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Most therapists believe that these sexually apathetic people are not casualties of the revolution. They are simply showing up for help now because the new freedom, besides raising expectations, has made it easier for people to admit to sexual problems. Sexologist Caplan is not so sure; he thinks that the sexual revolution has been a highly significant factor in the spread of ISD. Because of boredom, satiation and the elimination of taboos, he says, "it is becoming increasingly clear that the excitement value of average sexual practices is diminishing." Psychologist C.A. Tripp argues that sexual excitement depends on obstacles and barriers. As barriers fall, so does pleasure. Caplan says that he knows many men who carry out sexual seduction on a purely mental level: once they have psychologically won a woman, excitement fades, and they dread having to go to bed with their conquest.
America has been through it all before. In the '20s another generation shaken by war, disillusioned with authority and fueled by easy affluence conducted its sexual revolution. The flapper symbolized a sharp break with prewar Victorian morals. In one poll of 2,200 women, taken during the '20s, more than half said they regularly masturbated. By the end of the decade, a prominent gynecologist said, "sexual experience in some form has been known by 100%" of his unmarried patients. The divorce rate soared, and according to one estimate, up to 1 million illegal abortions took place each year during the Roaring Twenties.
Rapid urbanization, the growing intellectual and economic independence of women and the dislocations of World War I had all helped loosen traditional morals. As Americans read Sigmund Freud's dark warning about the effects of suppressed desire, writes Historian Geoffrey Perrett, "sexual freedom appeared to be scientific, more or less." By 1926 F. Scott Fitzgerald testily complained that "the universal preoccupation with sex had become a nuisance."
Though some researchers say the sexual spree of the '20s was confined to big cities and campuses, the famous study, Middletown, by Robert and Helen Lynd, found otherwise. By the middle of the decade, their typical American town (Muncie, Ind.) was in full sexual bloom. The change came with erotic fashions, literature and movies, and an unsuspected sexual aid, the automobile. A team of sociologists, reassessing Middletown from 1976 to 1978, concluded: "The Middletown studied by the Lynds during the 1920s was in the throes of a sexual revolution as far-reaching as the one we have experienced during the past two decades." There were differences, of course. Many women in the 1920s stopped short of intercourse. Those who "went all the way" often convinced themselves that they were in love, and the hasty or shotgun wedding was common.
Says Boston Psychiatrist Henry Abraham: "We are now seeking a balance. We realize that revolving-door sex is not the answer to true love and commitment. The '60s kids brilliantly saw the problems facing us, but their solutions were the solutions of children. After all, a roll in the hay does not a sexual relationship make."