Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. This famous dictum, variously attributed to Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa, Elvis Costello and Thelonius Monk, to name a few, could also be applied to museum exhibits about sex: They are destined to dissatisfy, to miss the point, to prove hopelessly inadequate compared to the experience of the thing itself. Nevertheless, undeterred, notebook in hand, world of therapy went to investigate the Wellcome Collection’s Institute of Sexology exhibition, where you are invited to “undress your mind.”
There’s an area devoted to Sigmund Freud, as you might expect. The father of psychoanalysis did more than anyone to bring sex out into the open as, in his view, not bringing it out into the open was a problem—the major cause of neurosis. You can read some of his philosophies, listen to a marvellous self-righteous recording of him from a 1938 BBC interview—it sounds like a Monty Python parody—and see a small sample from his vast collection of cultural artifacts. His favourite was a small bronze of Athena from the 1st or 2nd century which has lost her spear—a perfect symbol for Freud of penis envy.
Freud was also fond of double-faced figures. There’s a 3rd century BC Etruscan bronze with one face of a Satyr and another of a Maenad, which for Freud illustrated the binary nature of human existence. We are governed by antagonistic forces, polarities that pull us in opposite directions. We are made from a male and a female, and both parts live within us (according to Freud humans are inherently bisexual). We love and hate; live and die (Freud spoke of Eros and Thanatos—our libido duels with our “death drive”). We want intimacy, we want to be alone—come here, go away (another exhibit from Freud’s collection, another metaphor, is a porcupine—Freud noted that they huddle with others for warmth but then they poke each other, get hurt and separate). Maybe you have your own particular polarities, too—perhaps you are a rebellious conformist, or a privileged outsider (or deprived insider). A self-sacrificing narcissist (or a greedy do-gooder). Highly emotional yet numb. A cheerful depressive. A creative accountant. Spiritual atheist. Champagne socialist. Fully alive, but deeply diseased. And so on. Life is an oxymoron; a double bind.
And so it is with sex, too. Personally, culturally, historically, there are powerful opposing forces of liberation and repression at play. Stop! No, don’t stop! Both are on display at the museum. One the one hand there are early copies of the Kama Sutra (written between the year 200 and 400), ancient phallic amulets, saucy postcards and other erotica. On the other there are old papers detailing the moral dangers of sex, female desire resulting in “hysteria” for instance, or masturbation causing a range of disorders from nervousness to paralysis. In Berlin on May 6, 1933, three months after Hitler came to power, the forces of oppression broke into the library of sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld—an outspoken advocate for the study of sex and justice for sexual minorities—seized his vast collection of books, documents, photographs and artifacts, and threw it all on a bonfire. Hirschfeld was Jewish. He was out of the country on a speaking tour at the time; he never returned to Germany.
Besides Freud, the exhibition details the lives of some other notable names:
• Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s influential Psychopathia Sexualis, published in 1886, was the first book to describe in forensic, scientific detail the variety of human sexual practices. It popularised words like sadism and masochism and became the definitive psychiatric and legal guide to sexual pathology. Despite his professional interest, von Krafft-Ebing believed sex was strictly for procreation, not recreation.
• Havelock Ellis wrote the first textbook on homosexuality, Sexual Inversion, in 1897 and went on to study narcissism, autoeroticism and transgender phenomena. Ellis married a lesbian, and suffered from impotence until the age of 60, when he made the surprise discovery that he could become aroused by the sight of a woman urinating.
• Marie Stopes’ incendiary book Married Love, turned down by several publishers, was an instant hit when it was finally published in 1918. She dared to speak the unspeakable, dispensing advice of relationships, sex, marriage, children and birth control. The Wellcome exhibition includes some touching letters of gratitude to her from people who had no one else to turn to for guidance. Today, Marie Stopes International is an NGO devoted to sexual and reproductive health around the world. (These pioneers weren’t unanimously enlightened. Stopes, like Ellis and many prominent Victorians of the day, believed in the oppressive and usually racist philosophies of eugenics and social Darwinism: the elite decides it wants to improve the human gene pool by encouraging breeding by the “right” people—people like them—and discouraging the “wrong” people, sometimes with extreme measures such as compulsory sterilization or “ethnic cleansing.”)
