A History of Sexual Desire
From GlobeandMail.com:
It is difficult to criticize a book based on my favourite phrase within sexual theory: the Freudian term “polymorphously perverse.” Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire by Edward Shorter, who teaches the history of medicine at the University of Toronto, offers a history “not of sex but of sexual desire.” It is a brave, honest book with which I have fundamental disagreements.
In his introduction, Shorter argues that sexual behavior and pleasure are biologically driven, not environmentally determined. He comes quickly to the conclusion that his book will single-mindedly pursue. “[T]he history of desire is the history of the almost biological liberation of the brain to free up the mind in the direction of total-body sex.”
“Total-body sex” is a synonym for “polymorphous perversity,” which is the capacity to derive sexual pleasure from any part of the body. Freud viewed this as a natural, primitive response that children repress due to the rules imposed upon them by society. Shorter gives Freud’s theory an ingenious twist. He converts it from psychological analysis into a tool of historical interpretation, which he wields over nothing less than the scope of Western civilization. The word “audacious” is appropriate here.
Shorter takes us from “the free-and-easy sexuality” of classical antiquity, through the “sexual night-fall of Christian Europe,” into the re-emergence of full-body sex in the late 1800s that culminates in the late 20th century — specifically, the 1960s. It is a whirlwind tour of what people have done in bed since before Christ was born. And, like any good tour guide, Shorter directs attention to the left and right with colorful explanations of why specific items are significant.
But are his explanations correct?
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