By Melvin Anchell, M.D., A.S.P.P.,
Mission Viejo, California; 1985.

Dr. Anchell is the author of many valuable books on this topic including: "Killers of Children;" and "What's Wrong with Sex Education."

A Psychoanalytic Look at Today's Sex Education

To explain why sex courses given in schools today from kindergarten through high school are so horrendously devastating, it will be helpful to mention first a few basic psychoanalytic facts concerning human sexuality before highlighting the sex material taught and the harm done to students in these courses.

The psychoanalytic facts that will be briefly mentioned are generally well known, but because these sexual truths are in complete opposition to the sex tenets of the sex educators, students and much of the public have been misled into disregarding these important human sexual qualities.

One essential characteristic concerning human sexuality is that sex is an intimate affair. Two people in love seek total privacy during their sexual intimacies.

The more two people are in love, the more they suffice for each other. Intrusions of others into their sexual life arouse intense feelings of shame and resentment. It is only when love is lacking that people are able to share physical sex with others or in groups. When this takes place, a regression occurs to a primitive state in which love plays no part.

Monogamous intimate love is an integral part of the sexual instinct. Its need is prescribed by the very nature of the sex act itself.

Another salient psychoanalytic sexual fact is that, in humans, the sexual instinct is composed of two parts - an affectionate part and a physical part. The affectionate component of the sexual instinct in humans is as important -- if not more so -- than the physical component.

For human sexuality to be complete, there must be a confluence, a coming together, of the affectionate and physical components of the sexual instinct. When the affectionate needs are weakened and physical sex is all that remains, sex becomes meaningless and life becomes empty.

Sex education programs from kindergarten through high school continuously downgrade the intimate, affectionate, monogamous nature of human sexuality. Whether the sex educators purposefully intend to do so or not, their sex teachings act, nevertheless, to desensitize students to the spiritual quality of human sexuality.

In addition, every teaching technique known is used to break down the students' mental barriers of shame, disgust and morality that are natural inborn mental dams that control base sexual urges.

Repeated psychoanalytic observations show that in humans, unlike any other creature, sexuality occurs in three phases.

First Phase

The first phase occurs at birth and lasts until about the sixth year of life.

The initial sensual pleasure in life is derived from the sucking that is associated with the infant's need for nourishment. (From the very beginning it can be seen that natural sensual pleasure is united with life sustaining needs).

The sucking stage usually comes to an end around the second year of life at which time the child's main sensual pleasure is attained through expressions of aggressiveness.

Sexual aggressiveness consists of the desire to master another by force rather than by wooing. Such pleasure may not seem so surprising if one realizes that cruelty is a primitive vestige that remains in the human sexual instinct.

The aggressive stage passes into the third stage of childhood sexual development around three years of age and continues up until the fifth and sixth years.

The predominant sensual impulses of the 3- to 6-yearold child is "to see and show nudity." This stage is exhibitionistic and voyeuristic in nature. It can be readily seen in the innocent but unmistakable sensual excitement that the 3- to 5-yearold child exhibits when gleefully running about the room nude after a bath.

Children should not be encouraged to linger in these early stages of childhood sexual development.

If misguided adults, sex educators or child molesters cause the child to linger in these early sensual stages, an arrest in further sexual growth may occur.

Such an arrest in sexual development, indeed, may happen as a result of the sex teachings given to 3- to 5-year-old children. Sex education given to these kindergarten students consists of repeated demonstrations of nudity, genital anatomy and of showing how humans, as well as animals, mate.

The 3- to 5-year-old has absolutely no need for such sex teachings. The instructions have no beneficial value and can only serve to disrupt the child's further sexual maturation.

For example, a 3- to 5-year-old child, who is repeatedly given demonstrations of nudity, genital anatomy and instructions on the mechanics of mating, may become fixed in the need for an undue amount of exhibitionistic and voyeuristic pleasures in his or her later sex life. In such cases, the eye may replace the genital organ as the primary sexual site. Sexual growth ceases and "seeing and showing" becomes the main sexual aim.

Over the years, the widespread sexual interferences of sex educators with the sexual development of 3- to 5-yearold children are undoubtedly responsible for the ever-increasing exhibitionism and voyeurism seen in today's society.

The sex instructions given to 3- to 5-year-old on mating causes still further problems.

Psychoanalysis has shown that when a child is permitted to watch people mate (whether supervised by a sex teacher or not), the sex act is invariably regarded as a sadistic subjugation--an abuse--of the female.

The cruelty feelings in children subjected to such demonstrations may be strengthened and in later life an excessive amount of sadism and masochism may be relied upon to express their sexuality.

