Masturbation The History of a Great Terror [Hardcover]

Masturbation: The History of a Great Terroris a funny and frightening look at the attitudes towards masturbation throughout history and how they have affected the sex lives of anyone living and breathing today. The French biologist, Tissot, was the original spoil-sport who turned masturbation into the scourge of young men everywhere. Saying that a little self-induced pleasure caused wasting, insanity, and finally death, Tissot put the clamps (literally, in some cases) on the greatest relaxation inducer known to humankind. From Tissot's work to the punitive postures of the German courts to the surgical preventatives of continental Europe and England to the handbook of the Boy Scouts of America, spanking/wanking, yanking/choking, and other assorted diddling became the big no-no. Stengers and Van Neck give us the whole story and it isn't pretty, but it will fascinate everyone who agrees with Woody Allen when he said Hey, don't knock masturbation! It's sex with someone I love.

Introduction * A Shameful Vice Which Decimates Youth * Before the Fear *Onania*Onania's Influence * Tissot * Tissot's Triumph * An Obsession of the Western World * The Faith Starts to be Shaken * Tradition Holds On * Reflux into Disorder

...rigorous, well-turned and enlightening study. Publishers Weekly

...a good read. Library Journal

...required reading... Playboy

...genius... Flaunt Magazine

Kathryn Hoffmann's lively translation of Jean Stengers and Anne Van Neck'sMasturbation: The History of a Great Terroris both a great read and a cautionary tale about the power of ideas. . . . Loaded with quotations from Freud, Rousseau, and many lesser lights on the intellectual landscape, the book traces how speculation becomes fact,' and fact becomes nature'--and also how quickly that nature could change. Merry Wiesner-Hanks

Jean Stengersis Professor of History at the UnivlÃè