• From 1915 to 1918 anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski studied and lived alongside the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea’s Trobriand Islands, detailing a society where sexuality "dominates in fact almost every aspect of culture," and where some sexual behaviour among children was the norm.
• In a similar vein, Margaret Mead’s study of the people of Samoa in 1925 also highlighted a relaxed, permissive culture of sexuality that challenged the more constrained attitudes in the West.
• Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian psychoanalyst who like Freud believed that neurosis could be a symptom of thwarted or denied sexual desires. Unlike Freud, however, for Reich, sex and psychoanalysis were also political: He believed the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany to be the result of a national culture of sexual repression. Reich, author of The Function of the Orgasm, among other works, invented the “Orgone Accumulator”—a cabinet that patients sat in and got blasted by “orgone” radiation that he claimed could cure cancer, liberate repressed sexual energy, and heal the world. The “sex box” became increasingly controversial, Reich became increasingly delusional, and he was charged with contempt of court in his adopted home country, the U.S. He died in prison in 1957.
• Alfred Kinsey discovered there was more scientific literature on the sex lives of farm animals than people. In the mid-20th century decades, McKinsey and his team set about filling in the blanks: They interviewed more than 18,000 Americans about their sex lives, highlighting the prevalence of homosexuality, extramarital sex and other sexual activity which departed from the supposed “norm.”
• William Masters and Virginia Johnson recorded physiological changes during sex—their results, published in 1966, revealed the intricacies of the “female sexual response cycle” and bolstered the feminist movement and calls for women’s sexual liberation.
There’s an area devoted to Sigmund Freud, as you might expect. The father of psychoanalysis did more than anyone to bring sex out into the open as, in his view, not bringing it out into the open was a problem—the major cause of neurosis. You can read some of his philosophies, listen to a marvellous self-righteous recording of him from a 1938 BBC interview—it sounds like a Monty Python parody—and see a small sample from his vast collection of cultural artifacts. His favourite was a small bronze of Athena from the 1st or 2nd century which has lost her spear—a perfect symbol for Freud of penis envy.
Freud was also fond of double-faced figures. There’s a 3rd century BC Etruscan bronze with one face of a Satyr and another of a Maenad, which for Freud illustrated the binary nature of human existence. We are governed by antagonistic forces, polarities that pull us in opposite directions. We are made from a male and a female, and both parts live within us (according to Freud humans are inherently bisexual). We love and hate; live and die (Freud spoke of Eros and Thanatos—our libido duels with our “death drive”). We want intimacy, we want to be alone—come here, go away (another exhibit from Freud’s collection, another metaphor, is a porcupine—Freud noted that they huddle with others for warmth but then they poke each other, get hurt and separate). Maybe you have your own particular polarities, too—perhaps you are a rebellious conformist, or a privileged outsider (or deprived insider). A self-sacrificing narcissist (or a greedy do-gooder). Highly emotional yet numb. A cheerful depressive. A creative accountant. Spiritual atheist. Champagne socialist. Fully alive, but deeply diseased. And so on. Life is an oxymoron; a double bind.
And so it is with sex, too. Personally, culturally, historically, there are powerful opposing forces of liberation and repression at play. Stop! No, don’t stop! Both are on display at the museum. One the one hand there are early copies of the Kama Sutra (written between the year 200 and 400), ancient phallic amulets, saucy postcards and other erotica. On the other there are old papers detailing the moral dangers of sex, female desire resulting in “hysteria” for instance, or masturbation causing a range of disorders from nervousness to paralysis. In Berlin on May 6, 1933, three months after Hitler came to power, the forces of oppression broke into the library of sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld—an outspoken advocate for the study of sex and justice for sexual minorities—seized his vast collection of books, documents, photographs and artifacts, and threw it all on a bonfire. Hirschfeld was Jewish. He was out of the country on a speaking tour at the time; he never returned to Germany.
Besides Freud, the exhibition details the lives of some other notable names:
• Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s influential Psychopathia Sexualis, published in 1886, was the first book to describe in forensic, scientific detail the variety of human sexual practices. It popularised words like sadism and masochism and became the definitive psychiatric and legal guide to sexual pathology. Despite his professional interest, von Krafft-Ebing believed sex was strictly for procreation, not recreation.
