PSYCHOLOGIC ASPECT OF
BIRTH. CONTROL
CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO
MENTAL HYGIENE
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THEODORE SCHROEDER
OF THE NEW York BAR AND
COS COB, CONN.
FROM
MEDICOLEGAL JOURNAL
Vol. XXXIX, No. 1, Pages 16 to 21
JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1922
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PSYCHOLOGIC ASPECT OF
BIRTH – CONTROL
CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO
MENTAL HYGIENE
THEODORE SCHROEDER
OF THE NEW YORK BAR AND
COS COB, CONN.
FROM
MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL
Vol. XXXIX, No. 1, Pages 16 to 21
JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1922
PSYCHOLOGIC ASPECT OF BIRTH CONTROL
The human animal, with its general
ignorance of its own psychology, has
always tended to explain all human ac-
tivities as being exclusively determined
by things outside the self. This is ex-
pressed either in terms of some ob-
viously physical factors, or by means of
a supposedly transcendental mysticism;
that is by reference to alleged super-
human, or supernatural causation. As
applied to sex problems this means, that
we have been lead to think of them
either from the “exalted” viewpoint as
being of a poetically sacred, a divine,
or a devilish nature; or, on the other
hand, we think of such problems as a
matter of purely physiological adjust-
ment. I wish to emphasize the sug-
gestion, that the first of these views is
a glorified morbidity, and the second
one an ignorantly inadequate interpreta-
tion of the facts. I wish to urge upon
your attention the psychologic aspect
of sexual problems in general, and of
birth control in particular. The psy-
chologic problem for both is the same.
In so far as I succeed in holding the
true scientific spirit I must limit myself
to some explanation of the psychologic
processes involved, quite regardless of
either our moral sentimentalism, and
of our religious preconception. These
cannot be allowed to have any weight
with us, except by sacrificing some of
our scientific impartiality.
In every community there are persons
of privileged social and educational
status, whose psycho-sexual attitudes
and life have never attained real psy-
chologic maturity. To characterize
some of these conditions accurately,
even in scientific phraseology, would
shock some sensitive puritan ears.
Therefore, I will not be more specific,
just now. Such persons as I now have
in mind, all have painful moments of
emotional conflict over their own sexual
impulses, or over their methods of sex-
ual self-expression. If the resultant in-
ternal conflict of their irreconcilable
sexual urges are very intense, such
persons tend to find a compensation for
the painful and shameful aspects of
their lives by exalting their own unfor-
tunate defects, or the mask which con-
ceals them, to the rank of a social vir-
tue, or of a religious “duty” to God.
To insure to themselves this much need-
ed exaltation, they cannot bear to have
the intellectualization of their idealized
perversions frankly pointed out, or
bluntly repudiated. In order to neutral-
ize their own feelings of inferiority and
of shame, they must therefore de-
nounce the more healthy-minded ones as
immoral, and must seek to coerce them
to live according to the morbid ideal.
Where this is confessedly impossible,
they require at least a reverential
acknowlegment of its superiority.
The morbid vehemence of these few
insures imitation, or at least acquies-
ence, on the part of many of the more
healthy-minded ones, because the latter
have not a sufficiently conscious atti-
tude concerning the meaning and value
of their own greater wholesomeness.
Thus has come the popularizing of all
the gross emotional over-valuations put
upon everything sexual. Those who
have a more healthy common sense
about sex matters have not become suf-
ficiently conscious, nor sufficiently ar-
ticulate. Accordingly all sex is popular-
ly esteemed as being either devilish or
heavenly. We have difficulty in con-
sidering sex as being merely a human
problem—a human instrumentality for
promoting individual and social well-
being, mentally as well as physically.
We still tend to view sex as if it were
wholly a matter of moral sentimental-
ism, instead of being a problem of
science.
Those who, from morbid inhibitions
or unfortunate external circumstances,
are precluded from normal sexual re-
lations, often moralize their misfortune,
or exalt their resultant mental ailment
by making a virtue of their misfortune,
or of their disease. Hence, lifelong con-
tinence has been made a religious ideal,
and all marriage has been declared to be
but a tolerated evil. The “evils” of mar-
riage are only partially redeemed by
ceremonial sanctification and by the
number of virgins which marriage pro-
duces for the church. Such are the
mental processes by which the abnormal
ones have imposed lifelong continence
as a professed social ideal, with a max-
imum of tolerated evil represented by
the allowance of sexual relation only
for the purposes of procreation. All be-
yond puts one on the toboggan slide
that lands us finally in purgatory, if
not in the eternal flames of a brim-
stone hell. It remains to particularize
these general mental processes and to
trace their influence on the birth con-
trol problem.
