Man in the Trap

Society persists in a more irrational attitude toward adolescent sexuality than toward any other period in the sexual life of man. 1 Except for Reich 2 and possibly a few others 3 no one has even bothered to listen to the misery of those who, for the five to ten years between puberty and marriage, are allowed no acceptable genital expression. The natural genital embrace is considered evidence of delinquency and self-gratification is universally frowned upon; yet, during this period, genital urgency is the greatest of any period in life. We spend so much time correcting sexual problems of adults while completely neglecting the period in which these neuroses are fixed.

The child matures sexually during adolescence, experiences a strong surge of sexual feeling destined to be the most intense he will ever experience, and society and the law say, "don't touch it." According to society, the church, and the law, the adolescent is not supposed to have any sexual outlet. I have seen those who fulfilled this obligation and they were very crushed and sick. Surely we cannot believe that this is the solution; but it is one means of handling the problem. There are two other possibilities: masturbation and the genital embrace. With the former, I would include mutual masturbation and petting. Everyone knows that the vast majority of adolescents engage in one or the other or both of these outlets. However, we still pretend that we do not see it and that the adolescent is asexual. If he is careless enough to be caught expressing his sexuality he is severely punished, and any adult who condones his expression is contributing to the delinquency of minors.

With such conditioning the adolescent must, of necessity, feel guilt over his sexual urges and expressions. Conventional psychiatry has concluded that it is the guilt and not the masturbation that is harmful, but still takes the attitude that the adolescent should be encouraged to get his mind off sex. On the other hand, for those few adolescents who can marry, sex becomes permissible and not harmful.

The simplest solution would be to permit adolescents to live as their sexual needs would have them, but that course would often lead to disaster. In our society the great majority are not prepared for sexual expression, although many seek it just the same. In Reich's work with adolescents, he estimated that over two-thirds were unprepared to assume such responsibility even if society would permit it. Half of these could assume the responsibility if given sufficient knowledge and counseling. The other half would require extensive therapy. However, nature intended genital union at this stage. The fault is in our culture.

Geniality is everyone's right, but each must pass through babyhood and early childhood without trauma or major blockage if he is to achieve it and handle it responsibly. For only the emotionally healthy or those who could feel what emotional health should be can experience the genital embrace as love rather than as pornography or guilt. There is no easy solution and there will not be until we learn to bring up healthy children and to change our own attitudes and the attitude of the law. Adults are afraid of the intensity of genital feelings in adolescents, and so kill the feelings or suppress them.

Has anyone investigated what harm derives from sexual expression in adolescents? I do not mean in cases of rape, but where there is mutual desire and consent. One obvious objection is the possibility of pregnancy. Many girls do become pregnant. Seventeen did in a single class in one school. Was that better than to have taught them contraception and thereby contributed to their delinquency? I am sure that most readers will not like either alternative and will be appalled at both. Everyone prefers abstinence in adolescents. There again, nature takes over and brings in a safety valve in the form of night emissions and erotic dreams. But at best these afford only temporary relief.

Can we learn nothing from the Trobriand Islanders, whose attitude is sex-positive and who make arrangements for adolescents to be together? 4 They have no crime, no neuroses, and no insanity or obesity among their tribes. This prenuptial liberty is not an end in itself. Actually it is a preparation for marriage allowing a natural choice based on personality and compatibility rather than merely on sexual appeal. I understand that following such marriages both partners are remarkably faithful. My experiences have been in keeping with this in my practice. Those patients who are well integrated and have had considerable premarital sexual experience have been consistently more faithful in marriage than those who have married with little or no previous experience.

The demand made on youth for sexual abstinence in our culture is responsible for their sexual misery, the conflicts that occur in adolescence, and the sexual problems of the adult. The adolescent reaches sexual maturity, experiencing the necessity for sexual outlet and having the capacity for reproduction, while he is still structurally and economically incapable of creating the framework demanded by society for genital union-marriage. In matrilineal societies in primitive situations, the sexual misery that plagues our adolescents is never seen. Puberty rites introduce the adolescent to a full sex life and there is much emphasis on sexual happiness. Authoritarian societies, on the other hand, emphasize abstinence. Let us consider in more detail the three possibilities 5 for the adolescent in our culture.

Abstinence

With the development of the genital organs and the increase in activity in the endocrine glands, it is evident that sexuality enters a very active phase at puberty, with a normal urge toward sexual expression, specifically toward the genital embrace. But sexual ideas, particularly those involving intercourse, must be repressed or distorted if total abstinence is to be possible. More often than not, adolescents do not repress the idea of intercourse but think of it without feeling or attach so many fears and dis-gusts to the idea that it loses all real significance. However, to ensure abstinence, there must also be repression of sexual excitation. If that is achieved, the adolescent avoids the painful conflict about masturbation and the dangerous struggle with his environment.

