"Kinsey Interview: Paul Gebhard, Institute Director and Wardell Pomeroy, researcher -- Tape 1"

This and I go in about once a month. Now. I know you're going OK. First of all tell me the story of how you joined the king's Institute. I was a psychologist and the mental hygiene department in South Bend Indiana. And Kinsey came and muttered that the city is helping. And. Asked for people to give sexist views. It was perfectly happy to get mine. I was intrigued by what he was doing. You got a problem. You wanted to say that you did

can. You can you should do a little bit and then rewind the tape and look at it right there. Was a long day for sure. And you really have a double image. Oh. Yeah. Tell the story of how you joined the institute how Kinsey got in there. Yes I was working as a clinical psychologist in the mental hygiene clinic in South Bend Indiana. And Kinsey came through to lecture people who were interested such as social workers and so forth. About sex in prison. And I had worked as a psychologist in prison for a year and a half. Very shortly before this

and thought I knew something about sex in prison. When I went to hear him lecture I was absolutely dumbfounded by his knowledge of things that I had NO NO idea about at all that he had gotten out of inmates when he interviewed them. He asked for volunteers to give their own sex history. Which I immediately did him again was. Dumbfounded by his throne and his ability to interview. He offered me a job shortly thereafter which I turned down because I didn't want to become involved and Turley with sex and nothing else. This was in September of 42. My wife after some delay. Said that she thought I ought to take the job. That's really what I want to do and that's all I needed. But the best decision I ever made in my life. And that's how I did it. What kind of man was he to work for. Well first he always treated you as a colleague and not as. An

underling of any sort. He was hardworking driven and really more than hardworking so that on a field trip he would last outlast me and anybody else it was long. He was his long sisters stay desex. He was he was fascinating but occasionally go off and do other things which is called waspish I wasn't interested in. So occasionally he was boring but really mostly not and mostly was very very involved in sex. He spoke also about the need to restate the question. You know one of the things his uniqueness there is there's the Kinsey were just completely unique. There was there was no nobody anywhere near. He was a renaissance man and he was if he had anything to do with sex he would dabble into it no matter how far it went where or how small it was. I felt very comfortable in being his equal. Being treated as a as an

equal rather than an underling. It was a big asset that expect you to work as hard as he did. Not intellectually No. We knew we didn't. But actually you would prefer that we did. Have you tried that in your book all of the talk for the TV about the contrast how unusual it is for a man with your background in both his childhood background the gall wasp the guy in the counties out in the field with a butterfly net and it becomes ex-U.S. kind of we need to restate all that in. Well yes it is amazing that Kinsey had the background of being very religious. One story he tells about when he was a graduate student at Harvard a fellow student came to him and to that was very upset because he was masturbating. So Kinsey led him to the dormitory and they both got down by the side of the bed kneeled down and prayed to God that he would stop masturbating. This was Kinsey is a. Unbelievable.

The thing about him that is probably even more impressive to me than anything else is his lack of judgment and being willing to accept people. And what they've done completely without judging what they do. He could never have done this research. He could never have gotten us to do it if he had imparted this to us. That's one of the things he saw in me when at the beginning was the fact that I had very few judgments then and I had even fewer as I got going it was Kinsey. Well even if you take all the social history doing what people do sexually. I'm particularly concerned with. Is that if that is his nature is that something that evolved as a scientist or is that impossible to take in something that is probably not possible to separate those two as part. But he was used as a as a taxonomist as working it was he didn't have to judge you didn't care whether I. I said this size wing or size wing

but he carried that over into human sexuality. He had a certain that in the book he had a certain lack of sophistication. Yeah he was. He lacked sophistication in several ways because he he hadn't known top echelon people. He was sort of naive in a lot of ways. He went to Mexico for example and went into a movie theater. And found that they were hissing and booing people who were kissing and that was it came as a sudden shock to him. The lower level people didn't approve of hugging and kissing as he did. Is that an example of how he was. He was went to Guatemala and was really dumbfounded that. They insisted that he wear long sleeves that there was like nudity if he didn't have