In the blurred and excited vision of
such psycho-erotic morbidity, it was
natural enough that no difference could
be discovered between murder, abortion,
and a physiologically and socially use-
ful prevention of conception. So it
comes that we have organizations to
promote such morbidity in the name
of social purity; and laws, which, in
conjunction with human ignorance and
human nature such as it is, compel the
multiplication of the undesired and the
unfit.
Once having legalized the morbid
ideal, and enthroned its unhealthy moral
sentimentalism in the feeling of the un-
thinking multitude, some grave psycho-
logic consequences inevitably follow.
Here again I wish to emphasize the fact
that the problem of birth control is not
merely one of securing legal freedom
for the spread of contraceptive informa-
tion and materials. The extravagant
over-valuation of the ideals of the mor-
bid ones, cannot be ignored, nor imme-
diately altered by repealing a law. It
is impressed on the childhood feelings
of every coming generation. The neces-
sities of the economic and industrial
status of our time creates a most po-
tent objective motive for the limiting
of offspring. The emotional importance,
popularly associated with the condem-
nation of the use of contraceptive de-
vices, tends to create a subjective in-
hibition against the limitation of off-
spring. With social “morals,” laws and
economic necessity impelling to one kind
of conduct and the biologic urge im-
pelling to a contrary conduct, we have
a subjective conflict such as is the very
essence of all mental instability. Under
present legal and social restrictions, it
would almost seem as if this were con-
sciously designed to produce hysteria
and to limit the indulgence of sexual
expression to purposes of procreation.
For many of the more healthy persons,
and most of the morbid ones the biologic
and psychologic compulsions make con-
tinence impossible without hysteria.
In the resultant conduct and emotional
disturbance comes the more or less mor-
bid urge toward prostitution, abortion,
sexual perversion, as well as the use
of legally and socially prohibited con-
traceptives. In so far as any of these
impulses are the result of disturbed
emotions, the indulgence will tend to
increase that disturbance, to intensify
that hysteria. From a common-sense
and physiological point of view, the in-
telligent prevention of conception should
be perfectly harmless. But from the
unhealthy emotional valuations which
morbid puritanism imposes upon each
succeeding generation, too often the
use of contraceptives contributes to
those emotional disturbances called
hysteria. From this point of view,
puritanism should be considered an im-
portant problem of mental hygiene.
Our morbid moral-sentimentalism has
created a condition which inevitably
produces such evil psychologic conse-
quences. For example: Let us assume
that the child has become emotionally
impressed with the notion that there
is little or no difference between mur-
der, abortion, and prevention of concep-
tion. Even though in maturity such
a person becomes logically convinced
that the prevention of conception, or
even abortion, is not reasonably to be
classed with murder, the old contrary
feeling-valuation often persists. . From
below the surface of consciousness it
still determines part of our conduct and
is often a controling factor in fixing the
degree of our mental health and hap-
piness. If now prevention or abortion
is had yet, in spite of the contrary in-
tellectual conviction, there will rise up
the associated feeling of depression from
out of the subconscious, which feeling
is like one of self-reproach, approxi-
mately, of the sort that would arise if
murder had been committed. This de-
pressing feeling of fear very often
comes, both with and without a con-
sciousness of its causes, and in either
event it manifests itself as a feeling of
inferiority, or of excessive sinfulness.
Such fears and shame unfit many for
the , ordinary adjustments of living.
Again we have a case of preventable
morbidity, imposed by our morbid puri-
tanism.
Because the real causes of the de-
pression are not sufficiently understood,
or cannot be admitted to the world, the
painful and fearful depression is ex-
plained in terms of more or less imagin-

ary physical ailments, or the emotional
exaggeration of some real discomfiture.
