Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXregard James Hinton. It was half a century and more ago,though his arguments on the matter were not clearly publishedto the world until some forty years later. Hintondelayed any full public presentation of his criticism ofWestern monogamy until he had mastered the subject,and before then he died. He was not a man who could beput aside as abnormal or eccentric. He was a distinguishedLondon physician and a philosophic thinker as well, inclose touch with the scientific activities of his day, widelyinterested in general social questions, and in daily contactwith life. The masses of manuscript he left behind areshapeless and unsystematic, but have made it possible togather the general drift of his criticisms of monogamyand the conventional social systemassociated with it. Heconsidered that no real monogamy existed, and that inWestern Society, as he knew it, there are fewer men whoare genuinely monogamic than are to be found in Easternpolygamic societies. Monogamy, as established, is, he held,an essentially selfish and unsocial institution, and is responsiblefor prostitution. We arrived at ittoo soon, forit is a mistake to convert an ideal, however good, prematurelyinto a universal legal form. The result has beenthat, though ostensibly existing to avert licentiousness, ithas called out more license than a polygynywould haveled to. So it seemed to him that our marriage system isrotten,and rapidly breaking up. What we need, he believed,isa fluid order in our sex system, not rigid andseemed desirable,unmodifiable, but permitting, when itthe union of one man with two women, though alwaysleaving the order adjustableservice.to the claims of humanIn more recent days, a rather similar thesis, thoughoften on different grounds and seldom or ever with thesame concentrated intensity as by Hinton, has been put