April 20, 2011

Nymphomania and Don Juanism

It was in the 1960s that the notion of sex addiction entered popular consciousness. Two men — Albert Ellis, one of the most esteemed psychologists of the late 20th century, and Edward Sagarin, a closeted gay sociologist who helped launch the gay-rights movement — wrote a book published in New York in 1964 as Nymphomania: A Study of the Oversexed Woman. The book was titillating and influential. It helped popularize the locution nymphomaniac as a slur against unreserved women, and it inspired a 1975 follow-up by a UCLA psychoanalyst, Dr. Robert Stoller, who introduced the clumsy companion term Don Juanism to describe unbridled male promiscuity.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2050027,00.html#ixzz1K4RZquRf