long sleeves. Yet when he went in swimming in a nearby river and everybody was naked. So. He had a lot of differences in his. Way of looking at things. How did you know you were doing something important that you know you're a part of something that. Yes. Yes. I got him more I didn't realize none of us realized how quickly it would happen in 1948 when you restate that question for me. The question is how quickly was I aware of how important this work was. And my answer is yes I was but I was surprised at how quickly it took over. That did in 1948 when the mail volume came out we just bang bang bang there was. A thousand letters in a week. There were magazines. Books and so on and on that were involved with this immediately right away. So that took us by surprise. Well they had their own process which is what's one of the most important important

moments important qualities of the relationship between the two. Well let me start out by saying that the most important thing in interviewing isn't doing any sort of sex research is to be done non-judgmental if you aren't that you won't get anywhere with this. So in an interview you have to be willing to accept whatever the person tells you. So that's one of the important things. Second thing is to relate to a person and try to get into his or her skin. By my train of thought. They're not going to relate to the person that's not you. The second thing is you know what I was getting at. First you have to use their language their vocabulary their way of looking at things. I can remember so clearly taking the history of a. 16 year old black juvenile delinquent in a

room in Delaware and. It turned out that at 14 she had had an illegitimate child. Not in my upper levels naivety I said gee I was like oh. And then she had a miss. Which means she had a miscarriage. Now you said that was lucky wasn't it. That was exactly the wrong thing to say because you. Wanted the baby and the fact she was 16 had nothing to do with her 14. So that's an example of how you have to get into the skin of the person you're interviewing rather than your own judgments tell the story about the cocktail party called. Kinsey and I were at a cocktail party one time and he was asked the question. Are there certain kinds of sex histories that are harder to take another time. Are blacks harder to take than whites are women harder to take in men. And Kinsey replied No. There aren't any ones that are harder. Well this is just patently not true. But we were taught that we didn't argue with each other in public that we settled our differences. So I

was scratching my head as to how I could express my own view without getting in trouble with Kinsey. And suddenly it dawned on me what the problem was. So I turned to him and said prok which is the name we called you know and I agree with you that there are some histories that are harder to take than others. But wouldn't you agree with me that there are some histories that are easier to take than others. And he grinned and said yes that was true. But this idea of something being too hard just went against his grain and that's what he was responding to. He tried to conquer things that young. Did you know at the time. Now in retrospect but think in thinking of the time what you the studies will be when you when you for if you would sit down together talk about what would be done with all this material did you know what what use we rarely talk to in those terms we knew it was important and then we did the world need to know more about human sexuality and we were supplying this information. That's that's about as far as we tend to go in our discussions.

Talk about how the world just a little bit and how important his support lies in Hermie Wells was newly elected or appointed president of Indian university. I think in 1938 or seven probably. And that's when Kennedy first began working in the research and 38. And. We'll call him men and women know what was going on and why he was doing this research. Can replied. And Wells said that he would fight for his right to do it. This was an academic problem. But then later as time went on he became more and more a staunch advocate of the research and was very skillful in helping us avoid a lot of political problems that were all. The women of the Catholic. Diocese someplace in Fort Wayne Indiana for example got all upset about whether they should send their daughters to

a university that was studying this sort of thing. And Wells was very helpful in quelling that in working out the politics of the situation. Do you remember the first sexual history you ever taught. Oh yes. The first female sex history I ever took the males. The first one I took was a college student and he was like going to used to call them like sheep that they'd all do the same thing. But the first female history I took at Purdue University. And I was scared to death because I hadn't been working on the female part of the interview very much. Didn't think I knew it. All. I was also very much afraid that might become aroused sexually Of course that would never do because you're so involved in thinking that you get into it. But we stumbled through it and she sort of figuratively patted me on the head and said that was good. You did like then the first extensive homosexual history I took it was all clear in my

memory. That was our first big field trip. We went to the northwestern corner of Kansas into an exclusively black community. And we came away with getting the sex histories of. Three quarters of all the men women and children over 50. And then Perry Township. One of the histories you were taking was a black lawyer from a nearby town. And he went and. We had no place to take the history so I took the car and drove it into a vacant lot. And the country was out the country and put him under the wheel and I was on the right hand side so I could write. But he really wasn't interested in much and give me a sex history he was interested in me. So I was sort of fending off with one hand and hey you may disagree with me. That was my introduction to a sense of home. Is true. You were sitting on the right side of the car. They got. Were you ever shocked being taken such as.

