THE NEW IMMORALITY

by Brooks R. Walker ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 20, 1968

For anybody who is doing any superficial comparison shopping by title, this has nothing in common with Vance Packard's The Sexual Wilderness (p. 744), or Frederic C. Wood's Sex and the New Morality (p. 758). For one thing, it deals with a specific and older group, the young marrieds, and it is an attempt to relate libertarian (libidinous?) practices with both newer and older theological concepts. The author is a Unitarian-Universalist minister and in the first section here (roughly a third of the book) gives some case histories from his practice of the new spouse-swapping underground, those whom even Albert Ellis called ""a nutty lot."" In the second part he examines the psychopathological components of co-marital sex, the influence of pornography/obscenity in the media (Alan Watts' ""pushing the line back"" and, at some length. Hugh Hefner's Playboy philosophy. This at the close he attempts to relate to Christianity's alternatives (from a tentative Quaker study to Bishop Robinson's Situation Ethics) and to assess this transitional period in terms of the moral options which are available. The conclusion reached--""It is up to modern man to choose a morality for himself which is at once more moral than any single morality, and more inconclusive than any one system""--is essentially self-disciplinary, and provides no really easy answers or easy outs. A highly intelligent approach to both startling and sobering manifestations of sex in the Sixties.

Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968

Categories: NONFICTION