and Religion (London: SCM, 1931), 58000 by 1942
8. Rev A. H. Gray, Men, Women and God: a Discussion of Sex Questions from the Christian Point of View (London: SCM, 1923), 93 000 by 1947.
9. The most influential manual with the highest sales in the interwar period was Married Love (London: Putnam, 1918)
10. M. Stopes, which had sold 820 000 copies by 1937.
11. R. Macandrew, Life Long Love (London Wales, 1938)
12. According to her biography, Wright's Sex Factor had sold 1 000 000 by 1984.
13. The publisher claimed T. H. van de Velde's Ideal Marriage (London: William Heinemann, 1928) had sold 700 000 by 1970.
14. G. R. Scott's The New Art of Love (London: John Bale Sons & Danielsson, 1934) sold a relatively meagre 27 000 by 1954.
15. R. Hall, Dear Dr Stopes: Sex in the 1920s (London: Deutsch, 1978)
16. Beale, Wise Wedlock, p. 7
17. A. D. Costler nd A. Willy, The Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge, N. Haire, (ed.), 8th edn 1941 (London: Aldor, 1934), pp. 9-11
18. L. Eyles, Commonsense About Sex, 2nd edn, 1943 (London: Gollancz, 1933), p. 16
19. I. E. Hutton, Memories of a Doctor in War and Peace (London: Heinemann, 1960), p. 217
20. R. Porter and L. A. Hall, The Facts of Life: the Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 283
21. In 1938, the Marriage Guidance Council was set up by Rev A. H. Grey, who was soon joined by Dr E. F. Griffith. By 1945, the organization was receiving letters 'at the rate of 4,000 a month', many of which were about sexual problems.
22. J. H. Wallis, and H. S. Booker, Marriage Counselling: a Description and Analysis of the Remedial Work of the National Marriage Guidance Council (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 5.
23. H. Hopkins, The New Look: a Social History of the Forties and Fifties in Britain (London: Secker & Warburg, 1964), pp. 194-6.
24. E. Chesser, E. Cole, E. F. Griffith, I. E. Hutton, K. M. Walker and H. Wright. A. Havil was the pseudonym of Dr E. E. Phillip (b.1915).
25. L. Hall accepts Stopes' claim that he had plagiarized Married Love (1918).
26. L. A. Hall, Hidden Anxieties: Male Sexuality, 1900-1950 (London: Polity Press, 1991), p. 67.
27. Porter and Hall, Facts of Life, p. 282.
28. H. Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex and Contraception 1800-1975 (forthcoming, Oxford, 2004).
29. M. Jackson, '"Facts of Life" or the Eroticization of Women's Oppression? Sexology and the Social Construction of Heterosexuality', in P. Caplan (ed.), The Cultural Construction of Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1987, repr. 1993)
30. M. Jackson, The Real Facts of Life: Feminism and the Politics of Sexuality, c. 1850-1940 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1994).
31. L. S. Lewis and D. Brissett, 'Sex as Work', Social Problems 158 (1967).
32. M. Gordon and P. J. Shankweiler, 'Different Equals Less: Female Sexuality in Recent Marriage Manuals', Journal of Marriage and the Family (1971), 459-66.
33. M. Gordon, 'From an Unfortunate Necessity to a Cult of Mutual Orgasm: Sex in American Marital Education Literature, 1830-1940'
34. J. M. Henslin and E. Sagarin (eds), The Sociology of Sex (New York: Schocken Books, 1978).
35. E. B. Freedman and J. D'Emilio, Intimate Matters: a History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 267.
36. Porter and Hall, Facts of Life, p. 221.
37. I. E. Hutton, The Hygiene of Marriage, ed. M. D. Smyth, 10th edn, 1964 (London: Heinemann Medical Books, 1923), p. 54.
38. K. M. Walker and E. B. Strauss, Sexual Disorders in the Male, 4th edn, 1954 (London: Cassell, 1939).
39. K. Wellings, J. Field, A. M. Johnson and J. Wadsworth, Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (London: Blackwell, 1994), T.6.8, p. 164.
40. K. Wellings, J. Field, A. M. Johnson and J. Wadsworth, Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (London: Blackwell, 1994). T.12, p. 175.
41. D. Sanders, The Woman's Book of Love and Sex (London: Sphere, 1985), p. 81.
42. C. Chinn, They Worked All Their Lives: Women of the Urban Poor in England, 1880-1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988)
43. S. Humphries, A Secret World of Sex (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1988)
44. D. Gittins, Fair Sex, Family Size and Structure, 1900-39 (London: Tavistock, 1982)
45. E. Roberts, A Women's Place: an Oral History of Working-class Women, 1890-1940 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)
