Psychosexual Development in Health and Disease. (The Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Psychopathological Association, Held in New York City, June, 1948.): Edited by Paul H. Hoch, M.D. and Joseph Zubin, Ph.D. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1949. 283 pp.

This volume contains a cross-disciplinary survey of the field of sexuality with contributions from biologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and sociologists.

The first paper, basic for many of the following, is Concepts of Normality and Abnormality in Sexual Behavior, by Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin and Gebhard, and is based, of course, on their famous report. The problem appears greatly complicated by a philosophy, prevailing in our culture, that has neither biological nor sociological validity but stems from early Jewish and Christian theology, which judges certain sexual practices or even the totality of sex sinful or criminal, although science cannot discover any harm they may cause the individual or society. Current concepts of normality and abnormality in human sexual behavior represent what are primarily moral evaluations.

Psychosexuality in Animals, by W. Horsley Gantt, and A Cross-Species Survey of Mammalian Sexual Behavior, by Frank A. Beach, present valuable biological data. Sex play long before puberty, and forms of sexual behavior which in the human are called perversions, including autogenital stimulation and homosexuality, occur regularly in many species. A Brief Description of Human Sexual Behavior in Cross-Cultural Perspective, by C. S. Ford, covering the available information about one hundred fifty cultures other than our own, confirms the regularity in a great many societies of sexual practices which are tabooed by our sexual mores.

In the discussion of these papers, Kardiner holds that the array of evidence is presented in a way as to render it entirely misleading. Human sexuality in our culture cannot be studied by comparison with animal behavior nor with practices in primitive societies which are described as isolated from the entire social context. Sexual control, Kardiner contends, is a social necessity to prevent irresponsible procreation. Neurosis and perversion are the price we pay for this purpose.

Papers by Jules Henr