This. Shocked is not quite the word I would use. I got some very unusual things for example the first time I got the history of a man who had intercourse with a deer which was quite unusual. I became excited that I even remember I had an erection because of the excitement of the occasion but I don't think I was ever really shocked. I mean what is the most difficult. Obviously each of you with your different personalities had a greater difficulty in this kind of taking sexual history. But what was your difficulties and what was the reason that it was a business judgment or was it. No the rapid fire wasn't there yet. I can't actually know the question of what what was my most difficult part in taking a history is really what you're asking. I tended to not be dog good enough. Oh and another thing I guess this is the most important thing that I think about it. Is that I had to

commend the interview I had to be the chief. I had to pose or go after what I wanted to get out of the interview and that was hard for me to do. I'd been taught that the is always right. Over here the customer is not always right. And I can remember even saying to somebody say a 19 year old leather jacket and motorcycle. Good. Listen dammit if you don't want to give me a history get out of here. I don't need to take your history at all. You're not going to tell me the speed of it. I don't want to talk to you about it. And that was hard for me to do. I didn't but I didn't. You had to also. Did you have to memorize and I mean you had actually had everything memorized all the questions in the code and talk about it. But I I memorized everything in. In three weeks I think you could just start that by saying it was necessary for the interviews that we memorize it so it was necessary that we. Memorized the complete history.

We had no notes in front of us at all. And there were 350 questions took a lot of memorization took me about two or three weeks of working eight hours a day. Before. I was able to take a history. It took about six months before I had any facility and they can just take that long did you. You said it was the one he took histories. We did it. I said it. And Kinsey when he took history he said to me we would sometimes. Every year we'd take each other's history and I'd take Paul Gebhart history and Clyde Martin's history they'd take mine sometimes other either one of us would be sitting in other times not. Right. What was his style and what did you learn about him when he took six sisters. Was this the same person that he was when he was talking to you and your kids he would be the same sort of person when he. Took a history. There wasn't much difference. We were just we were trying to be sure that we were

grading things the same way we could. That's what we're after. And we did it we did we were good record within 90 percent of each other. You said in the book that people that the people really did kind of want to be honest with him though he sort of got something out of people. You know like of course we were all trying to get people to be honest with us and by and large we succeeded. It was really take me. Yeah. What mistakes would you say were made. The male and the female and then the whole research project. What's at stake here. Well. The question is where what mistakes we were making in the process. If we had to do over again I would have spent more time on a lower social level histories and we had we didn't have it. We got a fairly good sample we had 500 600 males for example. But that was in contrast to. 3000 upper level males.

So I would pay and they're harder to get harder to come by because they don't have organizations they belong to nearly as much. But that's one thing that I think would have helped. Although we still had a tremendous sample. And we talked much about a b b g b g b. Yeah he's in the book too isn't he. He's he was the head of the zoology department of the Aldine University. That was possible. Did. I don't know. And how about Vincent Nola's. He's more important now. Well last I heard he was a University of Rochester but I'm not sure. I think he may have left him going to Washington D.C. I have somebody else I want to ask you about. I don't know he's done yet. Know I'm off I don't want this to be on but I want to ask you about observations too. Nobody's talked about that about one because you actually started that that. That's what I'm trying to say on this one.

You have your but I think it's just great. The can see what they've done business with the devil himself if it ain't of his research that's true. He would have indeed. Yes. Is that the question. Yeah. The question is would Kinsey of you know what I've just said is I want to just as I stated in my book or as I stated in my book. Kinsey would have done business with the devil with the help the research. And this is true. The research was absolutely paramount. And he was astute enough to stay out of trouble. He never he got practically no trouble but he worked at it. Tell us about what was not as the public is not as aware of and that is the fact that he actually started observing sexual behavior and brought him back in for the filming and recording essentially. Well he used to say that in any other field you can observe what's going on in his study of girl

was she could watch to go Major to human sexual behavior. You can't do this. So he decided to fly in the face of the custom and hired a photographer. Bill Dolan back to come in. When people ask why we wanted Bill and ball and. Bill bark despite that phrase phrase you I mean that out and say when people ask if he's right there at that it was like why we had Bill Dillon by the photographer on our staff we would say that we're studying mammalian sexual behavior. We want to study how other mammals perform sexually. We forgot to say that the human is also a mammal but they seem to be satisfied the the. Audience seem to be satisfied with that sort of an explanation. So we did do a great deal of observing of all sorts of other mammals and humans

