Table 39. Number of sources of outlet in any 5-year period
Computed for the whole population involved in the present study, and computed for a theoretic adult male population with the age distribution found in the U. S. Census for 1940.
As previously noted, the six chief sources of orgasm for the human male are masturbation, nocturnal emissions, heterosexual petting, heterosexual intercourse, homosexual relations, and intercourse with animals of other species. The sum of the orgasms derived from these several sources constitutes the individual’s total sexual outlet.
Since practically all of the sexual contacts of the mature male involve emotional changes, all of which represent expenditures of energy, all adult contacts might be considered means of outlet, even though they do not lead to orgasm. These emotional situations are, however, of such variable intensity that they are difficult to assess and compare; and, for the sake of achieving some precision in analysis, the present discussion of outlets is confined to those instances of sexual activity which culminate in orgasm.
There are some individuals who derive 100 per cent of their outlet from a single kind of sexual activity. Most persons regularly depend upon two or more sources of outlet; and there are some who may include all six of them in some short period of time. The mean number of outlets utilized by our more than 5000 males is between 2 and 3 (means of 2.5 or 2.2) (Table 39). This number varies considerably with different age groups and with different social levels (Figure 35; Chapters 7, 10).
There are, both theoretically and in actuality, endless possibilities in combining these several sources of outlet and in the extent to which each of them contributes to the total picture (Figure 31). The record of a single sort of sexual activity, even though it be the one most frequently employed by a particular group of males, does not adequately portray the whole sexual life of that group. Published figures on the frequency of marital intercourse, for instance (Pearl 1925), cannot be taken to be the equivalent of data on the frequency of total outlet for the married male; for marital intercourse may provide as little as 62 per cent of the orgasms of certain groups of married males (Table 97). Similarly, studies of masturbation among college and younger students are not the equivalents of studies of total sexual outlet for such a group. Again, many persons who are rated “homosexual” by their fellows in a school community, a prison population, or society at large, may be deriving only a small portion of their total outlet from that source. The fact that such a person may have had hundreds of heterosexual contacts will, in most cases, be completely ignored. Even psychologic studies have sometimes included, as “homosexual,” persons who were not known to have had more than a single overt experience. In assaying the significance of any particular activity in an individual history, or any particular type of sexual behavior in a population as a whole, it is necessary to consider the extent to which that activity contributes to the total picture. Since all previously published rates on human sexual activity have been figures for particular outlets, such as masturbation or marital intercourse, the figures given in the present study on total outlet are higher than previous data would have led one to expect.
Table 39. Number of sources of outlet in any 5-year period
Computed for the whole population involved in the present study, and computed for a theoretic adult male population with the age distribution found in the U. S. Census for 1940.
The average (mean) frequency of total sexual outlet for our sample of 3905 white males ranging between adolescence and 30 years of age is nearly 3.0 per week. It is precisely 2.88 for the total population of that age, or 2.94 for the sexually active males in that population (Table 40, Figure 32). For the total population, including all persons between adolescence and 85 years of age, the mean is 2.74 (Figure 33).
These average figures, however, are not entirely adequate, for they are based upon the particular groups of males who have contributed so far to this study. Subsequent analyses will show that there are differences in mean frequencies of sexual activity, dependent upon such factors as age, marital status, educational, religious, and rural-urban backgrounds, and on still other biologic and social factors. In order to be intelligible, any discussion of sexual outlet should be confined to a particular group of persons whose biologic condition, civil status, and social origins are homogeneous. Most of the present volume is concerned with the presentation of data for such homogeneous groups. If there is any advantage in having a generalized figure for the population of the country as a whole, that figure is best calculated by determining the frequencies for a variety of these homogeneous groups, determining the relative size of each of these groups in the national census, and then, through a process of weighting of means, reconstructing the picture for a synthetic whole (Chapter 3, Tables 7–11).
For this synthesized population, which more nearly represents the constitution of the nation as a whole, we arrive at a figure of 3.27 per week for the total sexual outlet of the average white American male under thirty years of age (Table 40). For all white males up to age 85, the corrected mean is 2.34 per week. The latter figure is lower because of the inactivity of the older males.
While approximately 3.3 is the mean frequency of total outlet for younger males, no mean nor median, nor any other sort of average, can be significant unless one keeps in mind the range of the individual variation and the distribution of these variants in the population as a whole. This is particularly true in regard to human sexual behavior, because differences in behavior, even in a small group, are much greater than the variation in physical or physiologic characters (Table 40, Figures 32, 33). There are a few males who have gone for long periods of years without ejaculating: there is one male who, although apparently sound physically, had ejaculated only once in thirty years. There are others who have maintained average frequencies of 10, 20, or more per week for long periods of time: one male (a scholarly and skilled lawyer) has averaged over 30 per week for thirty years (Table 43). This is a difference of several thousand times.
