Who were the experts on sexuality in the Scandinavian countries? What kinds of sexual knowledge have been important to the sex experts, and how have the sex experts presented themselves in the media? I will discuss the figure of the sex expert in Scandinavia from the 1930s to today by ...
(Show more)Who were the experts on sexuality in the Scandinavian countries? What kinds of sexual knowledge have been important to the sex experts, and how have the sex experts presented themselves in the media? I will discuss the figure of the sex expert in Scandinavia from the 1930s to today by analyzing biographies, advice columns, popular books and photographs/portraits of different sex experts.
Many (but not all) of the Scandinavian sex experts were sexologists. Janice M. Irvine has described sexology as an ‘umbrella term denoting the activity of a multidisciplinary group of researchers, clinicians and educators concerned with sexuality’. Both clinicians and educators were crucial in the Scandinavian Popular Journal for Sex Education (Populært Tidsskrift for Seksuell Oplysning), which was initiated by the young Norwegian medical doctor Karl Evang in 1932. Many of the sex experts who wrote in the journal, as well as later experts, have written for a Scandinavian public. Tracing the Scandinavian sex expert can be an example of entangled history: Popular advice literature by experts such as Max Hodann (Germany/Norway/Sweden), Karl Evang (Norway), Inge and Sten Hegeler (Denmark), Maj-Brith Bergström-Walan (Sweden), and Malena Ivarsson (Sweden) have been published in one or two of the neighboring countries, and some experts have had advice columns in newspapers in two countries.
James Secord has underlined the importance of studying knowledge in transit. The sexual knowledge that will be discussed has circulated geographically (between the countries), but also socially as the sex experts popularized theoretical knowledge. In the 1930s Karl Evang was clearly influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis. In his sexual health manuals published after the war he embraced Kinsey’s large-scale sex research. Freud and Kinsey represent two very different, but also typical, forms of sexual knowledge: The therapist who builds his theory based on patients’ narratives, and the statistical scientist who bases his theory on large samples of the population. Following the Kinsey reports statistical surveys of people’s sex life was conducted in Scandinavia. They revealed new knowledge on sexuality, and social scientists conducting such surveys appeared as a new type of sex experts.
Pictures of and interviews with some of the most well known Scandinavian sex experts can tell us how the sex experts have been presented in media. Although Evang was a political radical figure, he presented (and considered) himself as a man of rationality and science. Maybe to counter allegations of “sexualism” he referred to a stable, married life. The playful sex-expert seems to be a creation that appeared in the aftermath of the 1960s sexual revolution and along with the development of the tabloid press.
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