and this is what was the important significance why was this done. Well if you're studying what people are doing and you can watch what they're doing it gives you much more meaning as to what they're doing. Much more understanding of what's going on. So. Things that we could only conjecture or think about we could actually see for example what happens when a male ejaculates what happens to his body does he jacknife or does he throw his hips out or what does he do. And we found all sorts of interesting variations in the after reactions of ejaculation for example. Didn't I know this you know maybe this doesn't relate. I mean you don't know but did Masters and Johnson know that he did this is this I mean what is there a connection there. No they never had met Kinsey. Masters and Johnson and there were McKinzie. And to my knowledge they didn't know that he had done these observations until I came

along a good deal later and told him what what was he able to do with his own. Was anything ever done. Almost nothing was ever done about this. There are many many parts of the research that were never expanded because his death for example he was going to have a whole book on the sex life of artists the Great Artist of the world. You're going to have a whole book on prostitution and on and on. There were many many different books that were in his mind and never got pulled out. Well. Is that significance of presence that always seemed like that would be a hard place to go to take social history with a captive audience. Yeah. Prisons were a sort of a separate category we were interested again in what happens to men sexually when they're confined and can't find the usual sexual outlets. We started taking. Prison histories back at the Indiana State Prison which is a

state prison rather than a jail. And then we expanded that practically all the prisons in California and many in the East Coast and so forth. We found that with the way we got into prisons was first to go to the to the warden. And have him agree that we could to win without his ever finding out what we were getting. We went then to the top inmate of an institution in San Quentin. It was 14 of the top people of the institution. So give them an hour's lecture on human sexuality based on our previous research. Ask them to give their histories which they did. And from that point on 95 percent of all inmates could have been would have given their histories. The next day because these 14 men vouch for us. All starting with the males on what is at first talk about what was controversial about it in the public's eye what the reaction was just tell that to cadets and tell that

story. Well the controversial part of Sexual Behavior in the human male was just the fact that for the first time people were able to discern what their next door neighbors were doing sexually. And so it was a they expose a really dumb and very technical terms of people's sexual lives. And the there were many things for example the famous 37 percent figure of the males who have had at least one homosexual experience to the point of orgasm in their life. That was picked up and been talked about. It's really I think a rather insignificant figure but people haven't thought so the fact that 50 percent of men were having extramarital intercourse. Was controversial and disturbing to many people. And the female bhagam given the extramarital intercourse thing was thing I you know somebody in Massachusetts I forget I think a politician said that maybe these

things happen in the rest of the country but they certainly didn't happen in Massachusetts. So people just weren't willing and able yet to to look at what people were actually doing sexually. Now barring that having actually more controversial than the male. Yes. Because there were females because they were had been on a pedestal. Time a little bit about the efforts that you and the staff already put into control the reaction knowing that it wasn't the mail. What you what you did to try to control the reaction of the press. Well nobody. Well first we pulled together the top writers in the country who had written about the male body and they got the mall into Bloomington at the same time. Gave them the completed manuscript to the female Bhagam hall at the same time. Something back to their rooms and had them review them or whatever they wanted to say about the book

and give it back to us. So it was done to spread out over weeks or days or weeks. It was all done at the same time within a week. Talk about a little bit about the critics. What was some of the some of the criticism was and particularly how you felt about it when did you guys like it hurt. Well I guess heard isn't quite the word but. We were upset to a certain extent by the unfair criticism there were some criticism it was quite fair. But a lot of it was just pure baloney. The very fact that we the title of the book Sexual Behavior in the human male. They wanted to make a big deal about this that we were studying all human males. Well they didn't know the English language. If it was sexual behavior of the human male would be quite a different thing. But this was within the species the human male. I remember a noted psychologist complained bitterly that the various interviewers Kinsey myself and

