By Howard Kainz
DDuring the 1970s, psychologist Karl Menninger publishedWhatever Became of Sin?, a reflection on the largely unnoticed but quite definite slippage of attitudes towards morality in the mid-twentieth-century. Tracing the disappearance of “sin,” he focused on one area that used to be of concern, but was gradually erased from consciousness, with extraordinarily wide ramifications: the “disorder” or “sin” of masturbation:
Masturbation, the solitary vice, the SIN of youth, suddenly seemed not to be so sinful, perhaps not sinful at all; not so dangerous – in fact, not dangerous at all; less a vice than a form of pleasurable experience, and a normal and healthy one! This sudden metamorphosis in an almost universal social attitude is more significant of the changed temper, philosophy, and morality of the twentieth century than any other phenomenon that comes to mind. It is not difficult to see why ALL sin other than “crime” seemed to many to have disappeared along with this one. . . .Can all sin have been repudiated as such because one behavior once considered evil is no longer condemned? It is easier to suppose this in regard to sexual “sin” (other than masturbation) than in regard to such “sins,” for example, as stealing and lying, although there is a psychological connection between all of these, which has long been recognized.
Menninger, of course, is not speaking here as a moralist, but as a scientific observer retracing a significant alteration in the then-contemporary mores – the correlation of changes in attitude towards masturbation with other changes in moral valuations. The rest of his book is concerned with bringing attention to types of theft, envy, cruelty, lying, etc., which are now tolerated, explained away, even condoned, but should be emphatically reinstated as “sins.”
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