• Havelock Ellis wrote the first textbook on homosexuality, Sexual Inversion, in 1897 and went on to study narcissism, autoeroticism and transgender phenomena. Ellis married a lesbian, and suffered from impotence until the age of 60, when he made the surprise discovery that he could become aroused by the sight of a woman urinating.
• Marie Stopes’ incendiary book Married Love, turned down by several publishers, was an instant hit when it was finally published in 1918. She dared to speak the unspeakable, dispensing advice of relationships, sex, marriage, children and birth control. The Wellcome exhibition includes some touching letters of gratitude to her from people who had no one else to turn to for guidance. Today, Marie Stopes International is an NGO devoted to sexual and reproductive health around the world. (These pioneers weren’t unanimously enlightened. Stopes, like Ellis and many prominent Victorians of the day, believed in the oppressive and usually racist philosophies of eugenics and social Darwinism: the elite decides it wants to improve the human gene pool by encouraging breeding by the “right” people—people like them—and discouraging the “wrong” people, sometimes with extreme measures such as compulsory sterilization or “ethnic cleansing.”)
• From 1915 to 1918 anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski studied and lived alongside the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea’s Trobriand Islands, detailing a society where sexuality "dominates in fact almost every aspect of culture," and where some sexual behaviour among children was the norm.
• In a similar vein, Margaret Mead’s study of the people of Samoa in 1925 also highlighted a relaxed, permissive culture of sexuality that challenged the more constrained attitudes in the West.
• Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian psychoanalyst who like Freud believed that neurosis could be a symptom of thwarted or denied sexual desires. Unlike Freud, however, for Reich, sex and psychoanalysis were also political: He believed the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany to be the result of a national culture of sexual repression. Reich, author of The Function of the Orgasm, among other works, invented the “Orgone Accumulator”—a cabinet that patients sat in and got blasted by “orgone” radiation that he claimed could cure cancer, liberate repressed sexual energy, and heal the world. The “sex box” became increasingly controversial, Reich became increasingly delusional, and he was charged with contempt of court in his adopted home country, the U.S. He died in prison in 1957.
• Alfred Kinsey discovered there was more scientific literature on the sex lives of farm animals than people. In the mid-20th century decades, McKinsey and his team set about filling in the blanks: They interviewed more than 18,000 Americans about their sex lives, highlighting the prevalence of homosexuality, extramarital sex and other sexual activity which departed from the supposed “norm.”
• William Masters and Virginia Johnson recorded physiological changes during sex—their results, published in 1966, revealed the intricacies of the “female sexual response cycle” and bolstered the feminist movement and calls for women’s sexual liberation.
Fifty shades of sex
The Wellcome exhibition leads us on a historical journey of sexual culture. Where has it led to—where are we today? Is society generally more permissive about sex? Or are the forces of repression and discrimination still at play?
Yes, and yes. Evidence abounds that from the 1960s onwards there has been a kind of sexual awakening in western life and culture. But all the action has inevitably been met with an equal and opposite reaction.
Psychotherapist Tanya Glyde writes in The Lancet that today there is much more acceptance of alternative, kinky, BDSM practices, and a hunger for them, as evidenced by the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon—the book has been bought by more than a hundred million people (evidence too of a masochistic tolerance for painfully poor writing).
“Is BDSM an orientation, a lifestyle, or both?” writes Glyde. “Some people are wired to be dominant or submissive from birth. Some discover a love of it when young, and some get into it later in life. This could be because they discover that it enhances their sex life, or because conventional genital sex doesn’t work for them, and they are looking for other ways to deepen physical and mental connection. People tell me they have experienced a personal renaissance when exploring BDSM ... Many report profound, life changing, therapeutic, and even spiritual experiences.”
But Glyde argues that, while kink is far more widespread than we think, it happens in secret because of prejudice, not least from a prudish mental health establishment. The free-spirited “id” goes underground (sometimes literally); the restrictive “super-ego” is given free reign.
The cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin describes the “charmed circle” of sexuality: if the sex is heterosexual, married, monogamous, procreative, non-commercial, in a couple from the same generation, in private, and involving bodies only, then it is considered “normal.” The “outer limits,” by contrast—bad, unnatural, damned, perverse, socially unacceptable—is sex that is homosexual, promiscuous, recreational, commercial, alone or in groups, casual, cross-generational, in public, sadomasochistic, or involving pornography or sex toys.