Martin particularly. Were getting different results and we couldn't get them together. So for example. In nocturnal emissions Kimsey got twice the frequency of my kernel emissions at Pomeroy's did we couldn't understand what they were talking about we went back and looked it up and he was right that I had gotten an average of once every one and a half times a year. McTernan vision Kinsey gotten three times the year that was twice the amount but it was in significant difference. The sort of criticism just boiled as you had statistical criticism too I don't think I understand that part of the story. You might think you have consultants come in and look at the way you handle statistics. Yeah we had this week just before the female volume came out we had the Americans to school Association came out and interviewed us to see our statistics work. And with very few exceptions they gave us a very good clean

bill of health. And for example when one of the statisticians decided that he was going to test how. What happens when you exaggerate your sex history. They all had agreed to give their own sex histories when they came down. So this one was taking his history and found that he was. Vague sometimes and changed his story once in a while. We got through the history and then he told me that he had tried to double everything in his history by a factor of two to see what would happen. And he said he couldn't do it. It was just it was so much immediate recall that had to take place that he just couldn't do it. And he said You can't exaggerate this district impossible. Is why I wanted to I wish that I had not taken such mysteries in the process. I'm sure you do. And your bottom line. I mean either lying to you know to cover or lying to

brag. Well as I say it's very difficult to break because there's so many details to stuff us into going and taking essentially it's taking of a sex history it's very difficult to break to exaggerate because there's so much detail asked for it immediately that has to dovetail with something else that you can't do it you can cover up. And that's hard because it was cover up and the things that you covered up mostly were these socially taboos things such as homosexuality. We were able to get all sorts of crosschecks like husband and wife histories. We did take histories of a person in prison who had a homosexual relation and have him name all the people he'd had sex with in the prison then go to them and see if they would tell us about it. Two men by and large they did. So we had all sorts of checks as to whether we getting what we were getting was accurate or not. You're talking about it's part of that you worked with within the interview.

Is it tough sometimes toeing the line. Oh yes. Yeah. Roy here is an example of the history of a prostitute. And the question is how often do you roll your tricks. How often do you rob your customers. And she became indignant and said we never wouldn't do a thing like that's illegal. And 20 minutes later in the interview we asked her what percentage your tricks come back to you a second time. And if she gives a very low percentage who come back. We know that she's rolling her tricks and we will present that to her heart. This can't be because you told me this 20 minutes ago. And then they would admit that they'd see that we knew what it was all about. One of the critics many some of several the critics I think said many I guess said that the problem with this study is the male and female is they left out emotion that is love right. Right. And our answer is we are understanding love because the are you have to restate the question in

the in the criticism of the fact that we were studying only sex and not love or emotion. We answered by saying we are studying love or emotion that's been studied for 2000 years. We're studying something else. We're studying human sexuality. So you can. Try this on what we haven't done but we have to we want criticism at the beginning of your book you say three questions that you're going to try to answer in the book and your how it all started who was Kinsey on there. And the third question is what did it all mean and you're going to answer. So answer that. It's in the book but yeah well. There are about eight different pieces of information that we go through life on a social level differences aging differences religious differences age of adolescence differences and so on. So there were many new things that came out that nobody had any idea about before that we see this as a step in the direction of

learning more about human sexuality and that somebody else will come along. Masters and Johnson did in a way they studied one aspect of it so that we and. We see this is what's called a report we're reporting on not a completed thing but then something that's ongoing. What ness do you remember some of them is that you actually did dispel. Nymphomania the woman's years of sexual Amen's many years of sexual peak or whatever or something like that. There was no way I can think of right now. Yeah I have a whole list of them which Miss that we studied which don't come readily to mind. But certainly the aging picture is something quite different. The more highly responsiveness of the female that people haven't been accustomed to thinking about the one of the things that I think is important contribution of the book is what we call our

zero to six scale. Whereas zero is a person who's exclusively heterosexual sex is exclusively homosexual three then would be right in the middle and too often people who have categorized people as homosexual or heterosexual when in reality they are somewhere along the continuum is that still use that scale. And more and more it's being used to talk all talk about what what we were time of it before and that's that in retrospect the controversy over Kinsey seems slightly incredible in looking at it from where we are. I think what we were talking about was the concern about the sexual revolution and there was a revolution that took place around 1965 and made in 72. We had the abortion Supreme Court decision we had contraception the pill come along we had pornography attitudes changing the

definition changing and on and on there were a whole series of things that happened and now I think we're in a counter revolution where people are very restrained even in my book boys and sex book I wrote for teenage boys some 20 years ago or so. Suddenly in Rochester New York they decided that was not fit for the library. They lost the case. But that wouldn't have happened 10 years ago I don't think so. So there has been a revolution in the counterrevolution. I think now we're going back even and even if the Republicans win the election I think though this will continue to swing toward a more liberated point of view. Know that said the doctor spots called it's cause of the sick sick this uprising in the 60s and 70s and he's been accused of starting the second revolution. I mean it's one of the many factors that went into it. Masters and Johnson also been. Ms. Starting a social revolution

