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The Fourth Annual Conference on Community Mental Health Research, held by the Social Science Institute of Washington University in St. Louis, is reported herein. Representatives of various disciplines discussed social and biological factors in human sexual activity. The data of Masters and Johnson provided an anatomic baseline for such study. Attitudes toward sexual activity, sexual identification, and lust orientation were discussed.
Kallmann and Money concerned themselves with genetic and biological determinants of human sexual behavior; their work shows the need for a better integration of biological with psychological research into the early determinants of gender identity. Despite the fact that a psychoanalytic approach was conspicuously absent, the factor that emerged as indisputable was 'rearing' with its implications for body image and object choice as a determinant of heterosexual or homosexual development. The papers that attempted an evaluation of human sexual behavior from the social and sociological point of view leaned heavily on the use of question and answer which gave little insight into the underlying fantasies of the individuals interviewed. This left one with a relatively superficial impression of dynamics.
Unfortunately the diversity of approach and variety of interests made it impossible to come to any over-all concept. Nonetheless, the conference did point up the need for further detailed study of human sexual behavior with dynamic psychology of an analytic variety as an essential part of such a study.