Sometime during the years of 3 to 6 there are brief intervals in which the child has inclinations to fondle its genitals. If a child is encouraged to engage in these genital acts, incessant masturbation may continue right through childhood, into adolescence and adulthood.

For example, a girl child led to engage in genital sex play by a child molester or sex instructions may grow up to become a nymphomaniac.

For the nymphomaniac, the sex act is merely a compulsive urge to repeat her early seductions. Any man who will have sex with her is considered a suitable partner. Her appetite for sex is like the alcoholic's for liquor--she can never get enough, she is never satisfied and she gets no pleasure from it.

It should be emphasized that a most important psychoanalytic finding that has been observed over and over again, show that every adult pervert is a product of premature sexual seduction in early childhood. This is true whether the seduction is due to actual attacks by a child molester or by seduction that is due to overexposures to sexual activities in sex classrooms or the pornographic media.

The Second Phase

School sex education given to the 6- to 12-year-old child coincides with the second phase of human sexual development. The sex programs given to the preteen student have further serious effects.

The second sexual phase is referred to throughout the world as the latency period.

This period of sexual development begins about 6 years of age and lasts up until 13 years of age. It has been shown to exist in savages as well as civilized people.

In the 6- to 12-year-old child, direct sexual feelings become quiescent. Because of this dormancy for direct sexual energies, latency is a time in life when the individual normally experiences the greatest tranquility.

The dormant sexual energies in the child do not disappear during latency, but are redirected by the mind and are used to serve other purposes. For example, during latency, some redirected sexual energy is used for acquiring knowledge. This is why the 6- to 12-year-old child is most educable.

Scholastic tests done on today's sexually educated 6- to 12-year-olds, indeed, show that these students have accomplished less scholastically than pre-sex-education students.

Prior to the establishment of sex programs, educators acted as though they seemed to realize that involving the child in sexual matters made the child uneducable, and they made every effort to avoid concerning the child with sexual matters.

The scholastic problems in today's schools cannot be corrected by spending more money for buildings, equipment and teachers. They can only be corrected by removing the sex education interferences which make students uneducable.

There are many cultural and personal achievements attained through the redirection of sexual energies during latency, but the most important achievement of all is the development of the capacity for compassion. It is this ability to feel compassion that truly separates man from all other creatures.

The second most important achievement .resulting from the redirection of sexual energies during latency is the strengthening of mental barriers that control perverse sexual impulses. The mental barriers that control raw instinctual sexual urges are shame, disgust, morality, aesthetics and so on. These mental barriers are inborn and are present at birth. However, to be effective in later life, they must be strengthened during latency.

Thus, proper sexual maturation and development of conscience during latency, makes invaluable contributions to the individual and his civilization.

The sex teachings given to the 6- to 12-year-old students keep sexual impulses stirred up, disrupting sexual growth, as well as personal and cultural achievements.

A partial summary of adverse effects due to the sex educators' interferences during latency is that they: 1) Make the 6- to 12-year-old student less educable; 2) can block the development of compassion; 3) weaken the mental barriers controlling base sexual instincts, thereby making the child vulnerable to perversions in later life.

Not infrequently, sex educators applaud the bold, saucy, immodest behavior of their student protégés and proclaim such behavior to be signs of increased social acumen.

In truth, the personality traits that they applaud are the early characteristics of the psychopath--that is, an individual who has no concern for anyone but himself or others in so far as they can serve some purpose for him.

The sex educators' teachings, along with the behavior portrayed by the heroes and heroines in today's movies, have made indelible impressions--scars--on the minds of young people. Gutter sex from these sources shape the character and sexual behavior of many youths.

From these sources youths are taught to remove controls over base aggressive and sexual instincts and to live by instinctual behavior only--these are the characteristics of barbarians.

The psychopathy in sexually indoctrinated, instinctually motivated, preteen children has reached alarming proportions. Preteen murders, pregnancies and criminality are not infrequent. This increase in crimes, violence and sex is even more shocking when one considers that the 6- to 12-yearold, who has not been sexually disturbed, is normally a most responsible individual and least likely to be involved in sociopathic behavior.

An egregious example, but not an unexpected one, of the savage behavior in a sex-educated and sexually uncontrolled adolescent living in an affluent community, having ready access to cable TV and other sources of pornography, can be seen in the June 15, 1985, news article appearing in the Los Angeles Times:

• `Crybaby,' 17, Gets 69 Years to Life in Two Sex Slayings - By Tim Waters, Times Staff Writer

   

• "...A judge ... sentenced a Rancho Palos Verdes teenager to 69 years to life in prison on convictions of sexually molesting and murdering two young girls.

