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THE SEX PROBLEM IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY
PHYLLIS BLANCHARD, PH.D.
SEX IN TERMS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY
Bearing of modern psychology on the sex problem; Conditioning
of the sexual impulse; Vicarious expression of the
sexual impulse; Unconscious factors of the sex life;
Taboo control has conditioned the natural biological
tendencies of individuals to conform to arbitrary standards
of masculinity and femininity; Conflict between individual
desires and social standards.
An adequate treatment of the sex problem in society
must necessarily involve a consideration of the sexual
impulse in the individual members of that society.
Recent psychological research, with its laboratory
experiments and studies of pathology has added a great
deal of information at this point. The lately
acquired knowledge of the warping effect of the environment
upon the native biological endowment of the individual
by means of the establishment of conditioned reflexes,
the discovery that any emotion which is denied its
natural motor outlet tends to seek expression through
some vicarious activity, and the realization of the
fundamental importance of the unconscious factors in
shaping emotional reactions,—such formulations
of behaviouristic and analytic psychology have thrown
a great deal of light upon the nature of the individual
sex life.
There are certain modifications of the erotic life
which are explicable only when we recollect that under
environmental influences situations which originally
did not call up an emotional response come later to
do so. This fact, which was first noted by Setchenov,
was experimentally demonstrated by Pavlov and his
students.[7] They found that when some irrelevant
stimulus, such as a musical tone or a piece of coloured
paper was presented to a dog simultaneously with its
food for a sufficiently long period, the presentation
of the tone or paper alone finally caused the same
flow of saliva that the food had originally evoked.
The irrelevant stimulus was named a food sign,
and the involuntary motor response of salivary secretion
was called a conditioned reflex to differentiate
it from the similar response to the biologically adequate
stimulus of food, which was termed an unconditioned
reflex.
