Impotence: A Cultural History [Hardcover]

Angus McLaren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2007

As anyone who has watched television in recent years can attest, we live in the age of Viagra. From Bob Dole to Mike Ditka to late-night comedians, our culture has been engaged in one long, frank, and very public talk about impotence—and our newfound pharmaceutical solutions. But as Angus McLaren shows us in Impotence, the first cultural history of the subject, the failure of men to rise to the occasion has been a recurrent topic since the dawn of human culture.

Drawing on a dazzling range of sources from across centuries, McLaren demonstrates how male sexuality was constructed around the idea of potency, from times past when it was essential for the purpose of siring children, to today, when successful sex is viewed as a component of a healthy emotional life. Along the way, Impotence enlightens and fascinates with tales of sexual failure and its remedies—for example, had Ditka lived in ancient Mesopotamia, he might have recited spells while eating roots and plants rather than pills—and explanations, which over the years have included witchcraft, shell-shock, masturbation, feminism, and the Oedipal complex. McLaren also explores the surprising political and social effects of impotence, from the revolutionary unrest fueled by Louis XVI’s failure to consummate his marriage to the boost given the fledgling American republic by George Washington’s failure to found a dynasty. Each age, McLaren shows, turns impotence to its own purposes, using it to help define what is normal and healthy for men, their relationships, and society.

From marraige manuals to metrosexuals, from Renaissance Italy to Hollywood movies, Impotence is a serious but highly entertaining examination of a problem that humanity has simultaneously regarded as life’s greatest tragedy and its greatest joke.

(20070422)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Men have been complaining about failed erections ever since Ovid, but as University of Victoria historian McLaren (Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History) shows, their significance, and with it our conceptions of masculinity, have changed over the centuries. In the medieval world, for example, the primary concern was with whether a man was capable of consummating his marriage; it would take centuries for the physical and psychological causes to take center stage. And though everything from excessive masturbation to coitus interruptus was put forth as an explanation, just about every era, from the ancient Greeks to modern antifeminists, has found some way to put the blame on women. (In the 19th century, doctors claimed men could be put off not just by women who were reluctant but those who were too eager.) After considering the early 20th-century "quack" remedies of gland injections and vacuum pumps, McLaren devotes his final chapter to the cultural changes wrought by Viagra and other drugs created to treat "erectile dysfunction." Far from eliminating the fear of impotence, he suggests such medications may actually lead to more anxiety, as pharmaceutical companies attempt to convince men that sexual activity is vital to their well-being. Perhaps one day McLaren will write about those problems with the wide-ranging verve of this lively history. 8 illus. (Apr.)
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Review

“Diverting, enchanting and often hilarious. . . . We in the West live now in what may well be the most highly and explicitly sexualised culture in human history; not surprisingly, sex has never been more publicly contested. . . . McLaren provides not just a scholarly and witty grand tour d’horizon of two and a half millenniums of thinking and writing about impotency but, in the process, reminds us that, when it comes to sex, it really is all in the mind. I only wish the book had been twice as long.”—Michael Bywater, Sunday Times

(Michael Bywater Sunday Times )

“Although impotence has again become an acceptable topic of conversation, we forget that this subject has enjoyed a long, colorful history. In this fascinating book, Angus McLaren gives us the first cultural history of the topic, exploring the many discussions, rumors, and controversies played out on the public stage throughout the centuries—from the days of Plato up to the present. This is a terrific book.”—Dr. Ruth Westheimer

(Dr. Ruth Westheimer )

"Men have been complaining about failed erections ever since Ovid, but as University of Victoria historian McLaren shows, their significance, and with it our conceptions of masculinity, have changed over the centuries. In the medieval world, for example, the primary concern was with whether a man was capable of consummating his marriage; it would take centuries for the physical and psychological causes to take center stage. And though everything from excessive masturbation to coitus interruptus was put forth as an explanation, just about every era, from the ancient Greeks to modern antifeminists, has found some way to put the blame on women. (In the 19th century, doctors claimed men could be put off not just by women who were reluctant but those who were too eager.) After considering the early 20th-century ''quack'' remedies of gland injections and vacuum pumps, McLaren devotes his final chapter to the cultural changes wrought by Viagra and other drugs created to treat ''erectile dysfunction.'' Far from eliminating the fear of impotence, he suggests such medications may actually lead to more anxiety, as pharmaceutical companies attempt to convince men that sexual activity is vital to their well-being. Perhaps one day McLaren will write about those problems with the wide-ranging verve of this lively history."—Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly )

"A fascinating book, but probably not a good idea for Father''s Day."--History

(History )

"In discussing impotence from Roman times (when a hard man was good to find, regardless of the object of his affections) to the Middle Ages (when Church officials would order suspect husbands to perform in front of clergy) to our current era of little blue pills (whose furious rise in sales has already started to decline), McLaren has written a pathbreaking history of masculinity."—Nick Gillespie, New York Post

(Nick Gillespie New York Post )

"This important, thought-provoking work should be read by scholars and students in gender and sexuality studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and history. Essential."—Choice

(Choice )

"McLaren follows up his earlier studies on human fertility with this lively academic study of male impotence. Using an array of relatively obscure historical, sociological, and medical research sources, McLaren shows how the concept of male sexual potency has changed. . . . Not a clinical guide to managing male sexual dysfunction, this work is instead a more complete cultural history of impotence than is found in any medically oriented approach to the topic. Highly recommended for all medical school libraries and academic libraries supporting the helping professions."--Library Journal
 

(Library Journal )

"There is much in this book to interest both the general reader and the specialist medical practitioner."