In general, adolescents' attitudes toward sexuality change after the first steps into puberty. After sixteen or seventeen they are more negative toward it; they have replaced a striving for pleasure by a fear of pleasure. This anchors an increasingly defensive attitude toward sexuality. The inhibited pleasure turns into unpleasurable or even painful genital excitation. This forces the adolescent to suppress his sexuality. Suppression always leads to psychic and somatic disturbances, but it helps him avoid the conflict with society and with his own developed morals.

If the sexual energy that is being suppressed does not manifest itself in illness, it will be channeled into daydreams and moodiness any of which interfere with normal activities. If the neurosis does not develop immediately it surely will when he is later confronted with the demands of "legal" sexual activity in marriage. Therapeutically, those patients who never dared to masturbate have the worst prognosis.

Popular custom suggests athletics to divert the sexual energy and release it in activity. However, not all the energy can ever be released, and repression is necessary anyway. Abstinence surely results in sexual atrophy, the flow of energy back into infantile and perverse activities, and in nervous disorders. Actually, abstinence is in itself already a pathological symptom indicating severe repression. It always damages the future love life and reduces achievement in work.

Masturbation

Masturbation is a substitute, lacking sexual intercourse. However, it has only a limited value. It may be useful if it helps a youngster through the early upsets of puberty. But only a few adolescents reach puberty with a relatively unimpaired functioning; most of them are so damaged by education and upbringing that they cannot masturbate without guilt. Usually they fight the impulse. If unsuccessful, they masturbate with severe inhibitions and harmful practices, such as trying to hold back the ejaculation.

Eventually, even successful masturbation becomes disturbing because the lack of a love object is painful. Further repression becomes necessary because fantasy is forced into infantile and neurotic reactions long since given up. At this point, the in-fantile repressions and those acquired at puberty meet and rein-force each other. The more severe the infantile damage to sexuality, the less chance has the adolescent to take up a normal sex life. Guilt feelings with masturbation are more intense than they are with sexual intercourse because it is heavily burdened with incest fantasies, while a gratifying sexual act makes these fantasies superfluous. Also, contact with a second energy system causes more excitation and therefore greater release.

There are many transitions between the extreme of the one type, who is incapable of taking the step from his infantile parental fixation to a rational sex life, and the opposite type, who seems to do so easily. The first represents the "good" youngster who gives in to all the demands made on him. He becomes the resigned marital partner and provides the main quota of neurotics. The other is rebellious, ambitious, adverse to parental restriction, and of above average intelligence. These, society may force into psychopathic behavior if their needs are not understood and properly handled.

Adolescents who achieve the development from masturbation to sexual intercourse are always the ones who are vigorous, bright, and competent. However, most adolescents are shy and awkward.

Sexual Intercourse

To begin with, the adolescent has to overcome his own inner inhibitions, the result of his sex-negative upbringing, so that usually he is not equal to the task of establishing a heterosexual relationship. His fixation in infantile attitudes toward his parents creates a discrepancy between psychic immaturity and compara-tive physical maturity. Not only is there a strict social taboo against adolescent sexuality, but, even more, every kind of active measure is taken to prevent him from sexual intercourse. For example, factual education is rarely given. He is given physiology and told how the sperm and ovum unite to form a new being, but not that he is biologically ready for intercourse.

On top of this he is never allowed opportunity for privacy, and his knowledge of contraception is likely to be incomplete or inaccurate. The adolescent who dares has to do so in cars, in corridors, in the bushes, always with the possibility of detection or resulting pregnancy, to say nothing of the law.

Obviously, in a society that does not recognize sexual expression outside of marriage, and without a rational sexual education of children, and without privacy and knowledge of contraception, it would be both foolhardy and unhelpful to advise adolescents to ignore rules not consonant with health. Such advising would be no less harmful than preaching abstinence.

However, we can at least affirm the sexuality of adolescents in principle, help them where we can, and work for an eventual sex-affirmative solution. Now, we can only present their problem fully and honestly to them and let each find his own solution. Even knowing the facts, and that their feelings and urges are natural, will give them some help in their effort to survive.

The average adolescent today has too much life and health in him to repress but has not learned responsibility, nor has he the knowledge of how to handle his problems. He knows only rebellion; so we have juvenile delinquency. The youth no longer will be denied their rights. Society must recognize this and help them to assume the responsibility of these rights.

 
Footnotes

1. Sweden is a notable exception. There, great strides apparently have been made toward accepting adolescent sexuality. back to text

2. Cf. Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution (New York, Orgone Institute Press, 1945).  back to text

3. Alfred C. Kinsey, in a lecture in New York City, clearly expounded the adolescent sexual problem. back to text

4. Other tribes who follow this policy are the Igorot of Luzon, Akamba of East Africa, and the Munski of northern Nigeria. back to text

5. For a more complete discussion read The sexual Revolution, op. Cit.  back to text