Often it expresses itself in an exag-
gerated notion of a supposed pernicious
hostility of the family circle, or of so-
ciety at large. In the extreme condi-
tion it is known in one of its aspects
as persecution mania. Thus developed
much of the hysteria, which so often
makes a comfortable family life impos-
sible and results in divorce, prostitution,
desertion or even in an occasional sui-
cide. A considerable part of these mor-
bid ones seek to mask the causes of
their own self-reproach by an ostenta-
tious and vehement puritanism. They
prove the intensity of their submerged
“moral” inferiority by the outward man-
ifestations of delusions about their own
“moral” grandeur. In such persons the
intensity of their devotion to puritanism
is the exact measure of their feeling of
shame, of their need for a mask. By
their pretentious moralistic vehemence
they again become a factor in imposing
their perversions and morbid moral-
sentimentalism upon the next genera-
tion with the same direful result. Thus
do the emotionally unstable ones per-
petuate their kind.
The only obvious escape from all this
vicious circle must be sought in dis-
crediting the moral sentimentalist, by
making the more healthy-minded per-
sons more conscious of their superiority,
and by making it plain that all this
emotionally overvalued purism is really
but a mask to conceal an equally mor-
bid lewdness. The purists must be made
to face the realities, by showing them
the futility of their modesty mask.
Even for this purpose we must avoid in
ourselves a similar moralistic deprecia-
tion of the purist. Let us give them a
sympathetic understanding, such as all
the mentally afflicted ones should re-
ceive. If we have sufficient insight, let
us also help them to outgrow their af-
fliction. All humans should be helped
to overcome all shame for a perfectly
normal, healthy-minded, intelligently
controlled lasciviousness. Intelligence in
such matters should never be given a po-
sition that is subordinate to “morals”.
This attitude is one of the fundamental
conditions of a better mental hygiene.
At least, we can all avoid abetting the
evil puritan influence by openly discred-
iting all its unhealthy, absolute, sexual
Creeds, even though they come clothed
in the delusive garb of a popular moral
sentimentalism, or in the verbal exalta-
tion of pious rhetoric.
Let us consider a little more in detail
these moral-sentimentalisms, to the end
that I may suggest a substitute for
moral values. There was a time when
the same ignorant and morbid valua-
tions were attached to metaphysical
theories about every phase of nature.
As humanity came to understand the
behavior of nature’s forces in relation
to the movement of the planets, etc.,
the religious cosmogonies lost their
“moral” values, and the astronomers
were freed from persecution. We no
longer burn at the stake those who de-
clare the earth to be round or who in-
vestigate non-human physical nature
and its ways. But about the psychology
of sex and about birth control methods
plain people are not yet allowed to learn
the truth. Popular “morality” requires
the perpetuation of sex ignorance. Here
scientists are still in danger of going
to jail. We are now allowed to adjust
our conduct to our understanding of
the behavior of electricity, gravity,
chemical affinity and repulsion, etc.,
without the intervention of satan or of
the theologians. We no longer invest
any part of such conduct with “moral”
values, nor hamper the more perfect
adjustment by contrary and anti-natur-
al “duties” to God. Is it not reasonable
to hope that a similar scientific attitude
toward sex will some day come into be-
ing 7 May we not reasonably expect
that when we have an equally general
understanding of the behavior of the
psychologic aspect of human energy, as
that expresses itself through the sex-
ual mechanism and in the formation of
our sexual creeds, that then even sex
will be self-regulated according to that
larger understanding 2 Will we not
then laugh at the creedal mandates of
the morbid ones, as expressed in our
emotionally determined preconceptions,
and invested with the hysterical’s “mor-
al” valuation? When that time comes
puritanism will surely have lost its
“moral” values and its terrors. Then it
will no longer serve as a respectable
mask for a morbid lewdness. That is
why all puritans tend to oppose the
spread of scientific education about sex-
ual psychology and sexual physiology.
They cannot bear to have science con-
tradict their comforting preconceptions
about the theology of sex, or to unmask
its morbid foundations.
I have suggested the operation of a
morbid psycho-sexual condition in pro-
ducing the vehement defenders of puri-
tanic sexual creeds. However, there is
another and contrary side to this, emo-
tional conflict. When the morbidly in-
tense erotism can no longer be re-
strained within the limits of ascetic
dogma, it tends to go to the other ex-
treme. For example: The Bible Com-
munists of Oneida began their career by
professing a belief in the religious duty
of life-long continence, and wound up
with a divine mandate for a compulsory
promiscuity, mis-called “free-love”. So
also among the Mormons of half century
ago. For the elect few, polygamy be-
came practically compulsory, and for
others who had not first merited and re-
ceived the divine sanction through the
Prophet of God, secret and fruitless
adultery, or mere formication, was
deemed worthy of a “divinely command-
ed” death penalty. The history of Chris-
tianity is full of similar events pro-
duced by similar morbid erotism. Al-
ways and everywhere an ostentatious
puritanism and excessive lewdness are
but different aspects of the same mor-
bid personality. The accounts of orgies
which our newspapers have been re-
cently publishing in dispatches from
California in connection with the asso-
ciates of “Fatty” Arbuckle, are the
natural psychologic reaction to an
equally morbid and ignorant puritan
dominance.