   

• "Torrance Superior Court Judge Cecil J. Mills imposed the sentence on Kevin Earl Hindmarsh, 17, who was found guilty last February on two counts each of murder and sodomy with a foreign object in the slayings of the 11-year-old Palos Verdes Peninsula girls.

   

• "...After listening to a tearful plea by a mother of one of the victims, that Hindmarsh should be sent to prison, Mills handed down the maximum sentence allowed under law.

   

• "Based on his reading of a psychological report, the judge said he believed Hindmarsh is sociopathic...

   

• "The victims, Neda O'Sullivan and her friend, Kristin Joy MacKnight, were found beaten and sexually assaulted the afternoon of May 10, 1984, in a condominium in the gated Rancho Palos Verdes Ridgegate complex where Neda lived with her mother ... Neda was already dead. Kristin died the next day at a hospital.

   

• "Defense attorney Fredricks has said that he will appeal the conviction."

Regarding morality, values and standards, sex educators teach students to distrust the values and morals of parents and the Judaeo-Christian religions. The educators encourage inexperienced youths to develop their own values that, in fact, consist of having no values at all. Students are led to believe that values simply entail enjoying what you do and do what you enjoy.

Should one feel that these statements about the values and standards promoted by sex educators are exaggerated or atypical, an examination of any ordinary "sex education teacher's guide and resource manual" should be made--as for example, the manuals provided to schools by Planned Parenthood. The section on "Sexuality and Values" in these manuals discusses three topics only.

One topic is "Human Sexual Responses" which is based on the reports of 300 or so "paid volunteers" and prostitutes used by Masters and Johnson to engage in sex acts while monitored by viewers and electronic devices.

The second topic discussed in the "Sexuality and Values" section is Masturbation. The masturbation discussion consists of explaining and sanctioning all forms of masturbation that lead to orgasmic emissions. If parents object to open masturbation, students are told to masturbate more privately in order to avoid family arguments.

The third and final topic discussed in "Sexuality and Values" -- a section that is supposed to give young people better values than established ' ones -- is homosexuality. Homosexuality is taught as a normal variation. The manuals advise sex teachers to bring homosexuals into the classroom to give students first-hand information about how homosexuals conduct themselves sexually. Students are taught that the homosexual's oral-genital sex acts, his oral-anal acts, and his mutual- and self-masturbation are normal and beneficial.

The Third Phase

The third and final phase of human sexual development begins in puberty, around the age of 13, and continues throughout adolescence and early adulthood.

In this final phase, latency comes to an end and direct sexual feelings are reawakened. In the case of adolescent boys, the reawakened sexual energies are more direct and are centered in the genitalia.

The erotic feelings and behavior of adolescent girls follows a much different course. Because her genital structures are biologically unready and remain anesthetic to sexual intercourse until much later in life, and because a girl's feminine psychology is not completed until late adolescence, the adolescent female has a natural aversion to sexual intercourse. Engaging in the sex act causes her unpleasant tensions, and these tensions reinforce the adolescent girl's normal sexual inhibitions.

A teenage girl's eroticism may be as intense as the boy's but her desires are not for sexual intercourse, but involve fantasies and dreams, kisses and caresses, the wish to love and to be loved and sometimes thoughts of having a child. Her sensual feelings, however, are not inseparably entwined with the sex act, such as they are in the male.

Today's sexually-educated and misled teenage female, who fails to abide by her natural feminine inhibitions and regularly engages in sex, reacts with feelings of coldness and emptiness. Her feminine psychology fails to develop. Her feminine emotions become dry and sterile. A lifelong conflict develops between herself and her inner femininity and motherhood feelings.

Not infrequently, the sexually-active adolescent girl expresses great pleasure from engaging in sexual intercourse. However, the pleasure she feels is derived from the instinct for independence. Her sexual inhibitions, she believes, are due to parental and religious teachings and by acting contrary to these teachings. She feels a satisfaction of doing her own thing. It is not possible in this paper to discuss all the psychoanalytic explanations of why some adolescent girls become sexually active. However, the prime cause is peer, educational and media pressures.

The dichotomy between the adolescent boy's readiness for sex and the girl's natural sexual inhibitions serves a vital purpose. Nature always has a reason for what it does.

The girl's reluctance serves to strengthen the affectionate and spiritual nature of sex. Adolescent chastity is essential for the spiritualization of sex. Through sexual spiritualization, the adolescent learns to feel esteem for members of the opposite sex. In boys this esteem is especially felt for girls who are chaste.

Esteem and affection for the sex partner are essential if human sexual needs are to be fulfilled. When affectionate needs are not met during sexual intercourse, frustrations result. A buildup of these frustrations results in mental anxiety and depression. For relief, many of today's promiscuous youths turn to perversions, alcohol, drugs and, not infrequently, suicide.

