prostitution, as i stated in a previous chapter is one of the results of the overthrowing of sex by the ego. the craving for food and power triumphs over all the sexual cravings and compels one individual to pursue apparently sexual goals which are no longer sexual as far as that individual is concerned. the female prostitute lends her sexual organs to many men for money (food, power), not for her own gratification or to reproduce her species.
that phenomenon is very complex and cannot be dealt with in detail within the limits of this book. i shall confine myself to pointing out some of the psychological problems which have to be elucidated before the causes, nature and results of prostitution can be clearly understood.
economic factors. certain radicals simplify a little too much the problem of prostitution by considering it solely as a by-product of the competitive system which would disappear as soon as a more[pg 105] equitable system of production and distribution was introduced into the modern world.
no one can deny that under our social system, woman, burdened as she is, by many physical and social handicaps, is easily driven to the wall in times of stress and compelled to sell her body. nor is there any doubt that under a system assuring every one a livelihood, regardless of business conditions, many women would be saved from adopting such a disgusting form of labor.
at the same time, the radical interpretation fails to explain why, when submitted to a practically identical pressure, some women do not become prostitutes but either kill themselves or beg or steal.
lombroso's theory. very unsatisfactory also is lombroso's attitude to prostitution.
he finds a constant coincidence between prostitution and crime and states that the female offender is a prostitute, one of the varieties of the "reo nato," of the born criminal.
the female offender is not always a prostitute and modern research makes the theory of "congenital criminality" untenable.
kurt schneider in his exhaustive study of seventy prostitutes brings out interesting details of their[pg 106] biography which throw a clearer light upon the psychology of prostitution.
there were certain characteristics which all of those seventy women exhibited. they were all unwilling to work. they all were very grasping, altho, at the same time, very extravagant spenders when it came to personal adornment. eroticism seemed to play a very insignificant part in their choice of a livelihood. most of them were frigid, many homosexual, the majority of them sadistic.
fifteen of them had been punished for larceny (money and clothes).
many of them kept a pimp or cadet.
most of them were unhappy, dissatisfied types.
all of them were greatly attached to children.
many of them were drunkards.
one half of them were weak minded.
seven per cent of them had been brought up in institutions.
we have there a striking picture of inferiority. an endocrinological examination of those unfortunates, similar to those which have been conducted recently at st. elizabeth hospital, washington, d. c., would have probably revealed back of their unwillingness to work and of their thirst for money, weak thyroids and poor adrenals, not to mention[pg 107] unbalanced pituitary glands. the fires of the body burnt slow in them, producing and consuming little energy, a condition which, causing an obscure unconscious fear of the future, compelled those women to seek easy ways of gathering money, the only protection they could think of. their inferiority complex revealed itself in their craving for personal adornment, to which they sacrificed their protective earnings.
sensuality. all the rant of the purity prophets to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not sensuality which "lures" women into a "life of shame."
if the prostitute sought in her means of livelihood mere gratification of "vicious" instincts, why would she so often submit to the whims of a pimp who despoils her of her earnings. the prostitute hates the men who can compel her thru their financial superiority to submit to their sexual desires. the pimp, whom she keeps and who depends upon her bounty, is her inferior and the more she degrades him, the less she feels her own degradation.
the prostitute, like all inferiors, is dissatisfied, but so are the man of genius, the inventor and the artist. the genius is the dissatisfied individual who organically is able to compensate for his feeling of inferiority by creating a more pleasant environment,[pg 108] physical or mental, and derives therefrom credit, praise, rewards, small as those rewards may be. the prostitute, too weak organically to find a suitable, socially valuable, form of compensation, flees from a reality which is unpleasant to her. alcohol and drugs supply her with a convenient form of escape from reality, the more acceptable to her as her intelligence is the more limited.
father fixation. kurt schneider found that fifty per cent of the prostitutes he examined were weak minded. the chicago vice report published a few years ago revealed the fact that fifty per cent of the prostitutes examined by the vice investigators were the victims of a violent father fixation.
one half of them, when asked by whom they had been seduced, incriminated their fathers. to a psychoanalyst such an answer is an obvious morbid wish fulfilment.
all of the women probably experienced unconscious incestuous cravings at some time or other, and in the minds of the weak minded, (fifty per cent of them according to schneider), those cravings had produced an absolute delusion. whether the incest was real or imaginary, the fact remains that those unfortunates either believed in it or considered it as a plausible explanation and scapegoat.[pg 109] a lie, when accepted as a part of our biography, often affects us as mightily as tho it were an actual fact. for, after all, every lie we tell is a fact unconsciously acceptable to us and which affords our ego a certain protection.
the woman with a father fixation is usually frigid. she either never marries or is a prey to prostitution fancies, until analysis has freed her of her unconscious incest fear or has led her to accept her incestuous cravings as a part of her personality.
prostitution is a neurosis, affecting mostly the hypothyroid, hypoadrenal female of low culture and low intelligence.
psychoanalysis, which requires a certain grade of mental development on the part of the patient, is rather impotent in the majority of cases of prostitution when the woman has crossed the line which separates fancies from practice.
there are male prostitutes also, of the normal sexual type. i do not allude here to the homosexual males whose mentality shall be considered in another chapter. by male prostitutes, i mean men who consort with women, in or out of wedlock, for purely sordid considerations.
the pimp who exploits some prostitute is a prostitute himself, but so is the man who marries[pg 110] for money or power a woman who does not attract him sexually. the male prostitute is, if anything, ethically inferior to the female prostitute.
prevention, rather than any form of cure, may some day solve the problem of prostitution. repressive measures are, of course, a dishonest farce which deceives no one and benefits no one. the prostitute cannot be reeducated or adapted, for she is a weakling and the modern world offers to her no equivalent for what she would have to give up in order to reform. female children, on the other hand, if trained properly and made independent, mentally and financially, could grow up free from the handicaps and the fears which, at the present day, drive too many girls into adopting the "easiest way."
prostitution has no redeeming grace. it may have saved many young men from impotence but it has made quite as many impotent thru venereal infection. some claim that it has saved many pure wives and daughters from temptation but it has contributed also thru infection to making thousands of innocent women sexual invalids.
prostitution is a maladjustment whose worst sin is perhaps the maladjustment of married life which it occasions in thousands of cases.
[pg 111]
too many young men, who acquired their sexual experience with prostitutes solely, imagine that they know and understand women, and they proceed to treat their life mates as tho the latter were only slightly different from the unfortunate neurotics they hired to relieve their sexual cravings. to that sort of experience we owe the horrible type of the "typical husband" who never misses an opportunity of reminding his wife of the fact that "she is only a woman."
