Body and Soul

Virtually all Americans are sexual cripples because of our culture's deep-rooted belief that sexuality is sinful, an attitude transmitted by parents through shaming in childhood, declares clinical psychologist Hastings. In this earnest, opinionated and not altogether convincing study supported by case material from her practice in Bellevue, Wash., she sets a high standard for monogamy, arguing that sexual bonding is by nature exclusive, and that if both partners are fully engaged in their relationship, neither person will have carnal interest in anyone else. Hastings places rejection of the body in Western societies on a continuum of cultural distortions that encompasses female circumcision in Africa and child prostitution in Thailand. American's stigmatization of homosexuality, she asserts, multiplies the effects of sexual shaming, because each of us has the potential for same-sex attraction, even if we don't act upon it. Sexual repression, she believes, induces people to find an outlet in erotic addictions, whether in the form of extramarital affairs, pornography or compulsive flirting. Calling sexual fantasizing a sickness, she excoriates sex guru Ruth Westheimer for advising people to use pornographic pictures, movies and books to arouse sexual energy. (Oct.)