Alex Comfort

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Alexander Comfort (born February 10, 1920 in Palmers Green, London , † March 26, 2000 in Oxford ) was a British doctor , writer , psychologist , scientist , pacifist and anarchist .

Life

Alexander Comfort was born in Palmers Green, a borough in north London, to a naval officer and a teacher. As a student at Highgate School, at the age of 14 he experimented with gunpowder in his spare time, trying to come up with a new composition. He injured his left hand so badly that only his thumb remained.

At the age of 16 Comfort wrote his first book The Silver River , a novel based on a trip he took with his father to Africa and South America. The novel was published by Chapman & Hall in 1938.

During the Second World War , Comfort became politically active. He was a conscientious objector and led a campaign against the indiscriminate bombing of Germany. In the period from 1941 to 1945 he wrote three novels, two plays and four books of poetry. Comfort also wrote a textbook on Physiology and Biology, with the English title First Year Physiological Technique . In 1947 he received his doctorate in biochemistry .

He was married to his wife Ruth Harris for 30 years, but cheated on her for over 10 years with Jane Henderson. In 1972, the Comfort couple divorced and Alex married Jane Henderson in 1973.

1972 published Alex Comfort The Joy of Sex ( The Joy of Sex ), which triggered a broad discussion in the Year and became one translated into 20 languages to date bestseller. In this book, Comfort describes its own sex practices. The sequels More Joy of Sex followed in 1974 and New Joy of Sex in 1991 .

From 1974 to 1983 Comfort was a lecturer at the Psychiatric Institute at Stanford University and from 1980 to 1991 Professor at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California. In 1994 Sinclair Stevenson published his last volume of poetry, Mikrokosmos . He also researched aging and working with generations.

In 2000, at the age of 80, he died in a nursing home in Banbury, north west of London.

Works

Poems

Novels

  • 1938: The Silver River , Chapman & Hall.
  • 1961: Come Out to Play , Eyre & Spottiswoode, London.

Non-fiction

  • 1946: Art And Social Responsibility .
  • 1948: Barbarism And Sexual Freedom .
  • 1950: Authority And Delinquency In The Modern State , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Paperback: Authority and Delinquency: A Study in the Psychology of Power (1970) Sphere Books.
  • 1950: Sexual Behavior In Society .
  • 1963: Sex in Society , London: Duckworth. Enlightened Eros: Plea for a philanthropic sexual morality , Reinbek: Rororo 1968 (first Munich: Szczesny 1964).
  • 1966: Nature and Human Nature , London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Nature and human nature: Man's self-liberation from the constraints of instincts , Reinbek: Rowohlt 1970.
  • 1972: The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking , Crown.
    • Joy of Sex (1976)
  • 1974: More Joy of Sex , Crown.
  • 1991: The New Joy of Sex , Crown.
  • Tantra of Sex
  • 1994: Writings Against Power and Death .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ariel Levy: Doing it (in The New Yorker , January 5, 2009)
  2. ↑ Reference date: February 10, 1920 - Alex Comfort's birthday , WDR of February 10, 2015.
  3. ↑ Alexikon: Alex Comfort: Into the comfort zone! from September 29, 2018.
  4. ↑ YouTube: One Man's Hands in the version by Odetta Holmes .
personal data
SURNAME Comfort, Alex
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Comfort, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British doctor, writer, psychologist, scientist, pacifist and anarchist
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 2000
Place of death Oxford