I'm talking a little bit now about kids these last days. I don't have anybody who's talked about that. Well remember he his heart was 50 percent enlarged. I remember in June of 1956 was it. He died 57 56. Anyway that June he died in August that June he and his doctor came to the institute to plead with him to cut down his workday and he agreed to cut it down to eight hours a day and then he proceeded to take the Doctor out a two hour trip to the institute to tell him all about it far beyond what he should have been doing. And within two months he was gone. Have an embolism. What what actually happened. A brief story of what happened in the years between the publishing of the female line and what you were doing and. Well it

has all changed in the garden in his khaki colored short stories just of working in the news that Dr. King tried. I remember that very well. Yeah. How long will this documentary be. Oh my goodness. You know Jim you were free to get much in 1953 with publication of the female volume. What happened and did it yourself from 1953 until he died in 56. We were working mostly on the sex in prison and we were spending a lot of time in

particularly the California prisons. And we were getting geared up for a third book in actuality the third book was a pregnancy birth and abortion. But that wasn't an Kinsey's Next List. We lost funding of that time on 53. The Rockefeller Foundation withdrew funding. Their excuse was that we had too much money from being nobody anywhere we didn't need it. Which was of course the work. Tell us why it wasn't true. Well we didn't sell that many copies. It wasn't supporting us and the. Sales went down after a year or so doesn't stay up that high very long. So we didn't need more money but we didn't get it. What's the legacy that you personally have gone. Oh my. Well I wrote a book about this really. I have a great respect for that man. They tell you a great deal of confidence in myself as a

result of working at the it. I got a way of looking at things that I wouldn't have had otherwise. And I just find myself feeling very fortunate that I had 20 years of things to do. All of the things that you techniques and things that you still use a history dating all the time. I'm retired now so I do very little history taking but certainly in New York I took a great many years because I was in the practice of psychotherapy then and that's been invaluable to me. I tell you how many stories you can tell us just any any more about some of the stories that you have on the streets of New York and the streets of Chicago and in the bars of getting sexual histories from those places. Well I remember you I'm taking a history of a man in New York City during the War. The Lincoln hotel. I think it's changed his name now and at the end of the history he

calmly pulled out a gun and told me of the story he was going to rob well as he left my place. And I think he was sort of testing me to see whether I would turn him in or not which I didn't do of course is that your business. Tell me about it. So nothing ever came of it. I had a man cut his throat in front of my face and San Quentin turned out that he was in a suicide which I didn't know at the time but he said it was a little nicked up a razor which barely broke the skin and so it wasn't anything but I didn't know that until later. So I've had a few scares of that sort. Also talk about the way lengths you want to to ensure the confidentiality in fact the only person that really can completely read the sexual histories because they will quote it for you for a man. That's right. And to this day. That's correct. Well Could you restate the whole thing I just.

We went to extremes to protect the confidentiality of immaterial. And the year there were nine of us who took any histories at all there were only four of us who took the major member and Clyde now has not kept up with his due date. And so he doesn't know Gebhart hasn't. So I'm really the only person left who can date you can please take history into what it means and what did you think the confidentiality and the code. Well it's all done in symbols. You can take by. You in one page one eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper you can take the equivalent of twenty five twenty five pages of material by calling it and very cryptically. Putting down with person said. And that's just when I've written a book about it now so that now other people have available the history taking if they want it.

When do you train Saxtorph searchers now. What do you tell the other Africans and what he did with them. I haven't read my book. First the first requirement of that right right. I am good for the most important thing I have to keep bringing back to this that I see as a sex researcher needs to do or it's a person who deals with sex of any sort. Is to be non-judgmental and I keep coming back to this. It's not the only thing. But as one of the most important parts of being a sexologist I have to ask you about that guy in Kansas who drove all the way to the south and took 17 hours to take his sexual history. He suffered third at 17 of his 33 religious as correct. That's correct. Amazing that he had sex with 200 pre-adolescent girls 600 pre-adolescent males. Many animals and on and on. And he had it all documented this wasn't just his

fantasy but he had it all laid out and records that he kept. The most amazing sex story I've ever run across in SR. So I just went on and now my question is why why the strong man and why nothing was done. He was enjoying sex and he was in love with scientists that he wanted to record it. He'd say I wonder how far males ejaculate so the next five hundred males he would get Jaiku weight and he'd measure the distance of their ejaculate and never been recorded before. I wonder how long a man's penis really is an erection. So again he would make you the next hundred men. He was interested in finding out what people did sexually. So he really wasn't in pursuit of the knowledge. Yes you know he got a lot of enjoyment out of it. Yeah. Can you can you tell me is there anything you think I should have asked that I haven't come back in.