Continues Glyde: “This is not taught on psychotherapy courses (at least none that I know of) because awareness of gender and sexual diversities is barely taught at all. And in some branches of psychotherapy, the further a person departs from being heterosexual, monogamous, vanilla (non-kinky), and cisgender, the more disordered and perverse they are labelled by default.”
I once went to a talk entitled, “Help! My client wants to talk about sex.” The speaker said that people in therapy will often desperately want to talk about their sexual difficulties—a taboo subject with everyone else in their lives. So, battling shame, they gingerly try to raise the topic, often very subtly, in coded language, testing the waters. An experienced therapist will respond and open up a space for exploration, but many do not because they are uncomfortable with the material. Or if they do engage, they might subtly or not-so-subtly try to steer the client back toward some kind of societal norm instead of being interested in them, their experience and their difficulties.
There are many sexual difficulties. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) includes complaints such as: delayed ejaculation, erectile disorder, female orgasmic disorder, female sexual interest/arousal disorder, genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder, male hypoactive sexual desire disorder, premature ejaculation, and unspecified sexual dysfunction. Sex addiction, like any addiction, can devastate lives. If any of these sound like you, don't suffer in silence—specialist help is available. But beyond these pathologised realities, so many sexual problems—and so much of human distress—are the result of trying and inevitably failing to live up to some supposed ideal, to be who we think we should be instead of who we are, to conform to other people’s standards or desires. These “shoulds” are so often in conflict with our innate personhood, and with each other, and can be profoundly unhelpful. Being a slave to such strict internalised demands is bondage of a most unenjoyable kind—a guarantee of suffering.
In and out of the bedroom, our challenge is to find ourselves. Instead of conforming to some imagined uniform, plain-vanilla conception of normality, we are free to embark on a postmodern exploration of individual preferences and practices in all their glorious multicoloured variety (and we are free not to, too, of course). There are infinite enjoyable ways of expressing libidinal energy; straight sex is but one.
The Wellcome exhibition leads us on a historical journey of sexual culture. Where has it led to—where are we today? Is society generally more permissive about sex? Or are the forces of repression and discrimination still at play?
Yes, and yes. Evidence abounds that from the 1960s onwards there has been a kind of sexual awakening in western life and culture. But all the action has inevitably been met with an equal and opposite reaction.
Psychotherapist Tanya Glyde writes in The Lancet that today there is much more acceptance of alternative, kinky, BDSM practices, and a hunger for them, as evidenced by the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon—the book has been bought by more than a hundred million people (evidence too of a masochistic tolerance for painfully poor writing).
“Is BDSM an orientation, a lifestyle, or both?” writes Glyde. “Some people are wired to be dominant or submissive from birth. Some discover a love of it when young, and some get into it later in life. This could be because they discover that it enhances their sex life, or because conventional genital sex doesn’t work for them, and they are looking for other ways to deepen physical and mental connection. People tell me they have experienced a personal renaissance when exploring BDSM ... Many report profound, life changing, therapeutic, and even spiritual experiences.”
But Glyde argues that, while kink is far more widespread than we think, it happens in secret because of prejudice, not least from a prudish mental health establishment. The free-spirited “id” goes underground (sometimes literally); the restrictive “super-ego” is given free reign.
The cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin describes the “charmed circle” of sexuality: if the sex is heterosexual, married, monogamous, procreative, non-commercial, in a couple from the same generation, in private, and involving bodies only, then it is considered “normal.” The “outer limits,” by contrast—bad, unnatural, damned, perverse, socially unacceptable—is sex that is homosexual, promiscuous, recreational, commercial, alone or in groups, casual, cross-generational, in public, sadomasochistic, or involving pornography or sex toys.
Continues Glyde: “This is not taught on psychotherapy courses (at least none that I know of) because awareness of gender and sexual diversities is barely taught at all. And in some branches of psychotherapy, the further a person departs from being heterosexual, monogamous, vanilla (non-kinky), and cisgender, the more disordered and perverse they are labelled by default.”
I once went to a talk entitled, “Help! My client wants to talk about sex.” The speaker said that people in therapy will often desperately want to talk about their sexual difficulties—a taboo subject with everyone else in their lives. So, battling shame, they gingerly try to raise the topic, often very subtly, in coded language, testing the waters. An experienced therapist will respond and open up a space for exploration, but many do not because they are uncomfortable with the material. Or if they do engage, they might subtly or not-so-subtly try to steer the client back toward some kind of societal norm instead of being interested in them, their experience and their difficulties.
