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Intimate Communications: Erotics and the Study of Culture

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This book is one of the most widely cited and recommended among anthropologists. People in other disciplines may come away wondering why. The book emphasizes the importance of depth interviewing and Herdt gives much credit to Stoller (a psychiatrist) for his assistance. People trained in clinical interviewing or qualitative depth interviews will give much of the book a "so what's new" response, while those without these backgrounds may find it more illuminating. Regardless, the book is overlong and the esoteric sexual rituals of Herdt's study population become rather repetitious and boring, although the individuals he studied are themselves, vivid and interesting.

Gilbert Herdt & Robert Stoller
Intimate Communications: Erotics and the Study of Culture

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990) 467 pages

This book should have been called
Sambia Sex:
An Investigation of Male Sexual Phases in New Guinea.
An anthropologist and a psychoanalyst
do extensive and intensive interviews of Sambia men (and one woman)
to understand the male pattern of passing thru
various phases of sexual behavior--first (as boys) with young men,
then (as young bachelors) with younger boys, & finally with wives.
How do they manage to change their sex-scripts?

More books along these lines will be discovered on the Internet:
"SEXOLOGY---SEX-SCRIPTS---BEST BOOKS".
Search the these exact words.

James Leonard Park, author of
Imprinted Sexual Fantasies:
A New Key for Sexology.