In considering structural characters of plants and animals, such as total height in the human, or length of wings, legs or other parts in other animals, a maximum that was two or three times the size of the minimum would command considerable attention (Bateson 1894, Wechsler 1935, Thorndike 1940). One of us has published data (Kinsey 1942) on individual variation in populations of insects. The populations represented individuals of single species, from single localities. There were many characters which varied. Extreme wing lengths, for instance, varied between 10 and 180 micrometer units. This difference of 18 times probably represents as extreme a linear variation as is known in any population of adults of any species of plant or animal. But differences between the extreme frequencies of sexual outlet in the human (Figures 32-33) range far beyond these morphologic differences. Calculation will show that the difference between one ejaculation in thirty years and mean frequencies of, say, 30 ejaculations per week throughout the whole of thirty years, is a matter of 45,000 times. This is the order of the variation which may occur between two individuals who live in the same town and who are neighbors, meeting in the same place of business, and coming together in common social activities. These sexually extreme individuals may be of equal significance, or insignificance, in the societal organization. They may be considered as very similar sorts of persons by their close friends who do not know their sexual histories. It has been notable throughout our field collections that a sample of as few as a hundred histories is likely to show a considerable portion of this full range of variation.
These differences in frequency of sexual activity are of great social importance. The publicly pretended code of morals, our social organization, our marriage customs, our sex laws* and our educational and religious systems are based upon an assumption that individuals are much alike sexually, and that it is an equally simple matter for all of them to confine their behavior to the single pattern which the mores dictate. Even in such an obviously sexual situation as marriage, there is little consideration, under our present custom, of the possibility that the two persons who have mated may be far apart in their sexual inclinations, backgrounds, and capacities. Persons interested in sex education look for a program which will satisfy children—meaning all the children—at some particular educational level, overlooking the fact that one individual may be adapted to a particular, perhaps relatively inactive, sort of sexual adjustment, while the next would find it practically impossible to confine himself to such a low level of activity. In institutional management, there has been almost complete unawareness of these possible differences between inmates. The problems of sexual adjustment for persons committed to penal, mental, or other institutions, the problems of sexual adjustment for men and women in the army, the navy, or other armed forces, are a thousand different problems for any thousand of the persons involved.
While the curve shows three-quarters (77.7%) of the males with a range of variation that lies between 1.0 and 6.5 per week, there is still nearly a quarter (22.3%) of the males who fall into extreme ranges (total population, U. S. Correction). There are, for instance, 7.6 per cent of all the males whose outlets may average 7 or more per week for periods of at least five years in some part of their lives. Daily and more than daily arousal and sexual activity to the point of complete orgasm must occur among some of the friends and acquaintances which any person has. When the data on the female are subsequently published, they will show that there is even a wider range of variation there, although a larger number of the females are in the lower portion of the curve.
The possibility of any individual engaging in sexual activity at a rate that is remarkably different from one’s own, is one of the most difficult things for even professionally trained persons to understand. Meetings of educators who are discussing sex instruction and policies to be followed in the administration of educational institutions, may bring out extreme differences of opinion which range from recommendations for the teaching of complete abstinence to recommendations for frank acceptance of almost any type of sexual activity. No other subject will start such open dissension in a group, and it is difficult for an observer to comprehend how objective reasoning can lead to such different conclusions among intelligent men and women. If, however, one has the histories of the educators involved, it may be found that there are persons in the group who are not ejaculating more than once or twice a year, while there may be others in the same group who are experiencing orgasm as often as ten or twenty times per week, and regularly. There is, inevitably, some correlation between these rates and the positions which these persons take in a public debate. On both sides of the argument, the extreme individuals may be totally unaware of the possibility of others in the group having histories that are so remote from their own. In the same fashion, we have listened to discussions of juvenile delinquency, of law enforcement, and of recommendations for legislative action on the sex laws, knowing that the policies that ultimately come out of such meetings would reflect the attitudes and sexual experience of the most vocal members of the group, rather than an intelligently thought-out program established on objectively accumulated data.
Even the scientific discussions of sex show little understanding of the range of variation in human behavior. More often the conclusions are limited by the personal experience of the author. Psychologic and psychiatric literature is loaded with terms which evaluate frequencies of sexual outlet. But such designations as infantile, frigid, sexually under-developed, under-active, excessively active, over-developed, over-sexed, hypersexual, or sexually over-active, and the attempts to recognize such states as nymphomania and satyriasis as discrete entities, can, in any objective analysis, refer to nothing more than a position on a curve which is continuous. Normal and abnormal, one sometimes suspects, are terms which a particular author employs with reference to his own position on that curve.
The most significant thing about this curve (Figures 32, 33) is its continuity. It is not symmetrical, with a particular portion of the population set off as “normal,” “modal” “typical,” or discretely different. No individual has a sexual frequency which differs in anything but a slight degree from the frequencies of those placed next on the curve. Such a continuous and widely spread series raises a question as to whether the terms “normal” and “abnormal” belong in a scientific vocabulary. At the best, abnormal may designate certain individuals whose rates of activity are less frequent, or whose sources of sexual outlet are not as usual in the population as a whole; but in that case, it is preferable to refer to such persons as rare, rather than abnormal. Moreover, many items in human sexual behavior which are labelled abnormal, or perversions, in textbooks, prove, upon statistical examination, to occur in as many as 30 or 60 or 75 per cent of certain populations (see later chapters). It is difficult to maintain that such types of behavior are abnormal because they are rare.