There are many sexual difficulties. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) includes complaints such as: delayed ejaculation, erectile disorder, female orgasmic disorder, female sexual interest/arousal disorder, genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder, male hypoactive sexual desire disorder, premature ejaculation, and unspecified sexual dysfunction. Sex addiction, like any addiction, can devastate lives. If any of these sound like you, don't suffer in silence—specialist help is available. But beyond these pathologised realities, so many sexual problems—and so much of human distress—are the result of trying and inevitably failing to live up to some supposed ideal, to be who we think we should be instead of who we are, to conform to other people’s standards or desires. These “shoulds” are so often in conflict with our innate personhood, and with each other, and can be profoundly unhelpful. Being a slave to such strict internalised demands is bondage of a most unenjoyable kind—a guarantee of suffering.
In and out of the bedroom, our challenge is to find ourselves. Instead of conforming to some imagined uniform, plain-vanilla conception of normality, we are free to embark on a postmodern exploration of individual preferences and practices in all their glorious multicoloured variety (and we are free not to, too, of course). There are infinite enjoyable ways of expressing libidinal energy; straight sex is but one.
The new rules of sex
So how are we to proceed in this confusing modern world? If none of the old rules of engagement apply, and "anything goes," how are we to live and love?
In Rewriting the Rules, Meg Barker summarizes the tired old prevailing western “rules” about sex:
• Sex is very important, and a defining feature of our relationships and identities.
• We should have normal sex in our relationships.
• We must not stray into abnormal sex.
• It should be great sex.
• We mustn’t communicate openly about what we really want sexually.
Then Barker rather splendidly rewrites the rules. She too invites us to undress our mind:
• Sex can be wonderful but it doesn’t need to define us or our relationships. It is something that ebbs and flows throughout our lives.
• There is a wide diversity of ways of expressing sex and sexuality.
• It is fine to be sexual in whatever ways feel right to you, so long as it is consensual for all involved.
• Sex can be all kinds of things at different times, just like food. Expecting it to be great every single time is a lot of pressure to put on it.
• We must communicate openly about what we do and don’t want sexually (with ourselves and with the people with whom we are sexual).
It's up to each of us to make and break our own rules. The answers lie within ourselves, our experiences, our relationships. And there is guidance, too—from partners, therapists, workshops, books, and from people like Barker who, from Marie Stopes to the present day, have given us permission to be ourselves. They are on the side of freedom, expression, discovery and release. Our most pressing question is: “Am I normal?" They respond unanimously, with a resounding verdict: “Yes! yes! yes!"
So how are we to proceed in this confusing modern world? If none of the old rules of engagement apply, and "anything goes," how are we to live and love?
In Rewriting the Rules, Meg Barker summarizes the tired old prevailing western “rules” about sex:
• Sex is very important, and a defining feature of our relationships and identities.
• We should have normal sex in our relationships.
• We must not stray into abnormal sex.
• It should be great sex.
• We mustn’t communicate openly about what we really want sexually.
Then Barker rather splendidly rewrites the rules. She too invites us to undress our mind:
• Sex can be wonderful but it doesn’t need to define us or our relationships. It is something that ebbs and flows throughout our lives.
• There is a wide diversity of ways of expressing sex and sexuality.
• It is fine to be sexual in whatever ways feel right to you, so long as it is consensual for all involved.
• Sex can be all kinds of things at different times, just like food. Expecting it to be great every single time is a lot of pressure to put on it.
• We must communicate openly about what we do and don’t want sexually (with ourselves and with the people with whom we are sexual).
It's up to each of us to make and break our own rules. The answers lie within ourselves, our experiences, our relationships. And there is guidance, too—from partners, therapists, workshops, books, and from people like Barker who, from Marie Stopes to the present day, have given us permission to be ourselves. They are on the side of freedom, expression, discovery and release. Our most pressing question is: “Am I normal?" They respond unanimously, with a resounding verdict: “Yes! yes! yes!"
The Kiss by Eadweard Muybridge, from the 1870s/80s. It's thought to be the first smooch ever filmed.
