Gentlemen's Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men

Synopsis

What is the relationship between intelligence and sex? In recent decades, studies of the controversial histories of both intelligence testing and of human sexuality in the United States have been increasingly common—and hotly debated. But rarely have the intersections of these histories been examined. In Gentlemen’s Disagreement, Peter Hegarty enters this historical debate by recalling the debate between Lewis Terman—the intellect who championed the testing of intelligence— and pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, and shows how intelligence and sexuality have interacted in American psychology. Through a fluent discussion of intellectually gifted onanists, unhappily married men, queer geniuses, lonely frontiersmen, religious ascetics, and the two scholars themselves, Hegarty traces the origins of Terman’s complaints about Kinsey’s work to show how the intelligence testing movement was much more concerned with sexuality than we might remember. And, drawing on Foucault, Hegarty reconciles these legendary figures by showing how intelligence and sexuality in early American psychology and sexology were intertwined then and remain so to this day.

Copyright:

2013

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

240 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780226024615

Related ISBNs:

9780226024448, 9780226024585

Publisher:

University of Chicago Press

Date of Addition:

12/27/20

Copyrighted By:

The University of Chicago Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Science, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender, Psychology, Social Studies, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.