Adolescents admitted to hospitals for depression have tripled, and suicide has increased by 200 percent since the establishment of sex education programs in schools--that is, in the past 20 or so years.

An epidemic of adolescent suicides is sweeping our nation. Teenage suicides now rank as the second leading cause of death in young people under 21.

In the March 21, 1985, issue of the Los Angeles Jewish Community Bulletin, psychiatrist Dr. Richard Bloom reports that the dramatic rise in teen suicides can be directly attributed to sex.

Dr. Bloom says, "Having extremely active sex lives by the time they're 14, teenagers have lost that feeling of looking forward to a special someone. Most kids have been through every kind of sexual experience by the time they're 16."

From kindergarten on, there is one main theme in school sex education programs--and that is carnality.

In junior and senior high schools, students are led into affectionless free love relationships and perversions by the sex educators. Some teachers, such as at Long Beach State College, award extra credit to students who participate in perverted sex acts and report their experiences in the classroom.

An over tolerance for perverts is instilled in the students by the sex educators. This over tolerance destroys the individual's inborn mental defense mechanism to shun the pervert as a means of avoiding contamination.

Teaching youths an over tolerance for perverts and an acceptance of the belief that orgasm achieved by any means is beneficial can lead young people into becoming polymorphous perverts--that is, mechanical robots capable of engaging in any kind of sex act with indifference and without guilt. These are the characteristics of prostitutes and pimps.

Along with the carnal teachings, students are given detailed instructions on contraception, abortion, childbirth and venereal diseases.

After stuffing the minds of students year after year with sexual indoctrinations, the sex educators, nevertheless, claim that they can prevent teen and preteen pregnancies if only the public would be even more supportive of sex education programs.

The sex educators insist that more funds be spent on teaching and providing contraception. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, a major sex education organization, goes even further and places the blame for today's preteen and teen pregnancies on American manufacturers for not developing more and better contraceptives for the sexually active students. The Guttmacher Institute and the sex educators do not begin to place the blame on themselves for the sexual disasters in today's young people. But they point their fingers at parents and the U.S. Congress for not appropriating more funds for school sex education programs.

The truth is that today's sex education programs are the direct cause for millions of teenagers becoming pregnant each year.

In 1979, it was determined that 5 million sexually educated adolescent girls between the ages of 15 and 19 engaged in sexual intercourse. In 1980, 1.1 million pregnancies occurred in these sexually active 15- to 19-year-old girls; 460,000 of these ended in abortions. This statistical information does not include the number of pregnancies and abortions among 10- to 14-year-old sexually educated girls.

By their callous teachings on abortion, sex educators have so desensitized students to abortion that should a sexually-educated girl become pregnant, she submits to these operations with about as much concern as buying an ice cream cone. Indeed, to meet the demands of unwed teenagers, abortion clinics have become as plentiful as local ice cream stores.

Sex educators have either a mental block -- a strong repression -- or, for some reason, cannot understand that their sex programs are directly responsible for the pregnancies, abortions, perversion, suicides and psychological, as well as, physical venereal diseases that are epidemic in today's youths. They not only deny their accountability, but have the gall to consider themselves the saviors of today's youths and claim they are protecting young people from the teaching, or lack of teaching, of sexually-inhibited parents and outmoded religion.

Nowhere do the sex educators make the slightest suggestion that their devastating sex programs should be stopped.

At no time do they remotely suggest that the cure for today's teen pregnancies, venereal diseases and suicides necessitates that the educational system uphold the family and basic Judaeo-Christian morality--a morality that supports the struggle for existence and sustains civilized life.

The national sexual calamity among our youths that has been caused by 20 years of kindergarten-thru-high-school sex education remains unabated.

The questions are "Has the educational system brought us to the point of no return?" and "Has our civilization already been destroyed?"

If not, what can be done? First, the gangrenous material filling the minds of our children as a result of today's sex education and the pornographic entertainment media must stop forming. A tourniquet preventing further spread of contamination must be applied.

Sex educators must be led to know that we have had enough.

Local, state and national school officials must be led to know that we have had enough, and that we expect them to translate our outrage into educational courses that serve the needs of civilized people -- not the needs of those living by instinct alone.

In a democratic society, popular demand can -- if sufficiently widespread and sustained -- bring our school leaders around to meet the needs of our society. There can be no compromise -- perversion and mature sexuality cannot exist side by side. Each destroys the other.

For the continued existence of human beings with consciences, we must eradicate the psychological venereal diseases that threaten our civilization.

Sexual decency must be maintained, not only in the home, but in the schools to which we send our children.

Idealistic?