46. P. Thompson, The Edwardians: the Remaking of British Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975)
47. R. Roberts, The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971)
48. L. England, 'A British Sex Survey', International ournal of Sexology, 3, 3 (1950)
49. M. Cole, The Life of G. D. H. Cole (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 89-94
50. J. Calder, The Nine Lives of Naomi Mitchison (London: Virago, 1997), pp. 41-3.
51. L. Jordanova, 'The Social Construction of Medical Knowledge', Social History of Medicine, 8 (1995), 369.
52. M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality (La Volonté de Savoir) (London: Peregrine, 1978), p. 84.
53. Foucault, History, pp. 17-8.
54. Childhood Sexual Learning: the Unwritten Curriculum, ed. by E. J. Roberts (Cambridge MA: Ballinger, 1980).
55. See Cook, Long Sexual Revolution, chs 6 and 7.
56. Wright, Sex Factor, 3rd edn, p. 92. The belief that shame at masturbation was natural was widely accepted.
57. E. F. Griffith, The Pioneer Spirit (Upton Grey: Green Leaves Press, 1981), p. 23.
58. Griffith, Spirit, p. 28.
59. K. M. Walker, Sexual Behaviour: Creative and Destructive (London: Kimber, 1966), p. 185.
60. E. F. Griffith, Modern Marriage, 19th edn, 1947 (London: Gollancz, 1935), p. 131.
61. Hutton, Memories, p. 214. For a brief discussion of Hutton's manual
62. Hall, Hidden Anxieties.
63. D. Russell. The Tamarisk Tree: My Quest for Liberty and Love (London: Virago, 1975).
64. B. Evans, Freedom to Choose: the Life and Work of Dr Helena Wright, Pioneer of Contraception (London: Bodley Head, 1982), p. 152.
65. Walker, Sexual Behaviour, p. 117.
66. Walker, Sexual Behaviour, p. 185.
67. Griffith, Pioneer Spirit, pp. 23, 28.
68. P. Ferris, Sex and the British: a Twentieth Century History (London: Mandarin, 1994), pp. 266-8.
69. E. Chesser, Love Without Fear (A Plain Guide to Sex Technique for Every Married Adult) (London: Rich & Cowan, 1941).
70. Jackson, Real Facts, p. 163.
71. Jackson, 'Facts of Life', pp. 60-1.
72. S. Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880-1930 (London: Pandora, 1985).
73. Jackson, Real Facts, p. 185.
74. Jackson, Real Facts, see also p. 75.
75. Jackson, Real Facts, pp. 163-4.
76. Jackson, 'Facts of Life', pp. 60-1.
77. Stopes, Married Love, 18th edn, p. 65.
78. Jackson, Real Facts, ch. 6.
79. E. and M. Charles, Indian Patchwork (London: Heinemann, 1933), pp. 283-5.
80. E. Charles, The Sexual Impulse (London: Boriswood, 1935), pp. 9-11.
81. D. H. Lawrence wrote an abusive essay about Stopes. Thanks to her, he wrote, sex had been 'mentalised', it was all 'cerebral reaction', and 'not a bit of phallic insouciance and spontaneity'.
82. H. T. Moore (ed.), Sex, Literature and Censorship (London: Heinemann, 1955), p. 76.
83. K. Briant, Stopes' former lover, wrote That 'she was a woman writing with a male personality and a male approach to the sex act'.
84. L. Taylor, 'The Unfinished Sexual Revolution: the First Marie Stopes Memorial Lecture', Journal of Biosocial Science, 3 (1972), 474.
85. R. A. Soloway, '"The Perfect Contraceptive": Eugenics and Birth Control Research in Britain and America in the Interwar Years', Journal of Contemporary History, 30 (1996), 643.
86. P. Ferris has written, 'she was, perhaps, not quite sane', Sex and the British, p. 109.
87. N. Mitchison described the contribution reading Married Love made to her marriage in these terms.
88. Calder, Mitchison, pp. 42-3, 48, 92-3.
89. Eyles, Commonsense, p. 46.
90. Jackson, Real Facts, p. 151.
91. Frances Prewett, in The Woman's Leader, 12 May 1921.
92. Frances Prewett, in The Woman's Leader, 12 May 1921. p. 135.
93. P. Shapiro, 'The Unplanned Children', New Society (November 1962).
94. This argument is also put by E. Wilson, Only Halfway to Paradise: Women in postwar Britain, 1945-1968 (London: Tavistock, 1980), p. 99.
95. K. M. Walker and O. Whitney, The Family and Marriage in a Changing World (London; Victor Gollancz, 1965), pp. 132-4.
96. L. Gordon, 'Why Nineteenth-century Feminists did not Support "Birth Control" and Twentieth-century Feminists do: Feminism, Reproduction and the Family', in Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, ed. B. Thorne and M. Yalom (London: Northeastern University Press, 1992).
97. M. Stopes, Wise Parenthood (London: Fifield, 1918).
98. Wright, Sex Factor, 3rd edn, p. 96.
99. M. Fielding, Parenthood: Design or accident? A manual of Birth Control (London: The Labour Publishing Company, 1928).
