- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: St Martin's Press (10 Aug 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0312224435
- ISBN-13: 978-0312224431
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 14.7 x 2.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 785,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
."..rigorous, well-turned and enlightening study." --"Publishers Weekly"
."..a good read." --"Library Journal"
."..required reading..." --"Playboy"
."..genius..." --"Flaunt Magazine"
"Kathryn Hoffmann's lively translation of Jean Stengers and Anne Van Neck's "Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror "is both a great read and a cautionary tale about the power of ideas. . . . Loaded with quotations from Freud, Rousseau, and many lesser lights on the intellectual landscape, the book traces how speculation becomes 'fact, ' and fact becomes 'nature'--and also how quickly that nature could change." --Merry Wiesner-Hanks
."..a good read." --"Library Journal"
."..required reading..." --"Playboy"
."..genius..." --"Flaunt Magazine"
"Kathryn Hoffmann's lively translation of Jean Stengers and Anne Van Neck's "Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror "is both a great read and a cautionary tale about the power of ideas. . . . Loaded with quotations from Freud, Rousseau, and many lesser lights on the intellectual landscape, the book traces how speculation becomes 'fact, ' and fact becomes 'nature'--and also how quickly that nature could change." --Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Product Description
A funny and frightening history of attitudes towards masturbation and how they have affected the sex lives of pretty much everyone living and breathing today. From the French biologist, Tissot, the original spoll-sport who turned masturbation into the scourge of young men everywhere, to the punitive German courts, to the surgical preventatives of continental Europe and England (don't ask!), to the Boy Scouts of America. It's all here, it isn't pretty but it's certainly fascinating. Includes 14 pages of illustrations!
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First Sentence
"There is no need for us to describe here an act which is unfortunately as well known as it is shameful": it is with these words that the entry Masturbation begins in the Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIX siecle by Pierre Larousse. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
"There is no need for us to describe here an act which is unfortunately as well known as it is shameful": it is with these words that the entry Masturbation begins in the Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIX siecle by Pierre Larousse. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Masturbation Terror., 9 Jun 2004
By zonaras - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror (Hardcover)
_Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror_ is an odd book about a collective medical, moral and religious fear from the 1700s until the second half of the 20th century. Before the 18th century, masturbation was more or less ignored in moral debate by philosophers and theologians. The Greek Cynic Diognes practiced masturbation in order to relieve himself of semen, not for sensual pleasure. The authors cite a tract about Diognes by the physician Galen who noted that Diognes arranged to meet with a courtesan but then sent her away because his "hand was faster than you [the courtesan] in celebrating the bridal night." However, masturbation stands officially condemned as a mortal sin in the Roman Catholic catechism and moral theology because it uses the sex organs for self-gratification rather than procreation. The 1723 publication of a pamphlet in England, "Onania," ascribed numerous moral and physiological disorders associated with masturbation. The author likened masturbation to the sin of Onan in Genesis. Onan "spilled his seed" on the ground when he was to impregnate his dead brother's wife, which refers more to a violation of the levirate marriage arrangement and coitus interruptus than actual self-stimulation. "Onania's" influence was expanded in decades afterward in the work of the Swiss physician Tissot. Tissot wrote at length of the supposed medical dangers of masturbation and his ideas were expounded upon later in the Victorian Era. The Victorians were notoriously uptight about sexual matters and quack doctors invented a plethora of anti-masturbatory devices such as penis rings, electric shockers and alarms to forcefully discourage the practice. By the middle of the twentieth century the masturbation scare died off, as the authors note, as suddenly as it began. I recommend this book, despite its liberal and anti-religious bias, as a strange read on a quack medical phenomenon.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Enlightenment of the Rather Shadowed Enlightenment Era, 20 Nov 2008
By Bonam Pak - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror (Hardcover)
I read the 2001 translated edition into English of the French original of 1998, "Histoire d'une grande, la masturbation". The unusual thing is that one of the co-authors, Anne Van Neck had passed on in 1982 already. A long time in the making...
Everybody knows about the reservations, past generations had about masturbation. In fact, hardly does anybody TODAY brag about how well they masturbated last night, and rarely do we watch a non-comedic, non-perverted masturbation scene made in Hollywood. But do we really know the different reasons in different epochs? How far our ancestors went to thwart any self-pleasuring attempt? How recent they did so?
In classic Greece masturbators were merely considered losers. In medieval times, masturbation took the place of today's fundamentalists' wrath of homosexuality. The former - and not necessarily the latter - was called a violation of the laws of the Creator, dead to the feelings for family, country and humanity, a sin against nature. The penance was the same as for murder. All that changed around 1712, when a quack sought to sell his "medicine" against the ficticious ailments caused by masturbation. At first, no civil authorities, no Church and no academics had anything to do with what should become the greatest medical fear in Western civilisation for two centuries. After the quack a real doctor jumped on the bandwagon, then a much-read author and the fate of self-pleasuring was sealed. There was no difference among political parties, denominations and even so-called free thinkers.
Some examples of the hysteria which ensued: infibulation (artificial foreskin closure) at the end of the 18th century, children's hands tied to the bed in 1827, repeated cauterization of boys' urethras in Paris to prevent any thought of nice feelings down there. Celebrities outed as masturbators in 1910. Babies' night gowns pinned to the crib in the US in 1914. And well, usually the last to change: Condemnation of masturbation by the Vatican in 1976. During those times of masturbation prohibition men weren't even allowed to touch themselves during urination. Instead shaking was en vogue. Ah, do I wish for a comedy of history instead of the American Pie - Unrated (Widescreen Collector's Edition) nonsense continuing the anti-masturbatory tradition!
A somewhat more recent (2003) and more elaborate scholarly work is Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation. Even though there are some intersections, both books may be read in tandem. If you want to go one step bolder, read the quite recently filled gap of masturbation accounts in the compilation First Person Sexual: Women & Men Write About Self-Pleasuring. If you like a coffee-table book about the subject, don't be afraid of Sex Machines: Photographs and Interviews: It doesn't show the artificial "masturbation" aids in action. If you want to do something medically BENEFICIAL, while you are at it, get informed via Prostate Orgasm, Prostate Cure.. But read AYOR, I only recommend this booklet for current lack of anything better. Oh, by the way: Modern science has found out that if you are male, the more you do it, the better for your health. The same is true for females, I presume...
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