The term “abnormal” is applied in medical pathology to conditions which interfere with the physical well-being of a living body. In a social sense, the term might apply to sexual activities which cause social maladjustment. Such an application, however, involves subjective determinations of what is good personal living, or good social adjustment; and these things are not as readily determined as physiologic well-being in an organic body. It is not possible to insist that any departure from the sexual mores, or any participation in socially taboo activities, always, or even usually, involves a neurosis or psychosis, for the case histories abundantly demonstrate that most individuals who engage in taboo activities make satisfactory social adjustments. There are, in actuality, few adult males who are particularly disturbed over their sexual histories. Psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and others who deal with cases of maladjustment, sometimes come to feel that most people find difficulty in adjusting their sexual lives; but a clinic is no place to secure incidence figures. The incidence of tuberculosis in a tuberculosis sanitarium is no measure of the incidence of tuberculosis in the population as a whole; and the incidence of disturbance over sexual activities, among the persons who come to a clinic, is no measure of the frequency of similar disturbances outside of clinics. The impression that such “sexual irregularities” as “excessive” masturbation, pre-marital intercourse, responsibility for a pre-marital pregnancy, extramarital intercourse, mouth-genital contacts, homosexual activity, or animal intercourse, always produce psychoses and abnormal personalities is based upon the fact that the persons who do go to professional sources for advice are upset by these things.
It is unwarranted to believe that particular types of sexual behavior are always expressions of psychoses or neuroses. In actuality, they are more often expressions of what is biologically basic in mammalian and anthropoid behavior, and of a deliberate disregard for social convention. Many of the socially and intellectually most significant persons in our histories, successful scientists, educators, physicians, clergymen, business men, and persons of high position in governmental affairs, have socially taboo items in their sexual histories, and among them they have accepted nearly the whole range of so-called sexual abnormalities. Among the socially most successful and personally best adjusted persons who have contributed to the present study, there are some whose rates of outlet are as high as those in any case labelled nymphomania or satyriasis in the literature, or recognized as such in the clinic.
Clinical subjects who have such unusual items in their histories often do present psychopathologies—that is why they have gone to the clinics. But the presence of particular behavior, or the existence of a high rate, is not the abnormality which needs explanation. The real clinical problem is the discovery and treatment of the personality defects, the mental difficulties, the compulsions, and the schizophrenic conflicts which lead particular individuals to crack up whenever they depart from averages or socially accepted custom, while millions of other persons embrace the very same behavior, and may have as high rates of activity, without personal or social disturbance. It has been too simple a solution to discover the sexual items in a patient’s history, to consider them symptoms of a neurosis, and to diagnose the disturbance as the outcome of the departure from the established mores. It is much more difficult to discover the bases of the unstable personalities that are upset by such sexual departures, and to treat the basic defects rather than to patch up the particular issues over which the disturbances occur Clinicians would have more incentive for using such an approach if they were better acquainted with the normal frequencies of the so-called abnormal types of activity, and if, at least as far as sex is concerned, they could acquire a wider acquaintance with the sexual histories of well-adjusted individuals.
Most of the complications which are observable in sexual histories are the result of society’s reactions when it obtains knowledge of an individual’s behavior, or the individual’s fear of how society would react if he were discovered. In various societies, under various circumstances, and (as we shall later show) even at various social levels of the population living in a particular town, the sex mores are fundamentally different. The way in which each group reacts to a particular sort of history determines the “normality” or “abnormality” of the individual’s behavior—in that particular group (Benedict 1934). Whatever the moral interpretation (as in Moore 1943), there is no scientific reason for considering particular types of sexual activity as intrinsically, in their biologic origins, normal or abnormal. Yet scientific classifications have been nearly identical with theologic classifications and with the moral pronouncements of the English common law of the fifteenth century. This, in turn, as far as sex is concerned, was based on the medieval ecclesiastic law which was only a minor variant of the tenets of ancient Greek and Roman cults, and of the Talmudic law (Angus 1925, May 1931), Present-day legal determinations of sexual acts which are acceptable, or “natural,” and those which are “contrary to nature” are not based on data obtained from biologists, nor from nature herself. On the contrary, the ancient codes have been accepted by laymen, jurists, and scientists alike as the ultimate sources of moral evaluations, of present-day legal procedure, and of the list of subjects that may go into a textbook of abnormal psychology. In no other field of science have scientists been satisfied to accept the biologic notions of ancient jurists and theologians, or the analyses made by the mystics of two or three thousand years ago. Either the ancient philosophers were remarkably well-trained psychologists, or modern psychologists have contributed little in defining abnormal sexual behavior.
The reactions of our social organization to these various types of behavior are the things that need study and classification. The mores, whether they concern food, clothing, sex, or religious rituals, originate neither in accumulated experience nor in scientific examinations of objectively gathered data. The sociologist and anthropologist find the origins of such customs in ignorance and superstition, and in the attempt of each group to set itself apart from its neighbors. Pyschologists have been too much concerned with the individuals who depart from the group custom. It would be more important to know why so many individuals conform as they do to such ancient custom, and what psychology is involved in the preservation of these customs by a society whose individual members would, in most cases, not attempt to defend all of the specific items in that custom. Too often the study of behavior has been little more than a rationalization of the mores masquerading under the guise of objective science.
While this problem will be met again in other places, the present discussion of frequencies of total sexual outlet provides a good opportunity for understanding the futility of classifying individuals as normal or abnormal, or well-adjusted or poorly adjusted, when in reality they may be nothing more than frequent or rare, or conformists or non-conformists with the socially pretended custom.
