The Proper Study of Mankind
By PETER WILES* IINTENDED this review to be facetious. We nearly all like to make sexual jokes, and disbelief in Dr. Kinseyt is one of the few respectable excuses for them. Belief in him, on the other hand, is not respectable. It is both naïve and dirty- minded. Nevertheless, your reviewer believes; Dr. Kinsey's work has all the stigmata of statistical validity. Indeed, the statistical part of it is very great work. To begin with superficial appearances. The difficult feat has been performed of translating the tables into accurate and lucid English; the words mean exactly what the figures mean. The text is thus quite unsensational, indeed prolix and dull (but the non-statistical passages, for instance, on physiology and sexual superstitions, are much more interesting). The index is exhaustive and invaluable. The interviewing techniques are described in detail. Dr. Kinsey points out both the likelihood that some activities, of which people are usually ashamed, have been minimised, and that others, of which they might be boastful, have been exaggerated. His own degree of mistrust in his results seems just about right. The mathematical tech- niques are fully explained, including the new accumulative incidence curve. A valid new statistical method is not worked out by slipshbd workers or sensation-mongers. Preference is given to the fully descriptive frequency distribution over the misleading mere average. The correlation coefficient, under a cloud among statisticians, is hardly used.
Dr. Kinsey is a taxonomic zoologist; a classifier of individual variations within any species of insect. This is a good back- ground because he will be dispassionate, alert for minor oddities and a good statistician, but bad because human beings are not insects. Psychological, religious and economic factors, unknown to zoologists, must be considered. How has Dr. Kinsey sur- mounted this disability? Well enough, it would seem. With the help of expert advice he has crudely but effectively covered the main items—except love and childbearing ! These- omis- sions apart, a pioneering work could hardly do more. Have the author's private opinions on his subject biassed him? He has a- bias against sexual inactivity, and claims that males who sublimate sex in other activities are mostly neurotic; but this is surely just not true of the many males who are quite simply too busy for sex and sublimate naturally. However, he has to dispute with a vast,literature suggesting that great sexual activity is harmful, and he does frequently stress the very wide variation within the " normal." Also he says " perverse " where others would say " moral "—condemnation of erotic stories is " perverse." But these things do not invalidate his facts, and in general I detect no emotional bias likely to have done so. Reviews in the learned journals, and American medical opinion in general, accept the statistical results, and scientists who know Dr: Kinsey speak highly of his disinterest- ness and honesty. Rumours that the experts speak ill of his figures seem to be baseless.
There have been specific criticisms of the procedures : (i) that the sample is biassed in favour of the upper classes, or the Eastern. states. Now it is found empirically that a sample of 300 suffices for any narrowly defined, group (e.g., lower class, active Protestants, age 16-20). In few cases are figures given for a group of less than 300; the chief exception is lower class females. Nation-wide results are arrived at by giving each sample the weight the corresponding group is known to have in the general population from the census figures. This method is correct. Larger groups, such as most of the lower class groups, do not need larger samples. The concentration on certain areas and classes is not wrong, since the remainder— with the exception noted—have been adequately sampled. The
* Fellow and Tutor of New College, Oxford.
I* Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. (Saunders. 1948. 47s. 6d.) Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. (Saunders. 1953. 50s.)
Gallup technique, of predicting the behaviour of the whole from a sample selected to be a microcosm of the population, is inferior; for a swing of political opinion among the upper classes may not be represented among the necessarily few upper class people in the Gallup microcosm, but the Kinsey samples are large enough to detect a sexual quirk in any class. We have of course no idea how the results would differ if the inadequate samples were completed : but the changes would be small; (ii) Informants were mostly volunteers. But refusers may differ significantly from them, making them a biassed sample of whatever group they befonged to. True, and recognised by the author—but biassed which way? Towards exhibitionism and exaggeration? But not, surely, of " perversions," and certainly not of masturbation. Yet such activity is very often admitted, the latter almost always. Then towards shyness— but the shy do not volunteer. The objection amounts to this, that the refusers probably included many who were shy of their " perversions " and many who were ashamed of their inactivity. Dr. Kinsey has met even this objection. By bringing social pressure to bear in some (chiefly upper class) groups he interviewed 100 per cent. of them; the former refusers mostly turned out to be sexually inactive, but the results do not differ widely from those of similar entirely voluntary samples. (iii) Voluntary or no, the informants lied or imagined things. Certainly possible, but a skilled interviewer can gain a man's confidence, and a long questionnaire provides many cross-checks. Also one can re-take after an interval, or check a man's answers against his wife's. Both these methods were painstakingly used and are illustrated. They indicate little untruthfulness. The M.V.D. has nothing on Dr. Kinsey. Only those who had not ploughed through the methodological intro- ductions would make such objections. Part I of the Male report deserves to be a text book for interviewers and for students of statistics.
My 'host fundamental criticism is that there is nothing in either volume about love—an astonishing omission. Neither " love " nor " romance " appears in the index. It is no defence that the study is confined to overt sexual acts, for in many passages it is not so confined, and in any case love is a most important motive for such acts. This omission is particularly vitiating in the comparisons of men with women, "Man's love is of his life a thing apart "—he is interested in discrete sexual acts, and for the rest, goes about his business; " 'tis woman's whole existence "—she is interested in romance, children and home-making, and integrates her sexual activity into the general pattern of her life. Yet Dr. Kinsey professes not to understand why women, who are quite indifferent to obscene literature and erotic displays, nevertheless react as intensely as men to romantic novels and films. He even insists that men are much more dependent on psychological stimuli, while women react only to physical ones. His own data on films and novels refute him : women are just as imaginative as men, but they imagine love, not sexual acts. Thus a priceless oppor- tunity for gathering data has been missed, and the data taken have been misinterpreted. Prepared to admit that homo sapiens is subject to religious and traditional influences unknown among insects, the zoologist has fallen into a larger and nearer trap : differences in sexual psychology. He excuses himself thus : "It is difficult to get histories from people involved in deeply emotional love affairs." True, but the older subjects could surely have given a rational account of their past loves, and love is not less easy to define for statistical purpose than, say, interest, excitement and piety—concepts which Dr. Kinsey does use.
This illustrates the one deep-rooted fallacy under which the whole Kinsey opus really does suffer : that the purpose of sexual activity is orgasm alone. This phenomenon is, to be sure, easier to define and count than love or home-making. But this mere statistical tractability has become an overweening claim to importance, which biasses all the conclusions and recommendations.
None of this, however, casts doubt on the main conclusions. Few of these surprised your reviewer, at any rate: Among men, homosexuality and bestiality are much commoner than he supposed, and before adolescence overt sexual activity surpasses even Freudian surmise. For the rest there is little surprising but much of immense value. Teachers, doctors, social workers, clergymen, marriage counsellors and psychia- trists must revolutionise their theory and their practice; and here Dr. Kinsey has rendered a service to humanity the value of which has not yet been recognised.
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