Nothing against his redesigns. I think I think. Now I think we covered it but you're so far away I can't go back to you with a camera really fast thing. I think we're done. I think. It

Right. Well. It began in the old biology building which is now Swaine East. I guess they call it. That's where Kinsey had his office. So it began in Kinsey's office and Kinsey's office has been destroyed when they built this new suite addition onto it. We move from there into the basement of all in the hall and then we move from one hall into Morrison. I'm sorry. Wait a minute we move from Owen Hall into Jordan Hall and Jordan Hall in the Morris. OK. But every 10 years they move.

Yeah. So basically I can just get pictures on the outside of those buildings. So polars wonderful that his daughter I mean his wife I think was a daughter of Lowell who was a very famous astronomer. That's right. And Frank was one of the first professors on campus who dared grew a beard. Really you for Benny to go Bears. They didn't forbid it but it was frowned upon. To give me. We are where we are. OK. Can you give me an overview of your years over here. Yeah well the projects start with projects the projects that we're doing are raising. And let me remind you that you need to restate my question. All right. Let me think how I. Was doing it. You want the you simply kind of a sequence of projects for the delivery of the abortion. OK I went first and you did pick up a couple different homosexuality

studies. All right. I think I can do that. Here we see here we're interested in knowing what projects were undertaken by the Institute during the time I was director of the first project was the thing on pregnancy birth and abortion which came out in a book by that same title. Kinsey had actually done work on that prior to his death that had just barely started. So we felt obliged to finish that which we did. And subsequently I went to the National Institute of Mental Health and pointed out to them that we had an enormous amount of data there that must be preserved. And we wish to also analyze it. But step number one was to get it on computer tape or it would be more accessible. So thanks to a grant for me and I am h our second big project. We call it the

data retrieval project. Nearly all of the Kinsey data is punched up on cards and then put on tape and safely recorded that way. The third project then would be the project on sex offenders. We did interviews several thousand sex offenders during Dr. Kinsey's era. And so we analyze the data on the sex offenders who published it that took care of the primary. You might say Kinsey data and then it was time for us to embark on some new projects. And by this time we had added Bill Simon and John ganyan to the staff. And so we began a project on the sexual behavior of college students so-called youth study which again was funded by I think that was funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. Let's see. Then shortly thereafter we

began our first broad homosexual's study which was funded by an image and that was studying a gay community on the near north side of Chicago. And that worked out well and so we tried an even bigger study in the Mekka San Francisco and all of these. Well the San Francisco study eventuated in two books plus a bibliography. And by that time we had Alan Bell and Merck Weinberg and Colin Williams on their and interspersed between these oh and then finally I did a kind of a summary of the Kinsey data so that people would know what data we had in case they needed to refer to it or wanted us to analyze portions of it for them. Those were the oh I left out what we had also an attitude survey. This was done largely by Albert class and Eugene Levitt. This was to

ascertain what the American public thought about different kinds of sexual behavior and there was an emphasis on human sexuality and it proved that two things one that when it came to sex the United States was remarkably conservative and B that the double standard is alive and well. That unfortunately didn't eventuate in the book but I think it will be published perhaps in the next year or two interspersed I might add between these major projects everyone is doing chapters in books and journal articles and things of that sort. So we were pretty productive. One of the things that most notable was setting up information services tools to explain but with make sure you restate my question in addition to the research projects we had several other projects both of which might be called educational.

