Nymphomania: A History [Hardcover]

Carol Groneman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2000

A lively and fascinating exploration of the surprising, contradictory, and illuminating history of nymphomania. Nymphomania--organic disease, psychological disorder, legal construct, and locker-room joke. Throughout history, it's been all these and more. Today images of sexually available women permeate our culture, and curiosity about nymphomania appears to be as insatiable as the stereotypical nymphomaniac herself. Doctors in the nineteenth century treated nymphomania as an organic disease, while in this century psychologists and psychoanalysts have looked to low self-esteem or an unresolved Oedipal complex to explain it. Nymphomania found its way into courtrooms when defense attorneys painted rape victims as so sexually twisted that they fantasized a sexual attack, or so voracious that they provoked it. Some sex experts dismissed the label altogether: Kinsey claimed that a nymphomaniac was simply "someone who has more sex than you do." Contemporary popular culture considers a woman's desire for sex so healthy that "nympho" can be a teasing compliment. At the same time, female sexual addiction has captured the public's imagination and entered the therapist's vocabulary. Carol Groneman explores the idea of nymphomania over the last two hundred years, unraveling questions about how much is too much sex for women--and who decides.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The dictionary still defines nymphomania as "excessive sexual desire in a female," yet, as Groneman shows, the condition may not even exist. Nymphomania, she argues, is a metaphor reflecting society's ambivalence toward and discomfort with female desire. Victorians considered nymphomania an organic disease. In the early 20th century, psychoanalytic theory associated nymphomania with frigidity, penis envy, lesbianism and prostitutionAall thought to stem from a woman's "immature" inability to enjoy vaginal orgasms. By the mid-20th century, scientific evidence of female sexual response led to even more confused theories of nymphomania, as "sexperts" sought to reconcile evidence of multiple orgasms and easy arousal with notions of morality. Groneman, a professor of history and co-editor of To Toil the Livelong Day: America's Women at Work, 1780-1980, sketches the historical and social contexts in which nymphomania was considered, and enlivens her text with numerous medical and legal case histories. She exposes the historical association of nymphomania with "lower" classes and new immigrants, and documents the disturbing tendency to blame rape and incest on the alleged provocation of the victim. Groneman concludes, "[E]ven though the sexual revolution appears to have changed the double standard about who gets to enjoy sex or how much sex is 'normal,' a deep ambivalence still exists... toward female sexuality." Groneman's anecdotal history stimulates thought and supports her feminist perspective, but remains more a general overview than a complex analysis. Agent, Georges Borchardt. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Groneman explored the annals of American medicine, law, and popular culture to trace the evolution of nymphomania, a term so prone to fluctuating definitions that it resides, she observes, strictly "in the eye of the beholder." Generally understood as a pathological degree of female sexual desire, nymphomania was once considered so dire that doctors removed the ovaries and clitoris of healthy patients in pursuit of a socially acceptable female sexuality, one that is unthreatening to men and with motherhood as its goal. Using case studies as her stepping stones, Groneman presents one disturbing disclosure after another as she moves from the homebound Victorian era into the complexities of twentieth-century womanhood, and deftly analyzes the madonna-whore syndrome, the biases of male sex experts, and all the harm done by Freud's misconceptions about women's orgasms. As Groneman drives home her point that interpretations of nymphomania are closely tied to advances in medicine and human rights, she provides dramatic examples to support her argument that in spite of improvements, fear and confusion regarding women's sexuality are still rampant and destructive. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393048381
• ISBN-13: 978-0393048384
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,618,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting and at times depressing look at a social "disease" of dubious existence, July 22, 2008

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Nymphomania: A History (Paperback)

Throughout history, nymphomania has run rampant in Western society, not in the sense that disturbed, sexually addicted women have been prevalent, but the meaning of the word has had a large and contradictory number of meanings. The best definition, and ironically probably the most absurdly reasonable, is the one put forward by many males and some professional females. "A nymphomaniac is a woman who desires more sex than her male partner can accommodate." This is the definition most commonly cited in this book about the convoluted past of this "disease."
Like so many historical accounts of how women were perceived by society, some aspects of this book are depressing. Some examples of the old wisdom that has happily passed into the dustbin of history are:

*) If a young female has an incestuous relationship with a male relative, it is totally her fault. It was her desires for sex that drove the male to the action.
*) The vagina is the sole source of a women's sexual pleasure.
*) Many rapes are the consequence of the women's unstated/secret desire to have sex with the attacker.
*) An act of rape is an act of uncontrolled lust rather than an act of violence.
*) Nymphomania is a mental disease that many women have and that must be cured.
*) Until approximately the end of the First World War, young girls in the United States that exhibited signs of heightened sexual desire could be "cured" by undergoing a radical hysterectomy.

True nymphomania, a condition where a woman craves sex to the point of putting all else aside, is a very rare condition, perhaps to the point of being effectively nonexistent. As sex researchers and Groneman point out, a desire for sex and the physiological capability of repeatedly enjoying it appear to be a normal part of the human female composition. Which makes it terribly ironic is that this is a "disease" that is as much a part of being physiologically human as eating and breathing.
This book is a fascinating journey through the history of one aspect of how sex was approached in American society. Unfortunately, it demonstrates once again the value of having diversity in all aspects of society, including medicine and psychology. When men dominated both fields, a woman could be considered sexually aberrant when her only abnormal trait was being more public than what was considered socially acceptable.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent History Of Nymphomania Since The 19th Century, June 10, 2007

By 

Chris Luallen (Nashville, Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nymphomania: A History (Paperback)

Groneman's book is an insightful look at Western, primarily American, cultural attitudes towards female sexuality from the 19th century to the present, with emphasis on the so-called "disease" of nymphomania. She begins in the mid-1800's, offering cases studies of young girls and housewives. These women, either voluntarily or through family pressure, sought out medical treatement to cure their high sex drive. Many doctors of this era viewed nymphomania as a physical malady. So they attempted to "cure" these women through weird and disgusting procedures such as having leeches suck blood from the vagina. Other doctors tried even more extreme surgeries, such as clitorectomies or removal of the ovaries.

By the 20th century American ideas about female sexuality had become slightly more progressive. Now women were expected to have healthy and happy sexual relations. But, of course, only within the confines of heterosexual marriage. However, largely influenced by the theories of supposed sex experts such as Freud, it was now believed that women should experience orgasms only through vaginal intercourse and that women who needed clitoral stimulation were either frigid or psychologically maladjusted. Of course, women who were lesbians, prostitutes or sought to have sex outside of marriage were still considered nymphomaniacs and in need of treatment.

The 1920s was a decade of modernization, with many women seeking greater equal rights and becoming more comfortable with their own sexuality. This progress continued in the 1960's and 1970's with the availability of the birth control pill and the resurgent feminist movement. Today young women are certainly more upfront about their sexual feelings compared to 100 years ago. But still a double standard remains with sexually promiscuous men considered to be "studs" while females who are equally sexually active are often called "sluts". Obviously, this needs to change.

I believe we should strive towards a sexually open and honest society where both women and men are able to be as sexually active, or inactive, as they wish to be without any social stigma attached. Of course, America rose up from Puritan roots and is still probably the most sexually repressed and immature of all the modern Western nations. Hopefully we will eventually grow beyond this childish and unhealthy attitude towards sex and especially women's sexuality.

8 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligently and Empathetically Written, A 'Must Read'., August 22, 2000

By 

Joanne & the Dogs "Joanne" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nymphomania: A History (Hardcover)

Carol Groneman has once again taken an in-depth and sensitive look at the historic and literary forces that have been used to identify and stereotype women. As in her previous book, To Toil The Livelong Day, Dr.Groneman shows her remarkable insight and exhaustive research skills while at the same time treating the women behind the subject with great respect and empathy. Thought-provoking, witty and highly engaging, Groneman's newest book will undoubtedly join Virginia Woolf, DH Lawrence, Herman Melville and others on the list of classics and 'must reads'.