Alfred Charles Kinsey

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Kinsey in Frankfurt (1955)

Alfred Charles Kinsey (born June 23, 1894 in Hoboken , New Jersey , † August 25, 1956 in Bloomington , Indiana ) was an American sexologist and university teacher . He was a professor of zoology at Indiana University and was the first to conduct large-scale statistical surveys of human sexual behavior . The Kinsey report produced on the basis of this data is considered to have triggered the sexual revolution .

life and work

Alfred Charles Kinsey

Alfred Kinsey developed a love of nature at an early age, was a boy scout and studied biology against his father's wishes . In 1920 he received his doctorate in zoology from Harvard . He began his scientific career as an entomologist ( entomologist ) at Indiana University in Bloomington. There he dealt with the cataloging of gall wasps and wrote a two-volume standard work on this family of insects. In order to be able to make reliable statements, he collected and identified hundreds of thousands of animals. In Bloomington he also married his wife Clara, who was then studying chemistry. In 1936 Kinsey was asked to hold marriage counseling classes for the students, which sparked his interest in human sexual behavior. It turned out that there was almost no data on the sexual behavior of the mammal, and that many writings drew very obscure conclusions based on purely philosophical considerations. In 1947 he founded the "Institute for Sexual Research" at the University of Indiana , which is now called the "Kinsey Institute for Sexual, Gender and Reproductive Research".

Kinsey's home in Bloomington, Indiana

Completely independently and alone, he laid the foundation for academic sex research by first asking his female students about their sexual behavior; these told their parents, who in turn informed church circles about it. Those outraged and put pressure on Kinsey. He had to change his methodology. Together with his employees, he asked over 20,000 Americans about their sexual behavior, for which he developed a 500-question catalog himself. The resulting reports ( Kinsey Reports ), published in 1948 and 1953, led to a violent controversy and are seen by many as a trigger of the sexual revolution in the 1960s . During his research he also developed the so-called Kinsey scale to classify human bisexuality .

Christian, conservative, and tradition-conscious groups still attacked and attacked Kinsey for what they consider immoral and dangerous investigations. Kinsey was accused by his opponents of the most diverse sexual deviances and criminal offenses. These included a preference for group sex , sex with children and the accusation that he had encouraged his wife to have sex with other men or that his employees had encouraged group sex. Although these claims could never be proven,  attempts are still being made - for example by Judith A. Reisman - to discredit Kinsey's research. Indiana University President Herman B. Wells defended Kinsey's research in what became a test case for academic freedom . The Rockefeller Foundation , the main funder, was summoned to appear on the McCarthy committee and then stopped making payments. Kinsey also denied FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover's requests to divulge data with a view to tracking down homosexuals in the State Department .

Kinsey himself, who had four children, assessed the social impact of his work as minor at the end of his life. Kinsey's own assessment shortly before his death in 1956 was that he had not achieved his goal of sexual liberation. At this point in time, the full impact of the sexual revolution was not yet apparent.

Reception in film and fiction

His life is the subject of the biographical film Kinsey - The Truth About Sex (2004) and the novel The Inner Circle (2004) by TC Boyle with the German title Dr. Sex (German audio book spoken by Jan Josef Liefers ).

Fonts

  • The sexual behavior of men , GB Fischer , Berlin 1955 (US original edition 1948)
  • The sexual behavior of women , GB Fischer, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1954 (US original edition 1953)

In addition to these two major works, also known as the Kinsey Report , Kinsey published numerous articles and articles in scientific publications.

literature

  • Cornelia Christenson: Kinsey: A Biography , Indiana University Press, 1971
  • Wardell Pomeroy: Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research , Harper & Row, 1972
  • James H. Jones: Alfred C. Kinsey. A Public / Private Life , Norton, 1997
  • Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy: Alfred C. Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things . Chatto & Windus, London 1998.
  • T. Coraghessan Boyle, From the American. by Dirk van Gunsteren: "Dr. Sex: Roman" Hanser, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-446-20566-6 , Dt. Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-20981-6 , Zeitverl. Bucerius, Hamburg, ISBN 978-3-938899-62-5
  • Josef Rattner & Gerhard Danzer: Alfred C. Kinsey - A wasp researcher takes the lead in sexology , in: Eros and Sexus - Your Liberators from 1500 to 2000 , Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3703-0 , Pp. 217-232.
  • Gunter Schmidt: Alfred C. Kinsey (1894-1956) . In: Volkmar Sigusch, Günter Grau (Hrsg.): Personal Lexicon of Sexual Research . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-593-39049-9 , pp. 350–359.

Web links

Commons : Category: Alfred Kinsey  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Profiles: Alfred Kinsey: The Swinging Detective: He Opened Our Eyes to Sex , The Sunday Times, March 6, 2005; at Sodomy Laws