After the Second World War, sexology experienced a renaissance in America through the efforts of Alfred C. Kinsey. His training and experience as a zoologist made him well suited for the task of taking a large-scale, strictly empirical survey of actual sexual behavior in the United States. With their two monumental studies, the so-called Kinsey Reports (SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN MALE, 1948, and SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN FEMALE, 1953), Kinsey and his co-authors made a new, significant, and non-medical contribution to sex research. Moreover, it could honestly be called sexological in the sense demanded by Bloch, because it was the result of interdisciplinary teamwork. As Kinsey himself made clear in the "Historical Introduction" to the first volume:
Throughout the nine years of study many hours have been spent in consultation with specialists outside this staff, particularly in the following fields: Anatomy, animal behavior, anthropology, astronomy (statistical), biology, child development, criminal law, endocrinology, general physiology, genetics, gynecology, human physiology, institutional management, law enforcement, marriage counseling, medicine (various branches), military authorities, neurology, obstetrics, penology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology (general), psychology (clinical), psychology (experimental), public health, public opinion polls, sex education, social work, sociology, statistics, urology, venereal disease.
Kinsey further explained that he did not expect future sex research to remain restricted to this preliminary list. He therefore offered a broad outline of a basic sexological library, which, in his opinion, had to cover at least all of the following fields:
Biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, medicine, marriage counseling, child development, personnel programs, public opinion surveying, radio programs, philosophy, ethics, religion, education, history, law, law enforcement, literature, arts, and erotica.
As one can see, Kinsey`s interests ranged wide, and indeed he succeeded in amassing a substantial library and collection along the lines he had indicated. Unfortunately, with his untimely death in 1956, and with the loss of previous financial support, his ambitious research programs for the future had to be curtailed drastically. Since then, the Kinsey Institute, under the directorship of Paul H. Gebhard continued its work on a reduced scale. Recently the directorship has been taken over by June M. Reinisch.
In the last few decades scientific attention has again shifted to medical and physiological studies. Mainly under the impact of two other pathbreaking books, Human Sexual Response (1966) and HUMAN SEXUAL INADEQUACY (1970) by William H. Masters and Virginia Johnson, researchers have concentrated on treating the sexual dysfunctions of the individual (or at most, the couple). As a result, the social and historical dimensions of sex have largely been neglected.
Thus, in the public mind, sexology is today often associated with "sex therapy," a medical, paramedical, or quasi-medical enterprise. This perception is, of course, wrong about both sexology in general and sex therapy in particular. After all, the latter is, to a large extent, no longer based on a medical model, but rather on various learning models of human behavior. Consequently, many sex therapists are not members of the medical profession, and the people they treat are no longer called patients, but clients. Nevertheless, there are still strong tendencies on the part of many therapists and researchers to borrow respectability from the medical establishment and to reintegrate sexology into medical schools as a specialty for physicians.
However, its own historical development tells us that sexology, properly understood, cannot grow on this narrow basis. The exploration and manipulation of physical and psychological responses is, at best, a sexological side issue. The holy aura of "therapy" should not blind us to the dangers of uncritical, ahistorical specialization. Indeed, we must realize that the academic dominance of a purely medical sexology would be a throwback to Victorian times, in spite of its increased technological sophistication. We deceive ourselves if we expect significant progress in understanding human sexuality by putting our faith in the mindless collection of more "data" or in the refinement of therapeutic techniques. Rather, the study of sex must first gain a critical consciousness of its own origin and historical role. After all, "human sexuality" or "sexual behavior" and similar constructs which now figure as the "objects" of sexology, are not concrete, finite, and clear-cut entities that can be touched, weighed, or measured. Instead, the are concepts which were developed in the course of a continuing larger historical process. All the key words, phrases, expressions, and concepts of modern sexology were unknown to the classical writers of the past. "Sexuality," "homosexuality," "sexual behavior," "sex drive," "sexual response," "sexual dysfunction," -- none of these terms can be found in the Bible, in Homer, Aristotle, Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, or Goethe. Neither would the American Founding Fathers have understood them. Indeed, even today the exact meaning of these concepts remains unclear to the extent that their historical origin remains unexamined. This becomes immediately obvious when one looks for their definition in dictionaries, encyclopedias, or professional textbooks. The current definitions are either tautological or carry a whole system of unquestioned, but unwarranted assumptions. These assumptions, in turn, can be understood only on the basis of a historical analysis. In short, the study of sex is, above all, a study of ideas, and, as it turns out, very often the study of foolish ideas. Sexology is therefore mainly Ideologiekritik, or the critical examination of ideologies.
Fortunately, there are some counterforces which try to rectify the present sexological imbalance, and which seek to reconnect sexology with its long and honorable lost tradition.
An important and meaningful link to the past has been the reconvening of World Congresses of Sexology in Paris (1974), Montreal (1976), Rome (1978), Mexico City (1979), Jerusalem (1981), and Washington (1983). These congresses have, once again, taken up the work originally started by Hirschfeld and Moll.
Furthermore, several European universities (Prague, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Leuven [Belgium]) now have departments of sexology, and in the United States there are a number of undergraduate and graduate Human Sexuality Programs. In San Francisco, a sexological graduate school, The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, even awards academic degrees specifically in sexology.
Still, the goal envisioned by Ellis, Freud, Bloch, Hirschfeld, Moll, Marcuse and other sexological pioneers has not nearly been approached, much less reached everywhere. As sex research advances, the variety of goals and methods in a multitude of disciplines itself creates a problem of correlation and evaluation. The loss of perspective is therefore a constant threat. In other words, Bloch`s sexological "centralized standpoint" is more important than ever.
