Impotence
A Cultural History
As anyone who has watched television in recent years can attest, we live in the age of Viagra. From Bob Dole to Mike Ditka to late-night comedians, our culture has been engaged in one long, frank, and very public talk about impotence—and our newfound pharmaceutical solutions. But as Angus McLaren shows us in Impotence, the first cultural history of the subject, the failure of men to rise to the occasion has been a recurrent topic since the dawn of human culture.
Drawing on a dazzling range of sources from across centuries, McLaren demonstrates how male sexuality was constructed around the idea of potency, from times past when it was essential for the purpose of siring children, to today, when successful sex is viewed as a component of a healthy emotional life. Along the way, Impotence enlightens and fascinates with tales of sexual failure and its remedies—for example, had Ditka lived in ancient Mesopotamia, he might have recited spells while eating roots and plants rather than pills—and explanations, which over the years have included witchcraft, shell-shock, masturbation, feminism, and the Oedipal complex. McLaren also explores the surprising political and social effects of impotence, from the revolutionary unrest fueled by Louis XVI’s failure to consummate his marriage to the boost given the fledgling American republic by George Washington’s failure to found a dynasty. Each age, McLaren shows, turns impotence to its own purposes, using it to help define what is normal and healthy for men, their relationships, and society.
From marraige manuals to metrosexuals, from Renaissance Italy to Hollywood movies, Impotence is a serious but highly entertaining examination of a problem that humanity has simultaneously regarded as life’s greatest tragedy and its greatest joke.
Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality: Bonnie and Vern L. Bullough Book Award
Won
"Impotence is an outstanding work on a neglected but important topic. It amply demonstrates that male anxiety over sexual functioning is not a by-product of modern life, but can be traced back, in different forms, at least as far back as the classical era. Accessible to the general reader as well as the specialist, it is full of valuable insights."--Dr. Lesley Hall, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine
“Although impotence has again become an acceptable topic of conversation, we forget that this subject has enjoyed a long, colorful history. In this fascinating book, Angus McLaren gives us the first cultural history of the topic, exploring the many discussions, rumors, and controversies played out on the public stage throughout the centuries—from the days of Plato up to the present. This is a terrific book.”—Dr. Ruth Westheimer
"Impotence is the first book of its kind. Better than being the first, however, is being good, and Impotence is without a doubt a good book. As well as a highly readable history of impotence, it is, by definition, also a history of sexuality and gender, in extremely different times and places. The range of McLaren's knowledge of the history of sexuality is simply staggering."--Karen Dubinsky, Queen's University
"Men have been complaining about failed erections ever since Ovid, but as University of Victoria historian McLaren shows, their significance, and with it our conceptions of masculinity, have changed over the centuries. In the medieval world, for example, the primary concern was with whether a man was capable of consummating his marriage; it would take centuries for the physical and psychological causes to take center stage. And though everything from excessive masturbation to coitus interruptus was put forth as an explanation, just about every era, from the ancient Greeks to modern antifeminists, has found some way to put the blame on women. (In the 19th century, doctors claimed men could be put off not just by women who were reluctant but those who were too eager.) After considering the early 20th-century 'quack' remedies of gland injections and vacuum pumps, McLaren devotes his final chapter to the cultural changes wrought by Viagra and other drugs created to treat 'erectile dysfunction.' Far from eliminating the fear of impotence, he suggests such medications may actually lead to more anxiety, as pharmaceutical companies attempt to convince men that sexual activity is vital to their well-being. Perhaps one day McLaren will write about those problems with the wide-ranging verve of this lively history."—Publishers Weekly
"McLaren follows up his earlier studies on human fertility with this lively academic study of male impotence. Using an array of relatively obscure historical, sociological, and medical research sources, McLaren shows how the concept of male sexual potency has changed. . . . Not a clinical guide to managing male sexual dysfunction, this work is instead a more complete cultural history of impotence than is found in any medically oriented approach to the topic. Highly recommended for all medical school libraries and academic libraries supporting the helping professions."--Library Journal
“Diverting, enchanting and often hilarious. . . . We in the West live now in what may well be the most highly and explicitly sexualised culture in human history; not surprisingly, sex has never been more publicly contested. . . . McLaren provides not just a scholarly and witty grand tour d’horizon of two and a half millenniums of thinking and writing about impotency but, in the process, reminds us that, when it comes to sex, it really is all in the mind. I only wish the book had been twice as long.”—Michael Bywater, Sunday Times
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Impenetrable Penetrator
2. When "Desire Refuses Service": Impotence in the Christian West
3. The "Infirmity of Others": Laughing at Fumblers in Early Modern Europe
4. "Shameful to Wives, Ridiculous for Husbands, and Unworthy of Tribunals": Impotence in the Age of Reason
5. Neurasthenia, Decadence, and Nineteenth-Century Manhood
6. Marketing Manly Vigor: Victorian Medicine versus Quackery
7. Sigmund Freud, Marie Stopes, and "the Love of Civilized Man"
8. Sex Glands, Rejuvenation, and Eugenics between the Wars
9. The "Impotence Boom": From Kinsey to Masters and Johnson
10. Viagra: Hard Science or Hard Sell?
Conclusion
Notes
Index
History: American History | European History
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