Thus it has come to pass, that at times
we are all the victims of an erotic over-
stimulation, produced either by exces-
sive indulgence, or by excessive repres-
sion. We have not even been allowed,
by our legalized prudery, to read dis-
cussions designed to enlighten our un-
derstanding as to what is physiologi-
cally and psychologically the most
wholesome. The morbid ones will not
yet allow us to show the essence of
their morbid moral pretenses. Even
many who have outgrown the theologic
dogmas about sex, have not outgrown
its underlying sexuo-emotional over-
valuations. Therefore, as a natural re-
action to the religious asceticism, we
have a sort of unconscious religiousity,
which justifies all manner or excess of
indulgence, if only it seems to be
prompted by, passions that are intense
enough (morbid enough) to be exalted
by a poetic romanticism. Underlying
this is always the implicit but often un-
conscious formula of sex for sex-sensa-
tion's sake. Frequently this is as mor-
bid as the ascetic sex-creed adopted
nominally for God’s sake. Amid the
din made by the controversy between
the poetic romanticist and the ascetic
ethicist, the voice of common sense has
seldom been audible. Each vehement
defiance hurled by the mad romanticist,
against the ascetic creed, does but stim-
ulate the neurotic moralists to a new
zeal. Their unhealthy conscience re-
sents the discredit cast upon its com-
forting “moral” masquerade. All the
more strenuously do they have to in-
sist upon their ascetic mask and the en-
forcement of laws against the dissem-
ination of sexual science, and of birth
control information.
Doubtless, by this time, some of you
are wondering what I can propose to
make birth control psychologically
more sane and safe. In a moment I
will tell you. First let me remind you
that we have a similar issue in re-
lation to food and drink. Those who
achieve the attitude of mind of the
erotically morbid ones, must unavoida-
bly transfer a part of the morbid char-
acteristics and valuations over into
their other activities. I believe it is a
psychologic fact, that most of the more
extravagant “blue law” reformers are
the victims of an erotic morbidity. They
express the same attitude of mind
as the sexual ascetic, and they also
have their psychologic mate and coun-
terpart in the glutton and the drunk-
ard. On the one hand, we are in effect
told, as in the matter of sex, that it
is sinful to enjoy food and drink. Those
who act upon the other aspect of their
conflict of morbid impulses, tell us that
we are to indulge in meat, drink and
the procreative function, only or pri-
marily for the sake of the immediate
sensations. I believe that both of these
positions are founded upon morbid
sensitivity, (hyperaesthesia) or upon
the ignorance of immaturity, and prob-
ably upon a combination of both.
Intelligent, wholesome persons do not
scorn the pleasures of sense. On the
other hand they do not allow their love
of sensations to control wholly their
choice of food and drink, either as to
kind and quantity, or so as to impair
their health or maximum of social effi-
ciency. Why is not that a good rule to
apply also to sexual indulgence?
According to the only articulate
creeds for sexual conduct which reach
the general public, we seem limited to
a choice between excessive stimulation
from sexual suppression, or from sex-
ual over-indulgence. Both result in a
maximum of psycho-erotic ecstacy.
Both satisfy the craving of sense for
sensation’s sake. The one secures this
result by peripheral stimulation and the
emphasis upon the physiological espect
of sex; the other through internal stim-
ulation and emphasis upon the psycho-
logic aspect of sensualism. The latter is
by the mystic often and erroneously as-
cribed to God, or else it is thought of as
being so exclusively of psychologic
origin as to be wholly and alone moral.
I submit that common sense disapproves
both these extremes. All repression re-
sults in such emotional disturbance,
as to preclude a maximum of efficient
concentration upon the world’s work.
A mature common sense requires that
we seek a maximum of emotional poise
and efficiency, for upon this our social
value depends. I conclude that the
more intelligent view requires only such
frequency, manner, and conditions of
indulgence as will best promote our
efficiency in living in social relations.
