Abstract

The common or lay view of the contribution of Freudian and psychoanalytic theory to our understanding of human sexual conduct seems to be that it is essentially subversive of traditional or conventional sexual morality. For does not the psychoanalytic discovery of psychological causes over which we have no direct control reveal that whatever we may be inclined to do from sexual motives is not a matterfor guilt or shame? Does it not show that much of the sexual guilt and shame that we do experience is merely the product of inhibitions and repressions which are the result of dubiously rational social taboos and parental prohibitions? The main impact of Freudian or psychoanalytic views on modern popular thought about sexual morality andconduct would appear to amount to little more than a collection of such vague beliefs