50 Psychology Classics (35 page)

Modernity does not do away with the need for us to attend to our unconscious minds. If we do neglect this side of ourselves, the archetypes simply look for new forms of expression, in the process derailing our carefully made plans. Usually the unconscious supports our conscious decisions, but when a gap appears the archetypes are expressed in strange and powerful ways; we can be ambushed by lack of self-knowledge.

The universe of ancient symbols we once used for deciphering life's changes and larger meaning has been replaced by a science—psychology—that was never designed to understand the soul and cater to it. About the scientific mindset in general, Jung wrote: “Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists… But ‘the heart glows,' and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being.” Modern man or woman lives with a spiritual emptiness that was once easily filled by religion or mythology. Only a new type of psychology that actually recognized the depth of the psyche would be able to quell this secret unrest.

Jung was born in Kesswil, Switzerland in 1875, the son of a Protestant minister. In 1895 he enrolled at the University of Basel to study medicine, and when his father died the following year had to borrow money to remain a student. He began to specialize in psychiatry, and from 1900 worked at the Burghölzli clinic in Zurich under the pioneering psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler. In 1903 he married Emma Rauschenbach, a wealthy Swiss heiress, and they built a large house in Kusnacht for their young family
.

In 1905 Jung became a lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Zurich, and in subsequent years developed a successful private practice. In 1912 he broke with Freud, and two years later resigned from the International Psychoanalytic Society. Freud had considered Jung his heir in psychoanalytical theory, so the split was a major event. It enabled Jung to branch out and explore concepts such as synchronicity, individuation, and the theory of psychological types (see also the commentary on Isabel Briggs Myers, p 46)
.

Jung's other books include
The Psychology of the Unconscious
(1911–12),
Symbols of Transformation
(1912),
Psychological Types
(1921),
Psychology and Religion
(1937),
Psychology and Alchemy
(1944), and
The Undiscovered Self
(1957)
. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
is Part I of the ninth volume of his
Collected Works.

After the Second World War Jung was accused of having Nazi sympathies, but there was no conclusive evidence. He spent time with native peoples in American and Africa, and had a strong interest in ethnology and anthropology. Jung died in 1961 in Switzerland
.

“One may become conscious of an increase in temperature in his own or the sexual partner's body surfaces, partly due to this peripheral circulation of blood, and perhaps in part due to the neuromuscular tensions which develop when there is any sexual response. Even very cold feet may become warm during sexual activity. The identification of sexual arousal as a fever, a glow, a fire, heat, or warmth, testifies to the widespread understanding that there is this rise in surface temperatures.”

“Among the married females in the sample, about a quarter (26 per cent) had had extra-marital coitus by age forty. Between the ages of twenty-six and fifty, something between one in six and one in ten was having extra-marital coitus… Since the cover-up on any socially disapproved sexual activity may be greater than the cover-up on more accepted activities, it is possible that the incidences and frequencies of extra-marital coitus in the sample had been higher than our interviewing disclosed.”

In a nutshell

There is a gap between the variety and extent of our sexual lives and what society or religion permits.

In a similar vein
Louann Brizendine
The Female Brain
(p 52)
Sigmund Freud
The Interpretation of Dreams
(p 110)
Harry Harlow
The Nature of Love
(p 142)
Jean Piaget
The Language and Thought of the Child
(p 222)

The famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey actually spent more than half his professional life as a zoologist studying gall wasps. He was known on Indiana University's Bloomington campus as a rather haughty middle-aged professor who knew more about bugs than people. How, then, did he go from this to being held partly responsible for ushering in the sexual revolution?

In the late 1930s, Indiana University's Association of Women Students made a petition for a course for married students or those contemplating marriage, and the job fell to Kinsey to run it. The students had questions such as: What would be the effect of premarital orgasm or sex on later married life? What is normal or abnormal in sexual activity? The little knowledge they did have had been shaped by religion, philosophy, or social mores, and Kinsey quickly found out that there was more scientific information on the behavior of small insects than there was on the sexual behavior of human beings.

The English physician Henry Havelock Ellis had produced the first dispassionate treatment of the subject,
Studies in the Psychology of Sex
(published in seven volumes between 1897 and 1928), but it was banned by the British government. And of course, Freud had made sex less of a forbidden subject, but had never conducted large-scale scientific research. So in 1938, Kinsey began collecting his own data.

Ten years later, Kinsey and his team published
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
, which, although written for a university audience, became a surprise national bestseller (selling over half a million copies). He became a national figure, and the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research became famous. That book was followed five years later by the 800-page
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
(written with Paul Gebhard, Wardell Pomeroy, and Clyde Martin). The two volumes, probably because their titles were embarrassing to ask for in a bookshop or library, became known simply as the “Kinsey reports.” In the year of the second book's release, 1953, Kinsey appeared on the cover of
Time
magazine.

The research that went into the Kinsey reports was one of the great scientific projects in history. Funding for it came from a combination of Indiana
University and the National Research Council's Committee for Research in Problems of Sex, guided by Robert Yerkes (known for his work in intelligence testing and animal behavior) and backed by the Rockefeller Foundation.

The study coincided with advances in research methods that allowed reasonably accurate sampling of large populations, instead of having to rely on a few case histories. But given the closed-door nature of sex, how was Kinsey going to get reliable information? The laws in different American states meant possible incrimination for people who submitted their stories. So his team had to develop a method of interviewing that would ensure people remained anonymous and secure in their confessions. They asked 350 questions on respondents' sexual history, and some of those interviewed provided diaries or calendars recording their sexual activity on a daily basis. All aspects of sexual behavior were investigated in reference to age, marital status, educational level, socioeconomic class, religious background, and status as a rural or urban dweller.

From 1938 to 1956, an incredible 17,000 people were studied, with Kinsey himself doing over 5,000 of the interviews.
Sexuality in the Human Female
was based mainly on the case histories of 5,940 white American females, and informed by the stories of 1,849 women who fell into other categories. The book includes a long list of the occupations of female subjects, everyone from army nurses to high-school students, dancers to factory workers, economists to gym instructors, movie directors to office clerks. The wider pool included women prisoners.

Along with the huge amount of raw data, insights from the fields of psychology, biology, animal behavior, psychiatry, physiology, anthropology, statistics, and law made their way into
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
, making it a more well-rounded work than the first Kinsey report, with more effort to look at sexual history through the ages. Despite the dry scientific language and endless pages of graphs and tables, it also seemed more shocking, since women's sexuality involves more taboos—and here was startlingly frank information on deep personal secrets.

The book covers a great array of subjects and presents thousands of findings. Among them we find the following.

Children as young as two masturbate.

More significant than genital stimulation in reaching orgasm, for both men and women, is rhythmic thrusting. The muscular tension involved in the sex act is a vital part of the overall physiological response.

The vaginal walls have very few nerve endings. Female masturbation focuses on the clitoris, labia minora, and labia majora, more than actual penetration.

Generally, men are more inclined to fantasize to achieve masturbatory orgasm, while most women rely on physical sensations alone. However, 2 percent of women had experienced orgasm through fantasy alone.

36 percent of women reported having had no orgasm at all before getting married, and a substantial number never achieved it even during marriage.