Morphologic differences between individuals are the product of both hereditary and environmental factors. Differences in behavior, on the other hand, are dependent not only upon hereditary morphology and upon the direct effects of environment on that anatomy, but upon psychologic conditioning and social pressures as well. Because of the larger number of factors involved, variation in behavior is much greater than variation in anatomic structures.
The most important biologic factors affecting the nature and frequency of sexual response in the human animal are the hereditary forces which account for the differences between male and female. Within either of these sexes, heredity must also account for some of the variation in sensory structures and in the mechanisms which are concerned with emotional response; but there is little precise information on this point. Variation within the lifetime of a single individual is effected by such biologic factors as age, general metabolic level, nutrition (Miles 1919, Jackson 1925), vitamins (Biskind and Falk 1943, Moore 1942), general health, changes in neurologic conditions, and still other situations. Age is the one biologic factor that most strongly affects variation in the sex life of an individual and which, therefore, accounts for the differences between populations of different age (Chapter 7). Sex hormones are the biologic factors with which there has been the most experimentation. In general, an increased availability of male hormone (up to the point of its optimum effect) increases the frequency of sexual activity (Hamilton 1937, Moore 1942, Pratt 1942, Lisser and Curtis 1943, Heller, Nelson and Roth 1943). Less often noted in the literature and less widely utilized for experimentation, thyroid hormones produce, if anything, more marked results, and our histories include some persons who have had the intensity of their sex drive and the frequency of their activity considerably increased by the administration of thyroid extracts. Since thyroid so directly affects the general metabolic level, it is probable that its influence on sexual frequencies is by way of its relation to metabolism in general rather than through any immediate action of the hormone. The master gland of the hormonal system, the pituitary, regulates both thyroid and sex glands and thus (probably in this indirect fashion only) affects the sexual activity of the individual.
Psychologic conditioning accounts for a larger part of the variation in behavior in a population. All living organisms, from the lowest to the highest, are modified by the experiences through which they pass. This modifiability is one of the intrinsic qualities of living protoplasm. In any creature with a central nervous system which is as highly developed as that found in the vertebrates, particularly in the primates, this conditioning becomes a paramount factor in determining the animal’s behavior. Whether an individual is located at some lower point or at a higher point on the total curve of outlets depends in part upon the experience which he has previously had and the incentive which that experience provides for a repetition or avoidance of further activity. Whether an individual depends upon masturbation or heterosexual intercourse for his pre-marital outlet depends in part upon the early experience he happens to have had. Whether exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual patterns are followed, or whether both heterosexual and homosexual outlets are utilized in his history, depends in part upon the circumstance of early experience.
A third group of factors effecting variation in human sexual behavior is the sociologic group. As later chapters in this volume will show, the mores are the prime forces which produce variation in the sources of sexual outlet in different groups. Patterns of sexual behavior are, in an astonishingly high percentage of the cases, merely reflections of the patterns of the particular social level to which an individual belongs. In most cases, the individual rationalizes his particular pattern and thinks that he himself has logically chosen the regimen which is most satisfactory, socially profitable, or morally right; but mores which are many hundreds of years old are, in reality, the sources of most of these decisions.
There are, then, a variety of factors which may modify the frequency and sources of sexual activity within the lifetime of a single individual; but within any limited period of time—within a five-year period, for instance—changes are effected chiefly by physical health and by modifications of situations which affect the opportunity for sexual contact. Most individuals maintain a surprisingly constant position on the outlet curve for periods of several years, changing mostly because of advancing age.
It is not simple to determine the extent to which an individual’s total outlet represents something less than the rate to which he would rise if there were no restrictions on his behavior. In a few cases, however, it is possible to make some analyses. The rates of unmarried males between the ages of 16 and 20 average 3.35 (based on 2868 histories, corrected for the U. S. Census distribution) while the rates for married males of the same age group average 4.83 (Table 60). The difference of 1.5 ejaculations per week is to a considerable extent dependent upon the social restrictions on pre-marital activity (Chapter 8). It is probable that the biologic capacity of the average younger male is even higher than 4.8 per week, for even in marriage there is considerable interference with sexual performance. Periods of menstruation and pregnancy cause interruption of activity. Most males would have intercourse more frequently if their spouses were more interested, if other occupations did not interfere, if business routines that take precedence over intercourse did not leave one physically and mentally fatigued by the time sexual contacts are available. The human animal usually demands a certain privacy which is not always available when intercourse or other outlets are most desired; society tries to restrict all sexual activities to monogamous relations; and moral codes put a taint on many sorts of sexual gratification. It seems safe to assume that daily orgasm would be within the capacity of the average human male, and that the more than daily rates which have been observed for some primate species (Sokolowsky 1923, Bingham 1928, Yerkes and Elder 1936, Carpenter 1942, Young and Orbison 1944), could be matched by a large portion of the human population if sexual activity were unrestricted. The males who are astounded to find that 7,6 per cent of the population does, in actuality, have daily or more than daily outlet are, in most cases, simply unaware of their own capacities. Since this percentage of the males already has daily rates, in spite of the restrictions on their behavior, it is probable that such a percentage of the population would, under optimal conditions, be involved in still more frequent activity during the first five or ten years of their adolescent and adult lives.
In another study we will present data on the relation of sexual and physical activity. There is no invariable correlation, and the list of top athletes includes persons with both low and high rates of sexual outlet. On the whole it is evident that general good health and, therefore, the physical activity which engenders good health, may contribute to an increase in the frequency of sexual performance. Only physical exercise which is carried to the point of exhaustion interferes with sexual as well as other sorts of reactions.
