‘You Can’t Dismiss that as Being Less Happy, You See it is Different’. Sexual Counselling in 1950s England

Abstract

This article uses the audio recordings of sexual counselling sessions carried out by Dr Joan Malleson, a birth control activist and committed family planning doctor in the early 1950s, which are held at the Wellcome Library in London as a case study to explore the ways Malleson and the patients mobilised emotions for respectively managing sexual problems and expressing what they understood as constituting a ‘good sexuality’ in postwar Britain. The article contains two interrelated arguments. First, it argues that Malleson used a psychological framework to inform her clinical work. She resorted to an emotion-based therapy that linked sexual difficulties with unconscious, repressed feelings rooted in past events. In so doing, Malleson actively helped to produce a new form of sexual subjectivity where individuals were encouraged to express their feelings and emotions, breaking with the traditional culture of emotional control and restraint that characterized British society up until the fifties. Second, I argue that not only Malleson but also her patients relied on emotions. The performance of mainly negative emotions reveals what they perceived as the ‘normal’ and sexual ‘ideal’. Sexual therapy sessions reflected the seemingly changing nature of the self towards a more emotionally aware and open one that adopted both the language of emotions and that of popular psychology to articulate his or her sexual difficulties.

Sex, relationships and ‘everyday psychology’ on British magazine problem pages, c. 1960–1990

“…More recent historical scholarship disputes these claims. Rusterholz (2019Rusterholz ( , 2021Rusterholz ( , 2022 has shown that mid-century sexual counselling called on individuals to work actively, stoically and responsibly towards achievement of the emotional openness perceived as necessary to mutual sexual satisfaction in stable heterosexual relationships. This research confirms and extends the analysis of Chettiar (2016), who sees the state-sponsored expansion of marriage counselling and debates on divorce reform as two sides of the same coin; both demonstrate the identification of romantic and sexual relationships, underpinned by psychologised concepts of emotional health, as essential to social stability.…”

“If we can show that we are helping adolescents to understand themselves, their feelings and their needs, then we are doing [a] valuable job”: counselling young people on sexual health in the Brook Advisory Centre (1965–1985)

“…From the interwar years onwards, in the field of sexual counselling and marriage relationships, the expression of emotions held a significant role in the understanding of the fragility of relationships, sexual development and sexual dysfunctions. The idea that emotions and authenticity were key to successful relationships were spread by marriage and sexual reformers, the Marriage Guidance Movement, church organisations, the FPA and agony aunts and advice columns in magazines and newspapers, among others (Chettiar 2013;Collins 2006;Harris 2015;Langhamer 2015;Langhamer 2013;Lewis, Clark, and Morgan 1992;Rusterholz 2019). BAC's work did draw on this tradition and represented a departure from it, since BAC applied it to advising young people, a clear break from the interwar focus on married people.…”

“…Thus, for the first time, the notion of enjoyment and pleasure was finally connected to that of young people. Indeed, while sexual pleasure became increasingly discussed and central to the sexual life of married couples from the interwar years onwards (Rusterholz 2019), and thus became a new field of practice in FPA clinics, associating sexual pleasure with young people was still highly controversial since it was feared it would encourage promiscuity. Sex education in school, when not simply absent, focused mainly on combatting venereal diseases; sexual pleasure was never addressed.…”

Obedient Men and Obsessive Women: Donor Insemination, Gender and Psychology in Belgium

“…Studies on marriage guidance and sex therapy have shown that an analysis of counselling encounters may teach historians much about the cultural diffusion of norms regarding gender and sexuality. 6 More specifically, Carolyn Herbst Lewis has used psychiatric evaluations and personal interviews for AID as a lens through which to examine masculinity in post-war American society. In her view, discussions of artificial insemination revealed an abiding concern for appropriate heterosexual gender identification and role fulfilment -especially for men.…”