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DOCTOR KINSEY AND THE INSTITUTE FOR SEX RESEARCH by Wardell Pomeroy

DOCTOR KINSEY AND THE INSTITUTE FOR SEX RESEARCH

By

Pub Date: March 8th, 1972
Publisher: Harper & Row

Twice as long, twice as full, and certainly four times as rewarding as Christenson's Kinsey (1971), this should be the definitive book on the indefatigable, pragmatic scientist who ""pulled up the shade and revealed what was there"" long before sex became fashionable, even in many circles admissible. Pomeroy was his close associate since the early '40's when Kinsey began his research (18,000 histories -- 521 items in each) which would form the basis of his breakthrough books having left his earlier field work on gall wasps and teaching (Indiana) to become the most ambitious researcher pre Johnson and Masters. A great deal of this work is devoted to (a) the data gathering and strictly objective but not faultless methodology and (b) the reactions to both books and the many controversies provoked by the press, the church, and psychiatry. Kinsey has been substantially vindicated since then. The man also appears as Cornelia Christenson described him -- shy, naive, and humorless -- but with much more decisiveness, and also a calm and unassuming talent for establishing a rapport with all kinds of people. Thus he is known here throughout by his sobriquet, Prok, and even though he literally devoted his life to his work (his death was directly caused by the long days and nights and years without a vacation), Pomeroy has kept this ramifying research interesting in terms of the reader (cf. Kinsey's findings on animal behavior; also on homosexuality where he was far more forward-thinking than his contemporaries). An in vivo presentation of the self-effacing ""human investigator.