Sexual abstinence for short periods of time, such as a few days or weeks, is of common occurrence; but average frequencies as low as once in two weeks, or lower, occur in only 11.2 per cent of the males under 31 years of age (Table 40). Average frequencies ranging between 0.0 and once in ten weeks (for any five-year period under 31 years of age) occur in only about 2.9 per cent of the population. There is a steady increase in the number of low-rating males after age 35. The list may include some whose pruderies led them to understate the frequency of their sexual activity; but this is more likely to be true among the females, and it is probably not true of more than an insignificantly small portion of the male population, for most males are inclined to be ashamed of very low rates of activity. On the other hand, the list of inactive males includes some persons of such superior scientific and other professional training that there can be no question that their statements were as complete and accurate as could be made. The low-rating males have all sorts of educational, religious, and social backgrounds (Table 41), Larger segments of the low-rating population come, however, from persons with lower grade school education (many of whom are of lower intellectual capacity and dull sexually as well as mentally); from persons who are religiously most active (especially devout Catholics and Orthodox Jews); and particularly from males who are late in arriving at adolescence (Chapter 9).
An examination of these cases of low outlet should give some information on the incidence of so-called sublimation. The concept, ascribed by the psychoanalysts to Freud (Brill, in Freud 1938), implies that it is possible for an individual to divert his sexual energies to such “higher levels” of activity as art, literature, science, and other socially more acceptable channels. The concept is, of course, much older than Freud. Its affinity to Christian, Hebraic, Greek, and more ancient asceticism is betrayed by its recognition of social values, and confirmed by the speed with which moral leaders of all denominations have adopted the term to cover everything that Freud originally intended, and abstinence, self-control, stern suppression, and the rest of the ascetic virtues as well. One can hardly object if a supposedly scientific concept has been turned into a moral issue, when the supposedly scientific concept amounted, in the first place, to little more than a formalization of an age-old tenet of several religions. Its original presentation (Freud, 1938 transl.) was dogmatic and without supporting data, and its subsequent treatment has usually involved little more than a faithful acceptance of the doctrine (e.g., Henry 1938, Brown 1940, Allen 1940, Young 1940, Brill 1944).
The importance of a soundly scientific critique of the whole theory of sublimation can hardly be over-emphasized. A great many persons have tried to establish their sexual lives on the assumption that sublimation is possible and the outcome desirable. In the histories available in the present study there are many cases of individuals who make definite and distinct, and sometimes heroic, efforts (also see Brockman 1902) to control their responses and who, in actuality, reduce the frequencies of their orgasms considerably below the levels which they otherwise would attain. But it still remains to be determined whether these persons turn their sexual energies into “higher” things, as nervous energy is shunted from one to another portion of a nervous system, or electricity short-circuited into new paths and channels. If sublimation is a reality, it should be possible to find individuals whose erotic responses have been reduced or eliminated, without nervous disturbance, as a result of an expenditure of energy in utterly non-sexual activities. It does not suffice to cite artists, or statesmen, or other busy persons as cases of sublimation, merely because they are energetic in the pursuit of their non-sexual professions. Certainly no one who actually knew the sexual histories of particular artists would have thought of using them as illustrations of sexually sublimated people. It is not sufficient to cite sexually apathetic or frigid women as examples of sublimation with no regard to the high incidence of relatively unresponsive females who never had any appreciable amount of sexual energy to be diverted. There must be a determination, based on an objective and thorough psychologic, psychoanalytic, and physiologic examination, of the incidence of persons of proved sexual capacity who have expended at least part of that energy in non-sexual activities, and whose energies are not merely dulled or suppressed.
We, in the present study, are not qualified to make all of these necessary analyses. It is possible, however, to draw attention to the sorts of cases that might conceivably serve as instances of sublimation, and to show the presence of other factors that must be taken into account in analyzing such histories. The most likely cases are those with unusually low rates of outlet. There are 179 males in our series who are under 36 years of age and whose rates have averaged once in two weeks, or lower, for periods of at least five years. These are the males whose histories would be most likely to show evidence of sublimation. There may be high-rating individuals whose activities would be still more frequent if they were not sublimated, but such cases will be more difficult to recognize and to analyze.
(1) Among these 179 males with the lowest rates, there are a few individuals (9 males = 5.0%) who are in such poor health, or otherwise so incapacitated by structural, hormonal, or other physical deficiencies, that all heavy expenditures of energy are impossible or held at a minimum. At ages over 45 there is a fair number of cases of impotency, and at younger ages there are a few males (4 cases cited in the previous chapter) who have been totally impotent throughout their lives for physical or physiologic reasons. There are more cases of younger males who are impotent under particular situations; but at ages under 36, neither erectal nor ejaculatory impotence accounts for more than a few stray cases of low rates of outlet. Other physical deficiencies are involved in the 9 cases which belong in this list.