(Yvonne M. Marshall New England Journal of Medicine )

"McLaren''s chapter on Alfred Kinsey and the sex therapists Masters and Johnson is absolutely superb—as is his final chapter on the production and aggressive marketing of Viagra. This is contemporary history-writing at its best."—Camille Paglia, Chronicle of Higher Education

(Camille Paglia Chronicle of Higher Education )

"Erudite, cogent, and timely, Impotence earns a place on the list of excellent books on sexuality."

(E. James Lieberman PsycCritiques )

"By focusing on a solitary concern . . . McLaren is able not only to chart a fascinating history but also to unsettle our contemporary notions of normal/natural male sexual performance and capability."

(Journal of American History )

"An excellent contribution to the history of sexuality, masculinity, and gender; it should be a welcome addition to libraries and history seminars across North America."

(Michelle K. Rhoades Canadian Journal of History )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (April 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226500764
• ISBN-13: 978-0226500768
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #515,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Historical Review of a Longstanding Problem, June 26, 2007

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Impotence: A Cultural History (Hardcover)

"Impotence in an age that believed in witchcraft was quite different from impotence in an age that believed in science." So writes Angus McLaren in _Impotence: A Cultural History_ (University of Chicago Press). What's even more important than the differences, however, is that all cultures have fretted about not having sufficient lead in their pencils. We have _the_ solution now, a wonderful pill, although like all the others, it is a solution linked with its own problems. McLaren's extensive history may be about impotence, but winds up being a history of all sorts of sexual ideas, like understanding of conception, superstitions about masturbation, women's emancipation, and more. This is literally a vital topic, and in some ways it is dismaying that we have a long history of surrounding it with silly and illogical worries. That merely shows, however, that the subject is an important one, and McLaren's entertaining book puts it into proper historical perspective.



Everything always seems to start with the ancient Greeks, who started the long tradition of blaming someone else for the problem. A Roman man would fret if neither women nor boys prompted an erection, and not having an erection, not being able to penetrate, was a shame in itself. It had nothing to do with failing to please a partner, for a desire to please a partner was itself felt to be effeminate. The medieval church felt that a marriage was only a marriage if it were properly consummated, and as a result, there was the irony of nominally celibate churchmen having to debate and adjudicate the finer points of coitus. If a wife or her family claimed that a husband had not fulfilled his part of the bargain, he might have to show that he had the power to do so. Sometimes prostitutes would be hired so that the clerics might witness the resultant erection. The performance anxiety must have led to many false positives. The problem has always been perceived as a real one, and so solutions were always there to be tried, even if they were not real solutions. Impotence then as now has been a boon for quacks. In the 1700s Dr. Brodum offered his Nervous Cordial and Botanical Syrup to get men ready for the rigors of the married state. Victorian doctors tried to cure the ailment, but they had little to offer to distinguish themselves from the quacks. They had advice on morals; don't have sex too often, and for goodness sake, don't masturbate. It would be nice to think that the twentieth century and its scientific and sexual revolutions would have solved things, but such is not the case. There were nutty therapies involving the implantation of goat or monkey glands. Viagra (and the subsequent Cialis and Levitra) were supposed to take all the worry out of sex, but nothing performs that function. McLaren reports that female partners of Viagra users aren't nearly as convinced that the drug is a boon as those who swallow the pills are, and anyway, only half of the men who try it ever get their prescriptions refilled.



It would be nice to shake some sense into people, to have them see that erections are not all there is to sex, and that there is plenty of sexual enjoyment to be had in lots of ways whether or not an erection can be counted upon. That's really the only sensible way to look at the issue, but McLaren's book demonstrates that we do not look at it sensibly. The best guess is that there will be even more advanced solutions to the problem a hundred years from now, and a hundred years from now, we will be fretting over the problem (or turning it into some new problem) just as every generation in history has.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pop culture conversation piece, OK. Scholarship? Not so much., December 7, 2007

By 

adrif "adrif" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Impotence: A Cultural History (Hardcover)

As an everyman "hey, look at what people did in Ye Olden Times!" book, this is enjoyable and amusing. It is a perfect example of how to publish scholarship that will actually sell on a mass scale. As a "Cultural History," this book exemplifies the common complaints against *some* works in Cultural Studies and New Historicism.

For individuals interested in a vague overview of gender issues and sexuality through the ages, the book is fine (with a grain of salt). Its tendency to conflate hundreds of years of history into "one era" and "one viewpoint," to hand-pick items of literature that will prove a statement while ignoring several dozens of items that disprove it, to overlook some *major* elements in the field, and to play fast and loose with information makes the book risky to use for any real scholarship. Its attempt to be the Reader's Digest of the topic makes it and its dubious veracity virtually uncitable.