Learning Theory
Learning theorists are the second group whose research opposes the idea that there are sexual aberrations that serve as compromise formations to salvage sexual pleasure from a situation filled with anxiety and conflict. There does not seem to be a learning theory that attempts, as does psychoanalysts, to account for the development of erotic behavior in humans, behavior that leads either to “normal” heterosexuality or to the aberrations. However, there are studies that suggest we may find roots of sexual behavior that are not the result of intrapsychic conflict.
Imprinting of infant creatures at a critical period can cause attachment to an inanimate object, an animal, or a man when they normally would become attached to their mother. In adult life their choice for mating may then be of the type of the imprinted object (87). Although the conceptualizations behind these observations have been extended to the human infant (8, 50, 133), no confirmatory data are yet available.
The contribution that classical conditioning makes to the development of sexual behavior has also been investigated. This can be summarized by saying that, in animals, almost anything is possible in the laboratory: by conditioning techniques, an animal can be trained to become sexually aroused by objects that would have no such power in the natural setting; even styles of gratification, such as masturbation, can be artificially produced. How or whether these findings are related to the development of sexuality in free-ranging conditions is unknown.
“Interpersonal” relations as contributing to the development of sexuality have also been investigated in animals. For instance, overcrowding has produced abnormal effects in animals, changing their object choice and their style, frequency, and capability of intercourse (40). Experiments in which monkeys are raised by abnormal mothers, including inanimate mothers, have caused profound disturbances in socialization and capacity for reproductive behavior (64). Defects in sexual ability also occur when monkeys are deprived of peer relationships when young (63). These studies seem to justify the stress analysts lay on the influence of interpersonal relationships in early life on later sexuality.
My enthusiasm for many fine animal studies is reduced if the author is unable to resist the temptation, on finding an experiment that produces abnormality, to extrapolate directly to human behavior, even to suggesting modifications in child rearing or in the functioning of whole societies, based on findings in, say, rats.
Human conditioning experiments producing sexual behavior are rare. In one, an easily extinguished, mild fetishism was artificially produced by pairing erotically stimulating pictures with shoes (118). Positive and negative reinforcements in a culture may in part account for changing sexual styles from generation to generation (for example, women’s fashions).
Social learning theorists stress the effects of shaping— reward and punishment—in creating personality (2, 126), as well as the effects of imitation and identification. Freud and other analysts have also, as in discussions of the development of the ego and superego (21, 31, 65, 94) or core gender identity (137). There are studies on identification wherein some learning theorists and psychoanalysts find common ground. These show that the infant-child who spends considerable time in a close and warm relationship with a parent may pick up the gender qualities of that parent. Thus a boy too close to his mother may be feminized but be masculine when with his father, and vice versa for girls (137, 4). Analysts disagree with most learning theorists in believing personality development does not occur without the influence of intrapsychic conflict over affectionate and sexual issues as well.
“Taxonomy”
The third argument is the statistical one, or, as Kinsey alleged, “taxonomic.” (That word was chosen for its implications of objectivity, naturalness, and absence of moral judgments; “normative” is cooler than "normal.”) It lakes the stance of the naturalist observing humans just as he would another animal species. In Kinsey’s hands it became a powerful research tool though also every bit as powerful a hammer of social morality, since in this crafty way Kinsey made a judgment by saying we should be nonjudgmental.
His data (77, 78), and the good subsequent sociological work (such as that by the Kinsey people [41]) have not shaken analytic theory, for they demonstrate what analysts had long since known—that human sexual behavior is far more variable than had been admitted. Kinsey’s challenge is not in his data but in the position he took before he even collected any data—that inner life is not pertinent to this psychological research: the observer knows enough when he has finished counting. In that regard, Kinsey is allied with the behaviorists.
Cultural Relativity
The fourth argument extends the third and is exhortative. Here the author uses the research of others to support his position for sexual freedom. This is especially the case with activists banded together to relieve the guilt and social degradation traditionally laid upon them. Homosexuals exemplify this approach, drawing from the first three categories above to deny allegations of abnormality or illness: first, their condition is widespread in lower animals, is inherited, is hormonally or otherwise physiologically induced; or it is the result of conditioning in childhood or adolescence; or it is aberrant only statistically. Crucial for each of these defenses is relief of guilt: since one’s self did not choose the condition, one is not responsible for it, and besides it is not shameful.
There is much turmoil today (3, 51,68, 100, 131) over whether aberrant behavior is perverse (that is, disgusting, sick) or only deviant (statistically askew); the key words have been "normal” and “healthy.” These arguments have been less than inspirational because the contenders, each with Science by his side, have ignored what the opposition means by “normal” or “healthy.” The one group says the perverse person is abnormal because the aberrant behavior can be traced back to childhood trauma and conflict and in the present masks (or may not even be able to mask) severe psychopathology. The other says the deviant is not abnormal because he manages his life, other than his personal preferences, no more peculiarly than heterosexuals, who, anyway, are not noted in the mass for their happiness and creativity.
I agree with both—and with neither. Many aberrations are perversions in the sense that they emerge as solutions to conflicts and thus secrete a burden of guilt and a sense of risk-taking at their core. On the other hand, I do not believe these dynamics cripple most of their owners any more than does the conflict-solving that produces normative (heterosexual) behavior. (This is less true the more bizarre the aberration.) We may not solve these moral issues, which masquerade as scientific ones, as easily as each side hopes.
To sum up (and I have reflected on the impact of the new advances rather than detailing them, and so any conclusions can only be opinions), I think the measurable impact of this research on psychoanalytic theory has been mild. First, the theory was drawn up in such a way that most of it cannot be put as propositions to be tested by any scientific procedures yet devised. Second, psychoanalysis concerns man, but the new research does not have the techniques yet to achieve its own primary, though usually unstated, goaclass="underline" to show how the findings of any experiment on animals or on an isolated part of a human subject’s physiology or psychic function bear on the sexual behavior of a human in his life as a person, not a laboratory subject. Still, while the measurable impact on theory has been mild, the impact on analysts may be considerable. Many are listening closely to the researchers, and into the writings and conversations of analysts is moving an impatience with being confined to theoretical positions glued together more by tradition than by data.