Desire and Imagination: Classic Essays in Sexuality Regina Barreca, Editor Plume (Reprint Edition) December 1995 Paperback ISBN#: 0452011507 Purchase this text online at Amazon.com Long before Sigmund Freud's theories became widely accepted, doctors, scientists, and women's advocates were fascinated by the physical, psychological, and political significance of sexuality. While the nineteenth- century has come to be regarded as an age of prudery and restraint, there was at that time a veritable explosion of research, study, and writing that focused on provocative subjects such as female desire, erotic fantasy, homosexuality, and masturbation. Much of this pioneering research has now been revised and refuted, but its influence on contemporary law, medicine, psychiatry, and our perception of sexuality is incalculable. These rarely examined but highly influential essays from writers such as Martineau, Krafft-Ebing, Darwin, Ellis, Sanger, and Freud illuminate the way in which we choose even today to define what is 'normal' sexual behavior and what is regarded with suspicion and fear. As we continue to rethink and reinterpret ideas about sexuality and gender, this compelling and unique collection provides a rich and important context for our understanding of sexual desire and the erotic imagination. ~"Where is it written..." we ask when confronted with conflicts between sexual practice and preference and cultural, social, religious, and intellectual norms. "Where is it written that sex is dirty? That homosexuality is deviant and destructive? That women cannot have both a maternal and intellectual life? That masturbation weakens the body? That women are dehumanized by cyclical hormonal changes? That men are plagued by incessant lust that must be curtailed at all costs? That having too much sex--or enjoying sex too much--leads to every misery, from a sallow complexion to insanity, impotence, and death?" These essays are, in fact, where these ideas were written. Perhaps they do not record the first instance anyone ever thought, spoke, or wrote about these issues, but they nevertheless constitute a range of characteristic opinions and visions held by important figures from 1837 to 1929. --Regina Barreca, Introduction Purchase this text online at Amazon.com