100. Griffith, Modern Marriage, 19th edn, p. ix.
101. Th. H. van de Velde, Fertility and Sterility in Marriage (London: Heinemann, 1931), pp. 300-1
102. M. Stopes, Contraception, Theory, History and Practice (London: Bale & Danielsson, 1923), pp. 138-9, 61-3.
103. K. M. Walker, The Physiology of Sex (London: Penguin, 1940), p. 69.
104. S. Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
105. Thompson, Edwardians, p. 78.
106. P. A. David, and W. C. Sanderson, 'Rudimentary Contraceptive Methods and the American Transition to Marital Fertility Control, 1855-1915'.
107. S. L. Engerman and R. E. Gallman (eds), Long Term Factors in America's Economic Growth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
108. Cook, Long Sexual Revolution, ch. 1. 51.
109. H. Wright, Sex Fulfilment in Married Women (London: Williams & Norgate,1947), p. 73.
110. Griffith, Pioneer Spirit, pp. 46-7, 57, 67.
111. Evans, Freedom, pp. 247-8.
112. Ferris, Sex and the British, pp. 266-8.
113. S. Brooke, '"A New World for Women"? Abortion Law Reform in Britain During the 1930s', American Historical Review, 106 (2001)
114. L. Hoggart, 'The Campaign for Birth Control in Britain in the 1920s'.
115. A. Digby and J. Stewart (eds), Gender, Health and Welfare (London: Routledge, 1996).
116. Evans, Freedom, p.148.55.
117. K. M. Walker, A Doctor Digresses (London: Cape, 1950), p. 17.
118. K. M. Walker and P. Fletcher, Sex and Society (London: Penguin, 1955),p. 136.
119. Walker, Sexual Behaviour, p. 171.
120. Griffith, Pioneer Spirit, p. 101.
121. Griffith, Pioneer Spirit, pp. 102, 104.
122. He may have first encountered Jung when the latter gave a seminar in England in 1923. (p. 23).
123. By April of 1948, when he went to Zurich for six weeks and had a few private sessions with Jung, he had already rewritten Modern Marriage (1935) to include a chapter on emotion.
124. K. Walker (ed.), Preparation for Marriage: a Handbook Prepared by a Special Committee on Behalf of the British Social Hygiene Council (London: Cape, 932), pp. 152-3.
125. H. Wright, Sex and Society (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968), pp. 80-1, 84.
126. A. Grey, Quest for Justice: Towards Homosexual Emancipation (London: Sinclair- Stevenson, 1992), pp. 27-8, 30.
127. E. Chesser's Live and Let Live: the Moral of the Wolfenden Report (London: Heinemann, 1958).
128. H. Montgomery Hyde, The Other Love (London: William Heinemann, 1970), pp. 6, 169.
129. Lord Arran, who piloted the homosexual law reform bill through the House of Lords said: 'I ask those who have, as it were, been in bondage and for whom the prison doors are now open to show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity'; cited in J. Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1981), p. 274.
130. Grey, Quest For Justice, pp. 108-9.
131. Grey, Quest, p. 179.
132. Psychiatry and the Homosexual: a Brief Analysis of Oppression, Gay Liberation pamphlet no. 1, cited in Grey, Quest, p. 181
133. J. Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (London: Quartet, 1977)
134. B. Cant and S. Hemmings (eds), Radical Records: Thirty Years of Lesbian and Gay History, 1957-1987 (London: Routledge, 1988).
135. Grey, Quest, p. 183.
136. Evans, Freedom, p. 79.
137. M. Schofield, 'Review: Sex and Society by Helena Wright', Family Planning (1968)
138. Evans, Freedom, pp. 170-1.
139. E. Chesser, Sex and the Married Woman (London: Allen, 1968), pp. 13, 118.
140. Permissiveness and Control: the Fate of the Sixties Legislation, 1977 Sheffield (London: Macmillan, 1980)
141. J. Weeks, 'Sexual Values Revisited', in L. Segal (ed.), New Sexual Agendas (London: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 43-59
142. A. Grey describes how he himself was rejected as reformist in the early days of the GLF - but in his gratitude to those heterosexuals who accepted him and supported law reform he expresses precisely the deferential attitude that the younger generation rejected. Grey, Quest.
143. Jackson, Real Facts, p. 156.
144. Gray, Men, Women, p. 81. Weatherhead, Mastery of Sex, pp. 151-8
145. Weatherhead, Mastery of Sex, pp. 151-8
146. M. Stopes, Enduring Passion, 4th edn, pp. 40-1.
147. Weatherhead, Mastery of Sex, pp. 134-9, 158.
148. E. Charles, Sexual Impulse, p. 155.
149. Scott, New Art, pp. 27, 110, 4th edition, p. 85.
150. G. R. Scott, Modern Birth Control Methods, 2nd edn, 1947 (London:Torchstream Books, 1933), pp. 30, 31, 33.
151. Macandrew, Life Long, pp. 28, 84.
152. Eyles claimed that in 1941, 'the only year of which I kept any statistics', over 7000 women wrote to her telling her they 'either detested and refused to have intercourse or put up with it with boredom, or longed to find in it something to enjoy'; Commonsense, p. 16.
153. Parker and Gagnon, 'Introduction', p. 5.
154. Walker, Physiology, p. vi.
155. Chesser, Love Without Fear, p. 94.