Dear God, me too! There are some pretty odd folks out there. One site I stumbled across was one which advocated “father-daughter love.” I’m wondering if I’ll get any odd spam in the next few weeks.
**
This might take a while. I have a huge collection of books on sociology and human sexuality to comb through. This thread may die before I find it, so apologies in advance for needing to ressurect it once I’ve located the information.
Unfortunately, I’m having trouble with the Indian proverb. Many of my books use it, but merely state that it is a proverb, and go on. I don’t know what kind of citation I can provide on this, other than it’s commonly quoted. I don’t personally know any Indian people to ask about it.
You can safely trust in the accuracy of the link which mentioned Thonga and other tribal incestual practices. I’ll post it again here. James Henslin is a deeply respected author of sociology texbooks.
I find this statement pretty suspect. India does not have homogenous culture (like Japan), but rather is comprised of hundreds of distinct cultures, all which have their own traditional rules governing marriage and sexual practices. Furthermore, since there are 16 major languages (and several minor ones), a statement such as “an old Indian proverb” seems pretty meaningless to me. Unless a proverb is derived from one of the widespread religious texts, there’s very little likelyhood that all Indian languages are going to have the exact same proverb.
That said, my parents are from India, and I’ve never heard this proverb, nor have I ever stumbled across any Indian who would find the practices described to be remotely acceptable. My community in India has lots of inter-marriages with relatives, but these are governed by very strict rules, and sex (or marriage) with one’s children would be expressly prohibited. Since I’m not psychic, I couldn’t tell you if everyone in our community has never egaged in incest, but it’s definitely considered deviant behavior. That said, the rules governing which marriages are acceptable would seem odd from a Western standpoint (such as marriages to some types of first-cousins are allowed, and some uncle-neice marriages would be allowed as well).
There is a widespread practice of children sleeping in beds with adults (as noted in the article), but AFAIK, this is not supposed to be sexual in any fashion. As for the part in the article about women getting married as children (around age 5 or 6), yes that was quite common and still happens in rural areas. But the part about them getting married off before they were “ruined” by their male relatives makes no sense to me, since it was also quite common for the women to remain with their parents until the age of 12-13.
Thanks for the input, BnS. I guess my suspicion level just increased, but personally, I’ll judge each claim as it comes up.
As promised, I wrote a note to Dr. Masters asking for more info. And he answered! Here’s the entire correspondence. (Well, I edited out my name…)
For the record, then, I guess at the very best, Llyod DeMause (the author of the article cited above) used an inappropriate reference, in not citing the book by Masters and Edwardes. At worst, he’s hiding the fact that the original citation, in that book by Masters and Edwardes, is not very strong. Certainly, by choosing a more recent edition of a previous work, he is artificially enhancing the credibility of the claims.
I note here that for the first set of statements (“regularly masturbated”) other cites are given:
Katherine Mayo, Mother India. p. 26 New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1927, pp.25-26; also see Mayo’s many subsequent books and other books written in response to hers, a bibliography of which can be found in Harry F. Field, After Mother India. New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929; and David and Vera Mace. Marriage: East and West. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1959.
Ganamath Obeyesekere, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
S. N. Rampal, Indian Women and Sex. New Delhi: Printoy, 1978, pp.69-71.
Lissa, maybe these would be cites you recall seeing? In any event, if anyone has access to these texts, perhaps they could comment on the accuracy of the cites in DeMause’s article?
Finally, I was hoping someone might have insight as to the quality of the journal in which the article is published, The Journal of Psychohistory. It is named like a peer-reviewed journal, but does anyone know anything more about it?
Not too inspiring. It turns out DeMause is the editor of the journal; that would kind of defeat the usual peer-review process of getting published. Also, the site has no instructions for authors or claims of peer-review; I’m assuming it is not in fact peer-reviewed. Poop. What a waste of time.
I had seen those cites, but I don’t have the articles listed. Another one that I found was ‘Brother-sister and parent-child marriage outside royal families in ancient Egypt and Iran: a challenge to the sociobiological view of incest avoidance?’, in: Ethology and Sociobiology 17 (1996), 319-340, but, again, I haven’t read it. It was cited in a brief line about some cultures accepting parent-child marriage (one which really wasn’t quote-worthy.)
Some people do indeed respect DeMause: In this link he is referred to as a “eminent scientist and discoverer” who unfortunately has “blind spots” when it comes to child abuse issues in that he somehow wishes to control human nature. It further notes that he is not a “mainstream” researcher.
(Which is obviously true, given DeMause’s research into the possibility of human consciousness as far back as conception-- a theory which seems somewhat strange, to say the least. His somewhat unorthodox theories toward this matter where what, he claims, got him kicked out of Columbia University for “heresy.”)
That being said, I haven’t yet found any peer reviews which debunk or criticize his work on social history. Several university web sites offer his works as references for sociology students. If you are aware of criticism, I’d enjoy seeing it.
So far, in my books, I haven’t found much which is new. The ones I have written by Henslin pretty much repeat the same information. I am still looking . . . it’s just a long process. I’ll keep you posted.
Just for concreteness, I think we can separate ones respectedness from their accuracy, ethics, and scientific worth. There are lots of brilliant people who are unethical, innacurate, or positively bad for science. Or all three. Some time I’ll tell you about a respected psychiatrist I worked with once who was unable to write an English sentence and published only papers written by students.
I’m not a sociologist, psychologist, or historian, so I’m not up on whether there’s criticism of DeMause in that area. Since he’s put himself out of the mainstream and appears not to attempt to publish with peer reviews, the peer-reviewed journals may ignore him. I wonder if the Skeptical Inquirer has taklen this on?