To this end all mere ceremonial values
and moral-sentimentalism will some
time be subordinated to our understand-
ng.
But here under the word “efficiency”
I do not mean efficiency only in a quasi
static sense. According to my view this
efficiency must also include a maximum
of character maturing, which often is
something very different, and more
healthy than that which obedience to
arbitrary and absolute “moral” creeds
can produce. Now then, if one has be-
come thoroughly imbued with the mor-
bid “morality” which preaches the sin-
fulness of preventing conception, such
“moral” valuation when coupled with
the actual use of preventives, may in
some cases produce even greater dis-
equilibrium than would result from total
abstinence. If so, then common sense
might even suggest that the lesser evil,
for some particular persons and under
present conditions, consists in living ac-
cording to the ascetic ideal, at least
until they can be cured of their fears.
When we take into account these emo-
tional aspects of the problem, we see
that the problem of sex and of birth-
control are not wholly problems of legis-
lation, or of education concerning the
physical behavior and relations of sex
functioning. The repeal of laws which
prevent or limit education as to the
physical factors of sex, and of the
means of preventing conception, or de-
claring them unconstitutional, is indeed
important. at I wish to impress is
that these factors are not the whole
of the problem. What is equally im-
portant, if not more so, is that both
before and after legal freedom has been
achieved, that sexual education shall
include an education concerning the be-
havior of the sexual emotions, and es-
pecially the maturing of our desires ac-
cording to our evolutionary concept.
All sex education had better be accom-
panied by such special emotional tones
and values in the teacher, and in the
articulate public opinion, as will min-
imize the development of feeling-values
and of their subjective emotional con-
flicts, in the young who are being
taught. This means the greatest en-
largement of our capacity for living
our sex lives according to the require-
ments of a superior understanding, and
free from even the subconscious in-
fluence of the present “moral” valua-
tions of hystericals.
Underlying the hampering legislation,
there always is this more fundamental
evil of puritan psychology, that needs to
be destroyed. Of course, you now know
that this includes the “morality” of our
morbid puritan reformers, which usu-
ally has the motive, at least subcon-
sciously, of masking an excessive lewd-
ness. Let us unmask them, and so des-
troy their influence among the thought-
less-healthy-minded ones. Proclaim it
from the housetops, that all prudery is
but the fig leaf for a guilty conscience.
Then common sense and sexual science
will for the first time have some chance
to reign supreme. Then we will be
allowed an intelligent use of birth con-
trol in spite of the morbid fears, of hys-
terical pretenders to superior “morali-
ty”, and in spite of the vociferous decla-
mations of our moralists for revenue.
P. S.—Here are samples of morbid fulminations against birth con-
trol, such as have capacity for producing a like morbidity in those who
can take any serious account of such utterances.
“If women bear children until they become sick and die, that does
no harm. Let them bear children until they die of it; that is what they
are for.” Martin Luther, Yale Review, XI : 419. Jan., 1922. Original
source not given.
“This [birth control] teaching which threatens by its practice,
if not impeded, to inundate this land of ours with a danger more de-
vastating than war, an offence unknown to animals and a crime against
morality for which men must blush, if not degenerate, and hopelessly
given up to Paganism and sensuality. [Birth control propaganda] is
fit only for the denizens of the underworld and [is] finally severely
punished by an angry God.” Right Rev. John A. Sheppard, vicar general
of the diocese of Newark, N. J., in New York Herald, Dec. 23, 1921.
“Even though some little angels in the flesh through the moral,
mental or physical deformity of parents, may appear to human eyes
hideous, misshapen, a blot on civilized society, we must not lose sight of
this Christian thought that under and within such visible malformation
there lives an immortal soul to be saved and glorified for all eternity.
* * * Heinous is the sin [of birth control] against the creative act
of God. * * * To take life after its inception is a horrible crime; but
to prevent human life that the creator is about to bring into being is
Satanic. In the first instance the body is killed while the soul lives on.
* * * In the latter not only a body but an immortal soul is denied exis-
tence, in time and eternity. It has been reserved to our day to see ad-
vocated shamelessly the legalizing of such a diabolic thing.” Archbishop
P. J. Hayes, of the Roman Catholic church, in Christmas Pastoral. N.
Y. Times, Dec. 18, 1921.