Research: Sexual repression

Child sexual repression refers to the prevention, through either subtle or overt methods, of children from fulfilling their erotic capacities. Other sources are available on PRD.

Cultural perspectives

• !Kung Bushmen (humanity's genetic heritage)

  "If a girl grows upwithout learning to enjoy sex, she had told me, her mind doesn’t develop normally and she goes around eating grass, like a crazy Herero woman who lived in the area" (Return to Nisa, p.156 -- cited in Growing Up Sexually)

Academic perspectives

• Prescott, J.W. (1975). "Body Pleasure and The Origins of Violence," in The Futurist and The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists.

  Prescott links deprivation of physical affection in childhood to the eventual development of violent and aggressive behaviors. He examines various cultures, and finds that high levels of violence are strongly correlated with repression of extramarital sexual activity.

• Nelson, J. A. (1989). "Intergenerational sexual contact: A continuum model of participants and experiences," Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 15, 3-12.

  "Cultural desexualization and denial of children's normal sexual thoughts and feelings: Many patients who present with sex problems suffer not because they were exposed to early sexual experience but because they were deprived of the natural sexual imprinting that occurs among animals and primitive humans (Harlow & Harlow, 1962). [...] In fact, they cite Kinsey et al. (1953) and Ford and Beach (1951) in suggesting that early sexual experience is often positively correlated with greater adult sexual and interpersonal satisfaction. They quote Prescott (1975) in linking repression of childhood sexuality with higher levels of adult social violence."

• Okami, Paul; Olmstead, Richard; and Abramson, Paul R. (1997). "Sexual experiences in early childhood: 18-year longitudinal data from the UCLA family lifestyles project - University of California, Los Angeles," Journal of Sex Research, 34, 339-347.

  "On the other hand, lack of sex play has been indicted for delaying normal development (Gadpaille, 1981), causing sexual pathology in adulthood (Currier, 1981), or indirectly resulting in social violence, as some have concluded from the work of Prescott (1975, 1979)."

• Körperkontakt: Die Bedeutung der Haut für die Entwicklung des Menschen ("Physical Contact: The Importance of the Skin in Human Development"), by Ashley Montagu for Klett-Cotta (2004)

  The author reports on her extensive research into the many deleterious effects of insufficient physical affection during childhood.

• Yates, A. (2004). "Biologic perspective on early erotic development," Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 13(3), pp. 479-496.

  "Societies that permit early sex play are said to have fewer adult sexual dysfunctions and paraphilias [10]. Across various cultures, the custom of punishing children for sexual activity is associated with adult sexual restrictions and abstention from intercourse [11]. Ample skin-to-skin contact between mother and infant is associated with a sexual approach rather than avoidance pattern in adults, whereas restricted skin-to-skin contact is associated with problematic intimacy and warlike or aggressive behavior [12, 13 and 14]."