That phenomenon is very complex and cannot be dealt with in detail within the limits of this book. I shall confine myself to pointing out some of the psychological problems which have to be elucidated5 before the causes, nature and results of prostitution can be clearly understood.
Economic Factors. Certain radicals6 simplify a little too much the problem of prostitution by considering it solely8 as a by-product9 of the competitive system which would disappear as soon as a more[Pg 105] equitable10 system of production and distribution was introduced into the modern world.
No one can deny that under our social system, woman, burdened as she is, by many physical and social handicaps, is easily driven to the wall in times of stress and compelled to sell her body. Nor is there any doubt that under a system assuring every one a livelihood11, regardless of business conditions, many women would be saved from adopting such a disgusting form of labor12.
At the same time, the radical7 interpretation13 fails to explain why, when submitted to a practically identical pressure, some women do not become prostitutes but either kill themselves or beg or steal.
Lombroso's Theory. Very unsatisfactory also is Lombroso's attitude to prostitution.
He finds a constant coincidence between prostitution and crime and states that the female offender14 is a prostitute, one of the varieties of the "reo nato," of the born criminal.
The female offender is not always a prostitute and modern research makes the theory of "congenital criminality" untenable.
Kurt Schneider in his exhaustive study of seventy prostitutes brings out interesting details of their[Pg 106] biography which throw a clearer light upon the psychology15 of prostitution.
There were certain characteristics which all of those seventy women exhibited. They were all unwilling16 to work. They all were very grasping, altho, at the same time, very extravagant17 spenders when it came to personal adornment18. Eroticism seemed to play a very insignificant19 part in their choice of a livelihood. Most of them were frigid20, many homosexual, the majority of them sadistic21.
Many of them kept a pimp or cadet.
Most of them were unhappy, dissatisfied types.
All of them were greatly attached to children.
Many of them were drunkards.
One half of them were weak minded.
Seven per cent of them had been brought up in institutions.
We have there a striking picture of inferiority. An endocrinological examination of those unfortunates, similar to those which have been conducted recently at St. Elizabeth Hospital, Washington, D. C., would have probably revealed back of their unwillingness23 to work and of their thirst for money, weak thyroids and poor adrenals, not to mention[Pg 107] unbalanced pituitary glands24. The fires of the body burnt slow in them, producing and consuming little energy, a condition which, causing an obscure unconscious fear of the future, compelled those women to seek easy ways of gathering25 money, the only protection they could think of. Their inferiority complex revealed itself in their craving for personal adornment, to which they sacrificed their protective earnings26.
Sensuality. All the rant27 of the purity prophets to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not sensuality which "lures28" women into a "life of shame."
If the prostitute sought in her means of livelihood mere29 gratification of "vicious" instincts, why would she so often submit to the whims30 of a pimp who despoils31 her of her earnings. The prostitute hates the men who can compel her thru their financial superiority to submit to their sexual desires. The pimp, whom she keeps and who depends upon her bounty32, is her inferior and the more she degrades him, the less she feels her own degradation33.
The prostitute, like all inferiors, is dissatisfied, but so are the man of genius, the inventor and the artist. The genius is the dissatisfied individual who organically is able to compensate34 for his feeling of inferiority by creating a more pleasant environment,[Pg 108] physical or mental, and derives35 therefrom credit, praise, rewards, small as those rewards may be. The prostitute, too weak organically to find a suitable, socially valuable, form of compensation, flees from a reality which is unpleasant to her. Alcohol and drugs supply her with a convenient form of escape from reality, the more acceptable to her as her intelligence is the more limited.
Father Fixation. Kurt Schneider found that fifty per cent of the prostitutes he examined were weak minded. The Chicago Vice36 report published a few years ago revealed the fact that fifty per cent of the prostitutes examined by the vice investigators37 were the victims of a violent father fixation.
One half of them, when asked by whom they had been seduced38, incriminated their fathers. To a psychoanalyst such an answer is an obvious morbid39 wish fulfilment.
All of the women probably experienced unconscious incestuous cravings at some time or other, and in the minds of the weak minded, (fifty per cent of them according to Schneider), those cravings had produced an absolute delusion40. Whether the incest was real or imaginary, the fact remains41 that those unfortunates either believed in it or considered it as a plausible42 explanation and scapegoat43.[Pg 109] A lie, when accepted as a part of our biography, often affects us as mightily44 as tho it were an actual fact. For, after all, every lie we tell is a fact unconsciously acceptable to us and which affords our ego a certain protection.
