CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF BEHAVIOR 



1473 



criticisms of the Kinsey, Ponieroy and jVIar- 

 tin sample, the number of male homosexual 

 prostitutes in their lower class male sample, 

 the inadequacy of the sampling of nonwhite 

 groups, the differential effect of male inter- 

 \'iewers on males, and male interviewers on 

 females, which need not concern us further 

 here (see also Cochran, Mosteller and 

 Tukey, 1955). 



However, one of their findings, so widely 

 quoted, that definitely needs reconsideration 

 is their statement that the sexual enjoyment 

 and activity of women increases as they 

 grow older and that of men decreases. An 

 examination of their data will show that 

 all they require for a sexual act in their 

 male sample is ejaculation, whereas from 

 their female sample they require orgasm. 

 If they had interviewed their male sample 

 about the strength and completeness of the 

 climax involved in coitus, instead of accept- 

 ing any "outlet" as a unit of sex activity, 

 their results would have been different, as 

 they would have been equating male learn- 

 ing about sex and its possibilities with 

 female learning about sex and its possi- 

 bilities. It is only fair to add, however, that 

 what they did here is the usual American 

 male classification, in which quantitative 

 frequency is treated as a surer sign of sexual 

 adequacy than intensity and duration of 

 coitus and depth of orgasm.^" 



In addition to the Kinsey reports, we 

 also have a number of other attempts to 

 construct a picture of American sex be- 

 havior (Davis, 1929; Dickinson and Beam, 

 1931, etc.) based on questionnaires, inter- 

 views (Hamilton, 1929), various sorts of 

 samples, for the most part of the middle 

 class and well educated. All of these studies 

 rely on premises which are essentially socio- 

 logic and quantitative in nature, and are 

 concerned with problems of reliability. 

 There is no consistent body of cultural 

 or psychodynamic theory behind them. 



In contrast, we have also very intensive 

 studies by research workers and psycho- 

 therapists, deeply and narrowly grounded 

 in psychodynamic theory, which seek by 

 the study of a few cases to describe the 

 characteristics of the population concerned 

 and to add to a theory of human behavior 



^'I am indebted to Ray Bird\vhist(>ll for point- 

 ing out this aspect of Kinsey's analysis. 



(Erikson, 1951) on sex differentiation, in 

 the Berkeley study, contrasted with the 

 studies by Sears, Maccoby and Levin (1957) 

 and Brown (1958) ; Davis (1926) who 

 queried women on the cyclic character of 

 desire, as compared with the Benedek and 

 Rubenstein (1939) attempt to correlate 

 intensive psychoanalytic therapy on 15 

 women with independent physiologic assays 

 of ovulation; studies of the changing inci- 

 dence of ulcer in male and female patients 

 (Mittelman, Wolff and Scharf, 1942) ; psy- 

 chiatric analysis of special groups, such 

 as Deutsch's (1944) study of prepubertal 

 girls; Levy's (1938-39) study of maternal 

 over-protection; Alexander and Healy's 

 Roots of Crime (1935). In these studies, 

 sex behavior is only a small part of the 

 whole psychodynamic process that is being 

 explored, and the reports often lack any 

 specific information on the categories which 

 primarily interested Kinsey and his fellow 

 investigators, on the details and incidence 

 of specific erotic behaviors. 



A thii'd tyjie of material centers around 

 the (fuestion of social role where neither 

 the details of erotic behavior nor the psy- 

 chodynamic problems are considered, well 

 exemplified by the work of Seward (1946), 

 who at no point discussed childbirth, and 

 mentioned menstruation only once to sug- 

 gest that the fact that women menstruate 

 is of no significance. 



A final group of materials is of the type 

 presented by Money and the Hampsons 

 in which cases initially identified either 

 through anomalies of structure, precocity 

 or hermaphroditism, or behavior, e.g., prac- 

 ticing homosexuals, are explored for specific 

 erotic patterns of behavior. 



These various types of material can be 

 used, as tiie Hamjisons and Money use 

 them, as background for a theoretic point 

 which they wish to make about the over- 

 weening importance of the sex of assign- 

 ment and of gender role, but when we at- 

 tempt to use them to give a picture of sex 

 behavior in the United States in the last two 

 decades, we are confronted at once with the 

 need for a more integrated frame of ref- 

 erence than a mere patchwork summation 

 of shallow national samples, small special 

 samples, and pieces of research done from 

 many ditt'crcnt theoretic positions. 



