Sex by Prescription: The Startling Truth about Today's Sex Therapy

by Thomas Szasz

For St Augustine, sexual desire was a disease; to the great doctors of coitus today, lack of sexual desire is a disease. For Dr Szasz, both these presumptions are absurd and unscientific. He argues persuasively that human sexuality - however it may be expressed - reveals and reflects who we are and who we want to be. There are no sexual disorders that need to be cured by sex therapies - there is only the never-ending task of having to develop and shape our lives. Szasz maintains that we evade that task by handing the management of our sexual lives over to sex education and sex therapists.

Genres: Psychology, Mental Health

Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Thomas Stephen Szasz (pronounced /sas/; born April 15, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary) was a psychiatrist and academic. He was Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He was a prominent figure in the antipsychiatry movement, a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism. He is well known for his books, The Myth of Mental Illness (1960) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement which set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

c1980 trade paper penguin 1981

see p126 "first there can be no real sex education so long as it is called sex education.... As we have seen sex educators do not want to impart information, they want to exert influence. Secondly, sex education is doomed to be a corrupt enterprise so long as it is taught within our present system of public education."

[Steven H · Rating 3 out of 5]

SZASZ CRITIQUES MASTERS AND JOHNSON, AND MORE

Thomas Stephen Szasz (1920-2012) was a Hungarian-born psychiatrist who was professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1980 book, “Whether, when, with whom, and how a person should engage in sexual acts depends on whether he wants to please God, enhance his erotic enjoyment, or promote his health. Hence, a question, such as how many orgasms a woman should have is like the question of how many children she should have. In the past, people in the Christian West believed that women should have as many children and as few orgasms as possible; now they believe just the opposite. These beliefs are important---but what, if anything, have they to do with medicine?” (Pg. xiii-xiv)

He continues, “The penis, some wag has observed, never lies. But sexologists do---principally because they are determined to conceal moral values and social policies as medical diagnosis and treatments. ‘Scientific’ sexology is a veritable Trojan horse: appearing to be modernity’s gift to mankind in its struggle for freedom and dignity; it is, in fact, just another strategy for its pacification and enslavement.” (Pg. xvi)

He clarifies in Chapter 1, “Although I am generally critical of, and skeptical toward, professional approaches to sexual problems, nothing that I say in this book is intended to imply that all medical, psychological, or psychiatric help for persons who seek such assistance for their sexual difficulties is worthless.” (Pg. 9-10)

He states, “This … gives us a glimpse of the real ugliness---at once linguistic and spiritual---of Masters and Johnson’s work…. The therapist is not even the Foundation---but the ‘basic premise’ … insists… on claiming that neither husband nor wife is the patient but that the marital relationship is. That simply cannot be so. When people consult Masters and Johnson, they usually pay for the service they receive. When a check is made out… it is written and signed by a person… not [by] a ‘marital relationship.’” (Pg. 30-31)

He comments, “The caveat---that women can have orgasms with masturbation ‘if they choose to’---reveals the stupidity of this type of sexological writing. Of course, people can enjoy sex if they want to… then they can teach themselves… how to do so. Why, then, all the fuss about sex therapists teaching women how to masturbate? Could this be still another variation of … men putting down women?” (Pg. 65)

He asserts, “one of the most objectionable aspects [of] sex education, ignored by most of its critics---[is] namely, its intimate connection with psychiatry. The connection … helps to foster the impression that anyone opposed to sexual values advocated by the sex educators is opposed to mental health and science… second, making …sex education a matter of psychiatric concern strengthens psychiatry’s weakening medical legitimacy and its shaky economic and social foundations. Among all the medical specialties, psychiatry is the only one whose job is to stigmatize people with moral judgments camouflaged as diagnoses and to imprison them under the guise of treatment. Entrusting matters of sex to this profession betokens our society’s continued desire to stigmatize and suppress sexual interests and acts, and to do so under the cloak of medical management.” (Pg. 125)

He argues, “there is not a shred of evidence that that ‘sexual deviates’ are less able to resist their erotic preferences and rituals than devoutly religious persons are able to resist their theological preferences and rituals. It is, of course, precisely the act of categorizing certain persons as sexual psychopaths that makes them appear in the light in which this name is intended to show them---and it is precisely this propensity to defame and dehumanize person who engage in ‘deviate’ sex acts that the sex educators show no sign of relinquishing.” (Pg. 138-139)

He summarizes, “to the question, ‘How should people go about obtaining help for their sexual problems?’ my answer is: ‘The same sorts of ways they go about getting help for their religious problems.’ In a theological society, people are expected to seek clerical help. In a therapeutic society, they are expected to seek clinical help. In a free society, they could seek help from whomever they wished. This would leave individuals free to choose the source of their sexual enlightenment and ‘training’; some people might prefer to get their sex education and sex therapy from ‘professionals,’ while others might choose books and pictures, parents and peers, friends and lovers, pornographers and prostitutes.” (Pg. 163)

Szasz seems a bit ‘out of his element’ on this topic, but it has a few interesting observations.

[Sara Halb · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s worth a read because his ideas are different. But be aware it’s difficult to follow and it’s not always clear what his point is. I’d recommend reading the last chapter it’s a good summary of his ideas.

[Ellen Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful and cleverly written/well researched, as always.