(2) There is another group of males (at least 52.5% of the above tabulation) who are apathetic. They never, at any time in their histories, have given evidence that they were capable of anything except low rates of activity. These are persons who would be described, figuratively, as “low in sex drive.” Whether the factors are biologic, psychologic, or social, it is certain that such persons exist. After these apathetic persons have had orgasm, they may go for some days or weeks without further arousal. There are few if any psychologic stimuli which will excite them, and even when these males deliberately put themselves in erotic situations which involve active petting and genital manipulation they may be unable to respond more than once in several weeks. This situation is even more often found among females, 30 per cent of whom are more or less sexually unresponsive. Such fundamentally apathetic persons are the ones who are most often moral (conforming with the mores), most insistent that it is a simple matter to control sexual response, and most likely to offer themselves as examples of the possibility of the diversion of probably nonexistent sexual energies. But such inactivity is no more sublimation of sex drive than blindness or deafness or other perceptive defects are sublimation of those capacities.
There is an inclination among psychiatrists to consider all unresponding individuals as inhibited, and there is a certain scepticism in the profession of the existence of people who are basically low in capacity to respond. This amounts to asserting that all people are more or less equal in their sexual endowments, and ignores the existence of individual variation. No one who knows how remarkably different individuals may be in morphology, in physiologic reactions, and in other psychologic capacities, could conceive of erotic capacities (of all things) that were basically uniform throughout a population. Considerable psychiatric therapy can be wasted on persons (especially females) who are misjudged to be cases of repression when, in actuality, at least some of them never were equipped to respond erotically.
(3) In this list of relatively inactive males there are 35 cases (19.6%) who were delayed in starting activity, but whose rates were abruptly and materially increased as soon as they made their first socio-sexual contacts. As their later performances demonstrated, their earlier rates were low only because their capacities had not been awakened. Having once been conditioned by sexual experience, these males subsequently found it difficult to get along without regular sexual outlet. Such histories are not cases of sublimation.
(4) There are many cases of males of proved sexual capacity who are suddenly forced into relative inactivity by being deprived of opportunities for outlet. Sometimes this results in nervous disturbance; but where the individuals are effectively removed from sources of erotic arousal, most of them are able to adjust to the lower rates. This is best illustrated by the many hundreds of histories which we have from men who have been confined to penal institutions, some of them for periods of as much as twenty or twenty-five years. In a prison, there may be opportunity for such outlets as masturbation, nocturnal emission, the homosexual, or a stray experience of some other sort; but the sum total of sexual activity is very much below that found in similar groups outside of an institution. In a short-time prison, the majority of the men do not accept homosexual contacts, and there are a great many who, coming from a social level in which masturbation is taboo (Chapter 10) and from a social level where nocturnal emissions are at a minimum (Chapters 10, 15), may go for long periods of months, or for a year or more, without ejaculation. A few of these men are nervously disturbed as a result of their lack of outlet; but most of them live comfortably enough, apparently because there is little erotic arousal which needs to be relieved by orgasm. The men in such institutions regularly insist that there is very little if any arousal from conversation, printed pictures, descriptions in literature, or anything short of actual contact with a sexual partner. Educated persons are commonly misled by the constant discussion of sex for which prisons, armies, factories, and other places of partial restraint are notorious. Academically trained students are too prone to interpret such situations in terms of their own, highly conditioned, responses. For the more poorly educated portion of the population, however, there is a minimum of erotic fantasy, and 91.5 per cent of all of those committed to penal institutions never go beyond high school in their education (U. S. Census 1940). In consequence, these prison males do not illustrate sublimation, for they have little or no aroused sexual energy which needs dissipation. This is such a special situation that prison cases are not included in the above list of low-rating cases, and frequencies in prison have not entered into any of the calculations of the rates of outlet in the present volume.
There are, however, males who represent cases of deprivation under more usual situations, such as divorce, the illness of the wife, and other causes; and these constitute 8.3 per cent of the low-rating list given above.
(5) Finally there are timid or inhibited individuals in this low-rating list, who are afraid of approaching other persons for sexual relations, afraid of condemnation were they to engage in such socially taboo behavior as masturbation, pre-marital intercourse, or the homosexual; or afraid of their own self condemnation if they were to engage in almost any sort of sexual activity. This accounts for more than half of the low-rating list (58.1%). Some of these individuals become paranoid in their fear of moral transgression, or its outcome. There are 9 cases of attempted suicide among the histories of mates who were trying to suppress some aspect of their sexual activity. These individuals readily acquire and accept every superstitious tale concerning the consequences of masturbation; ascribe every pimple and stomach ache, their limitations in height and their failures in school or business to their occasional departures from the moral code; and seek religious confession, penance, and introverted solitude as means of avoiding further sin. Many of these individuals in actuality reduce the frequencies of their orgasms considerably below the level of the rest of the population.
If they are better educated persons, and especially if they have some command of psychology, these inhibited persons rationalize more adroitly, admit that masturbation does no physical harm, but reason that it is bad to continue a habit that may subsequently make one unfit for normal marital relations, decide that pre-marital intercourse similarly unfits one for making satisfactory sexual adjustments in marriage, that the homosexual is a biologic abnormality, and that extra-marital intercourse inevitably destroys homes. Even among scientifically trained persons, these propositions are offered as excuses for their sexual inactivity. Of 58 male psychologists who have contributed histories to the present study, 57 have defended one or more of these theses, in spite of the fact that no one of these conclusions has ever been justified by objective data that would satisfy scientists in any field that did not have a moral (traditional) implication. Out of 74 male psychiatrists who have contributed, 70 defend one or more of these same prejudices. These are all rationalizations, clutched at in support of a sexual suppression that is too often mistaken for sublimation.