The woman with a father fixation is usually frigid. She either never marries or is a prey45 to prostitution fancies, until analysis has freed her of her unconscious incest fear or has led her to accept her incestuous cravings as a part of her personality.
Prostitution is a neurosis, affecting mostly the hypothyroid, hypoadrenal female of low culture and low intelligence.
Psychoanalysis, which requires a certain grade of mental development on the part of the patient, is rather impotent in the majority of cases of prostitution when the woman has crossed the line which separates fancies from practice.
There are male prostitutes also, of the normal sexual type. I do not allude46 here to the homosexual males whose mentality47 shall be considered in another chapter. By male prostitutes, I mean men who consort48 with women, in or out of wedlock49, for purely50 sordid51 considerations.
The Pimp who exploits some prostitute is a prostitute himself, but so is the man who marries[Pg 110] for money or power a woman who does not attract him sexually. The male prostitute is, if anything, ethically52 inferior to the female prostitute.
Prevention, rather than any form of cure, may some day solve the problem of prostitution. Repressive measures are, of course, a dishonest farce53 which deceives no one and benefits no one. The prostitute cannot be reeducated or adapted, for she is a weakling and the modern world offers to her no equivalent for what she would have to give up in order to reform. Female children, on the other hand, if trained properly and made independent, mentally and financially, could grow up free from the handicaps and the fears which, at the present day, drive too many girls into adopting the "easiest way."
Prostitution has no redeeming54 grace. It may have saved many young men from impotence but it has made quite as many impotent thru venereal infection. Some claim that it has saved many pure wives and daughters from temptation but it has contributed also thru infection to making thousands of innocent women sexual invalids55.
Prostitution is a maladjustment whose worst sin is perhaps the maladjustment of married life which it occasions in thousands of cases.
[Pg 111]
Too many young men, who acquired their sexual experience with prostitutes solely, imagine that they know and understand women, and they proceed to treat their life mates as tho the latter were only slightly different from the unfortunate neurotics56 they hired to relieve their sexual cravings. To that sort of experience we owe the horrible type of the "typical husband" who never misses an opportunity of reminding his wife of the fact that "she is only a woman."
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1
overthrowing
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| v.打倒，推翻( overthrow的现在分词 )；使终止 | |
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ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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elucidated
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| v.阐明，解释( elucidate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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radicals
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| n.激进分子( radical的名词复数 )；根基；基本原理；[数学]根数 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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8
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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by-product
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| n.副产品，附带产生的结果 | |
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equitable
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| adj.公平的；公正的 | |
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livelihood
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| n.生计，谋生之道 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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offender
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| n.冒犯者，违反者，犯罪者 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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adornment
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| n.装饰；装饰品 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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frigid
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| adj.寒冷的，凛冽的；冷淡的；拘禁的 | |
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sadistic
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| adj.虐待狂的 | |
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larceny
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| n.盗窃（罪） | |
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unwillingness
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| n. 不愿意，不情愿 | |
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glands
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| n.腺( gland的名词复数 ) | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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earnings
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| n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得 | |
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rant
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| v.咆哮；怒吼；n.大话；粗野的话 | |
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lures
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| 吸引力，魅力（lure的复数形式） | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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WHIMS
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| 虚妄，禅病 | |
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despoils
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| v.掠夺，抢劫( despoil的第三人称单数 ) | |
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bounty
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| n.慷慨的赠予物，奖金；慷慨，大方；施与 | |
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degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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compensate
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| vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消 | |
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derives
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| v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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investigators
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| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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38
seduced
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| 诱奸( seduce的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾引； 诱使堕落； 使入迷 | |
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39
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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40
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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41
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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42
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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43
scapegoat
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| n.替罪的羔羊，替人顶罪者；v.使…成为替罪羊 | |
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mightily
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| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
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45
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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46
allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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mentality
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| n.心理，思想，脑力 | |
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48
consort
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| v.相伴；结交 | |
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49
wedlock
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| n.婚姻，已婚状态 | |
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50
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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51
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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52
ethically
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| adv.在伦理上，道德上 | |
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53
farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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54
redeeming
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| 补偿的，弥补的 | |
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55
invalids
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| 病人，残疾者( invalid的名词复数 ) | |
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56
neurotics
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| n.神经官能症的( neurotic的名词复数 )；神经质的；神经过敏的；极为焦虑的 | |
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