The director of me and I pointed out we should serve more of an educational function rather than a purely research function. And so he urged us to begin teaching about sex. First of all I would go into this in more detail later. So we began a teaching function and then we began an information service. This letter was almost a necessity because we had been getting mail with questions. And this increased to a point where I found I was spending at least a third of my day answering letters and I felt obligated to do that. Can I stop you start. I want you to stay on top of the information services without mentioning the teaching thing. So right now I can use either one. OK. Because because I may add that I'm not in a different order saying you going to start over again. In addition to the various research projects. We also undertook an information

project that he ought to call it that many people have been writing letters some were just from a lay person some are from physicians some were from Turney and so forth and they come to a point where about a third of my time was spent answering the mail. And so we realized something and something needed to be done here and the National Institute of Mental Health liked the idea. And so they gave us a grant and we started an information service so that people could write in and we could give them bibliographies we could give them data we could even run some data out of our own and give them the results. This proved to be a very popular service and it's continued to this day for a long time. We didn't charge anything because we felt that since we were supported by public money as we used we could do not charge. But when Grant's got a little bit thinner we began making a nominal charge for our services

spendings in specifics like what information services would operate like who might write in and what kinds of questions they might ask what kind of thing. Attorney is would write and if they were involved in sexual cases for example if someone is defending a so-called child molester they want to know about paedophilia or if there was a case of so-called obscenity they would ask us what other court cases did we know that dealt with this particular topic. So there's a fair number from attorneys then interestingly enough we've got a moderately large number of things from physicians because your average physician doesn't know too much about sex. They know the anatomy but they aren't very good on the behavior. So physicians write in and want to know whether we thought something was normal or abnormal or whether exhibitionists would escalate into rape. So that's what we had some inquiries from

law enforcement sources and then a good many from simply private individuals know wanting to know what to do with something or another you have someone right and they've discovered their husband is a fetishist or something of that sort should they take the children and run away or not. You know I think if we had all manner of questions. Was it during your administration that we started the summer institute. Yes. The summer institute again was an offshoot of our educational might call it the thrust when we realized that there were so many professionals as physicians attorneys consulars and simply teachers that wanted and needed the information we decided to provide it. So we began giving what we call our summer programs which lasted several weeks and we would invite any experts in the field

and including ourselves and give a series of lectures with audio visual supplements and so forth. And they were quite successful. We gave them that see I think we gave at least nine of them. OK. You made some changes in the institute I think by hiring a sociologist not something I know I've been going. Yes. We changed after Kennedy's death. We made several changes. One was of course that we had more people publishing independently and running their own projects. Well I can't say their own projects but being in charge of broad Institute projects when Kinsey was alive we only had one project at a time with Kinsey of course as he is the leader. That type of hierarchy wouldn't wouldn't function in the late

50s 60s and 70s. If you were going to get good young men they wanted to run their own show and be the first author on their own publications. So that was perhaps the biggest change I made. The institute became an umbrella organization with all these colleagues beneath it and we tried to operate as a mutually supportive concern but each individual might have his be the chief project. Well what do you call me. Well at any rate the head of their own particular project and you're sending by the sociologist say yes in fact we sort of went overboard on the sociologists we hear ganyan as a sociologist and Simon was a sociologist and Weinberg and Williams were both sociologists but we didn't really care what the discipline was as long as the individuals were good

sex researcher and I might add if I can interject there is one good thing about the Institue. Most people don't realize this as Indiana University proclaims itself to be the mother of presidents because so many of its faculty who go off and become presidents of other universities and colleges. The Institute served the same function for sex research all over ex-employees have gone out and started up their own sex research here and there around the country. So it's you might see our research efforts have gone beyond ourselves. I think you were quoted as you I quoted I quoted you when I say that you said that Kinsey's work is still the most comprehensive research on its kind even though the findings are flawed. Yeah that's still true. You want to say that point like yes even after 40 years after publishing his first book Sexual Behavior in the human male

The Kinsey work the two volumes remain the most comprehensive and most reliable sex surveys conducted and all subsequent sex through AID use it as sort of a baseline for comparison. I think we've talked about this a little bit last time and very much that at first during Kinsey years particularly people felt there was something wrong with people doing sex or sex. Oh yes. When did that change is going to happen like that. Just in the beginning of course anyone who went into sex research was immediately suspect. They either thought you had some private hang up that had driven you into this field or that you were some sort of a voyeur who got your jollies by you know learning about other people's sexuality. So we had to live with that for quite a few years and it was I think it was only after the first two volumes came out that sex research became almost respectable. But prior to that no we were

women are looked upon with a certain amount of suspicion by many many people. You write after Kennedy's death you made some decisions to pull back a little bit from the public eye. Because of the