Recently we have secured histories from a segregated group of males, a high percentage of whom are sexually restrained. This has provided an unusual opportunity to see the results of suppression on a large scale. The group is not at all typical of the American population as a whole. It is drawn largely (82.8%) from males in their twenties (Table 42), almost wholly from college trained (90.3%) and white collar levels (93.3%), and almost wholly from Protestant religious groups (96.3%), with 43.3 per cent of the group actively religious, which is about double the number of actively religious persons in the total population on which the present study is based. The mean frequencies of total outlet of the segregated group, both in the single and the married histories, are between a half and two-thirds of the frequencies for corresponding age groups in the total population. The incidences of masturbation and of homosexual contacts in the group are almost identical with those found in the total population, but the incidence of pre-marital intercourse is definitely less (74% of the figure for the total population). The group has been honored by several religious organizations for its idealism and its refusal to allow any interference with its ideals. Many of these males are belligerently defensive of their sexual philosophy. Some of them are vociferous in claiming that they are perfect examples of sublimation, and many outsiders look on the group as sexually sublimated. However, several of the members of the group were receiving psychiatric attention at the time of our interviews, and several psychiatrists have reached the conclusion that a high percentage of the whole group is neurotic.
Table 42. Sexual outlet in a restrained group of males
Compared with the U. S. population of same age and marital status.
If then, from the list of low-rating males, one removes those who are physically incapacitated, natively low in sexual drive, sexually unawakened in their younger years, separated from their usual sources of sexual stimulation, or timid and upset by their suppressions, there are simply no cases which remain as clear-cut examples of sublimation. Whether there is partial sublimation among individuals with higher rates of outlet, it would be much harder to determine. Whether there is more real sublimation among certain groups, as among celibate priests, is a matter that cannot be known until we have an adequate sample of histories from such groups. Certain it is that among the many males who have contributed to the present sample, sublimation is so subtle, or so rare, as to constitute an academic possibility rather than a demonstrated actuality. In view of the widespread and easy acceptance of the theory, and the efforts that such a large proportion of the population has made to achieve this goal, one might have expected better evidence of its existence, at least among the sexually least active 5 per cent of the males in the population.
Since most people have only average rates of sexual outlet, many of them will question the accuracy of the data on persons with high frequencies. Pearl, for instance (1925), considered high frequencies as “extremely rare,” although he emphasized the fact that “they do occur often enough to show that apparently there really does exist a small but definite ‘sexual athlete’ class of men, of which Casanova may be regarded as the classic prototype in literature.” However, our large sample shows that, far from being rare, individuals with frequencies of 7 or more per week constitute a not inconsiderable segment (7.6%) of any population.
There are high-rating persons of every sort, including some who are scientifically trained, and other reliable individuals whose records cannot be doubted. This high-rating population is described in Table 43. In each age group under 30, there are more than four times as many males as in any group over 50. More or less equal percentages of the high-rating males come from single, married, and previously married groups. Every age, educational, and social group is included. It is important to realize that an individual may be very active sexually, and of considerable significance socially. All religious groups, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, are duly represented by both their inactive and devout members. Nearly half (49.4%) of all the underworld males who have contributed to this study appear in this high-rating group, and this is further evidence for believing that most individuals could be much more active sexually if they were as unrestrained as the group that openly and regularly defies the law and the social convention. Fewer high-rating males come from the college level, but a somewhat larger number comes from the group that has professional training. Upper white-collar classes are rather less often represented. The boys who are earliest adolescent, by age twelve at the latest, are the ones who most often have the highest rates of outlet in the later years of their lives.
In explanation of these high rates of outlet, it is to be noted that it is a common pattern for many persons to engage in intercourse every night or practically every night in the week; and there are many married persons, especially at lower social levels, who have intercourse quite regularly both in the evening upon retiring and in the morning upon awakening. Where the occupation allows the male spouse to return home at noon, contacts may also occur at that hour of the day and, consequently, there is a regular outlet of fourteen to twenty-one times per week. In the same fashion, masturbation, the homosexual, and still other sorts of sexual activities may acquire daily or more than daily frequencies.
An even larger portion of this high-rating group secures its outlet in multiple ejaculations during a limited number of sexual contacts. The existence of multiple orgasm in the pre-adolescent male has been discussed in Chapter 5. A similar situation occurs, although less frequently, in the adult (Table 48, Figure 36). Most males occasionally ejaculate more than once; but there are males who regularly do so, practically every time there is a socio-sexual contact. Of the white males who have contributed to the present study and who have had experience in intercourse, 380 have had a history of regular, multiple ejaculation at some period in adolescence or in adult years. Sometimes these ejaculations, totaling two or three or more, are spread over several hours in a single evening, with more or less continuous sex play; but in a fair number of cases it is habitual for a male to ejaculate two or more times in continuous intercourse and while maintaining a continuous erection (it is mentioned in Kahn 1939:110). Some physiologists have questioned the possibility of such a performance. Since multiple ejaculation in the male depends upon glandular secretion, there are complications which are not involved in the female, where multiple orgasm is better known. Nevertheless, scepticism over the possibility of repeated response in the male merely emphasizes the incapacity of even scientifically trained persons to comprehend that others may be made differently from themselves. Both the testimony of the performing husbands and the collaborative record obtained from their wives or other female partners, leave no doubt that multiple orgasm, usually with ejaculation, is the regular routine in a fair number of cases. Data from males with homosexual experience indicate that in such relations it is not at all infrequent for a younger male to proceed to a second or a third orgasm in a matter of five or ten minutes. Most of these multiple climaces occur in younger males, but not all of them do so, as the age distribution in Table 48 will show. Very few adult males are able to reach more than four or five climaces in any limited period of time; an occasional teen-age boy will reach six or more; and a quarter of the pre-adolescents for whom we have any record of orgasm were able to go beyond five, and in some cases to as many as ten, twenty, or more in a few hours’ time (Table 33). Wherever there is multiple orgasm, the total frequencies of outlet are multiplied, and these cases account for nearly 30 per cent of the population which lies on the higher portions of the curve.
