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The sexual revolution was born in the mid-'60s, the product of affluence, demographics and the Pill. Women had been pouring into the work force since World War II, and the Pill offered sexual liberation to go with growing social and economic freedom. The baby-boom generation shaped its culture around sex, drugs and defiance of traditional values. The California therapies, chiefly those derived from the ideas of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, supplied much of the rationale for the sexual revolt. Fulfillment and growth came from close attention to the needs of the self. Maslow taught that the self is a hierarchy of inner needs and that culture and tradition push people toward inauthentic selves; living for others is a trap. At the pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy stood the self-actualized person, virtually independent of culture or troublesome ties to others. Rogers too stressed the goal of self-actualization and personal growth.
Daniel Yankelovich's study New Rules showed how the self-fulfillment ethic, largely confined to the campuses in the late '60s, had pollinated much of America's culture by the late '70s, wafted along by a score of pop-psych books, from How to Be Your Own Best Friend to Passages and Your Erroneous Zones. By the late '70s, according to polls conducted by Yankelovich, Skelly & White, 72% of Americans spent a great deal of time thinking about themselves and their inner needs. "The rage for self-fulfillment," wrote Yankelovich, "... had now spread to virtually the entire U.S. population."
In the sexual arena, self-fulfillment converted almost every sexual itch into a sexual need. Acts that had traditionally been viewed as perversions, like sadomasochism, were now proclaimed "alternative life-styles," presumably self-fulfilling for those attracted to them. Joseph Epstein, in his book Divorced in America, argued that for those on a lifelong mission of self-fulfillment, the very thing that led individuals into marriage—more growth—was bound to lead them right on out; the ties and obligations of wedded life blocked the proper unfolding of the self. But, points out Carlfred Broderick of the University of Southern California's marriage and family therapy program, "total growth, total narcissism, which is supposed to fix everything, doesn't."
Yankelovich's study, published in 1981, captures the theology of the revolution at its peak. Future historians of the movement, in fact, may set the years of sexual revolt at roughly 1965 to 1975. Since the mid-'70s, according to some small surveys, the revolution has decelerated or reached a plateau. One such study shows that rates of premarital intercourse for students at the University of California at Davis rose sharply to 62% by 1977 and then increased to only 64% by 1981. Said Ann Clurman, a vice president at Yankelovich, Skelly & White: "In the latter part of the decade, we see a slowing down in support for the sexual revolution. People are reassessing. They're moving away from the extremes."