Among the more active cases in our histories, there are male prostitutes whose capacity to perform may determine the level of their income. Male prostitutes may be involved in heterosexual prostitution, which is rare, or in homosexual prostitution, which is much more frequent. In male prostitution, the prostitute usually experiences orgasm. This is in contrast to the situation among female prostitutes, most of whom go into prostitution for the sake of the money that may be earned. In most cases the female prostitute is not aroused and does not experience orgasm during a professional contact. In male prostitution, on the contrary, in some of the techniques that are employed, capacity to achieve erection and ejaculate is a requisite part of the arrangement. Some male prostitutes ejaculate five, six, or more times per day with regularity over long periods of years. While the amount of semen per ejaculation is thereby reduced, there is usually emission, even with such frequent orgasms. The validity of the data on this point depends not only upon the records of the several hundred male prostitutes who have contributed their histories, but also upon the observations of persons who have had contact with them. In a few cases, there are records made by persons who have observed the actual performance of particular male prostitutes from hour to hour, over periods of time, and there is no question that there is frequent arousal and actual ejaculation of semen five or more times per day in some of these cases. One such set of observations concerns a 39-year-old Negro male who had averaged more than three per day from 13 to 39 years of age, and at the latter age was still capable of 6 to 8 ejaculations when the occasion demanded. The average frequencies of such an individual carry the curve of total sexual outlet to unusually high points.
SIX MOST ACTIVE MALES
Maximum frequencies during 30 continuous years, in best authenticated cases
Marital status during maximum activity
Married (4), single (2)
Religion
Active Protestant (1), inactive Protestant (4), inactive Jewish (1)
Educational level in years
3, 16, 17, 20 (3 cases)
Occupations
WPA and labor, physician (2), scientific worker, educator, lawyer
Ages at onset of adolescence
11 (2 cases), 12, 13 (2 cases), 14
30-year period involved
11-40 (2 cases), 12-41, 13-42, 16-45, 21-50
Years of maximum frequency
At ages 11-15, 12-15, 13-15, 21-25, 36-40 (2 cases)
Average rates per week for 30-year period
10.6, 11.7, 13.6, 14.0, 17.8, 33.1
Range in rate during 30-year period
5.3 to 19.6, 11.6 to 31.6, 9.0 to 13.0, 14.7 to 15.7, 10.0 to 21.5, 25.6 to 37.8
Multiple ejaculation
1-2, 2 when younger, 2-5, 3 and 4, in each coitus. Two cases never multiple
Chief sources of outlet
Masturbation, marital intercourse, and extra-marital intercourse
Masturbation, marital intercourse, and homosexual contacts
Masturbation and extra-marital intercourse
Masturbation and pre-marital intercourse
Masturbation and homosexual outlets
Marital intercourse only
The six white males with the highest long-time averages for a continuous 30-year period deserve further examination, although it should be understood that there is a continuous list of others who grade into these highest cases. The males included in this list all went to considerable pains to give details for each of the periods involved; one is a lawyer, one is an educator, three of them are scientifically trained persons, two of whom had kept diaries or other records; and we have had such extended contact with three of these individuals that we feel considerable reliance can be placed on their data. The six cases are strikingly different in regard to ages involved, in the variability of the rate during the 30-year period, and in the sources of most of the sexual outlet.
Outside of penal institutions and cloistered halls, there are ever-present stimuli to heterosexual response. For the educated portion of the male population, for instance, there are persons of the opposite sex, female wearing apparel which emphasizes and suggests sexual situations, the constant portrayal of these things in magazines, in moving pictures, on billboards, in decorative art, in the plots of printed fiction and stage drama, in the emphasis given to radio performances, in advertisements everywhere, in most poetry and songs, and, more subtly but even more effectively, in all those forms and ceremonies which are accepted as courtesies between the sexes, and in the social traditions connected with marriage. There is, in consequence, constant arousal and regular sexual activity in most males, particularly younger males who are conditioned by any experience, or by the vicariously shared experiences of their fellows. While all males must have known of the regularity of sexual activity in their own histories, the significance of the fact for the population as a whole has never been fully appreciated. The assumption that the unmarried male has only occasional outlet, or that he may go for long periods of time without any sexual activity, is not in accord with the fact. The assumption that there can be such sublimation of erotic impulse as to allow an appreciable number of males to get along for considerable periods of time without sexual activity is not yet substantiated by specific data. For most males, whether single or married, there are ever-present erotic stimuli, and sexual response is regular and high.
