Three contributions to understanding human sexuality

A critical review of three recent studies of sexuality is placed against the background of four groups that have, for the past decade, attempted to discern the most important facts—known or still to be discovered—about human sexuality. The books reviewed are:The Pleasure Bond by William H. Masters and Virginia Johnson;Christian, Celebrate Your Sexuality by Dwight Hervey Small; andMale Homosexuals: Their Problems and Adaptations by Martin S. Weinberg and Colin J. Williams.     

Note on the invariance of response latency in shuttlebox avoidance learning

Rats trained to avoid shock by running in a shuttlebox showed an orderly increase over trials in the probability of avoidance but no corresponding change over trials in the latency of the avoidance response. Both responding in the presence of shock (escapes) and responding prior to shock onset (avoidances) appeared to be stationary in time. Latencies were found to vary with different experimental conditions but in every case to be invariant over trials.     

Perspectives on contemporary mysticism

Contemporary mysticism is in continuity with religious mysticism of all ages. Mysticism, like all religion, has an ideological and an experiential dimension. Traditional Freudian theory is inadequate for understanding either the ideological or the cognitive aspect, because it does not adequately account for either the cognitive process or the self-conscious I. Categories of both ego psychology and the social scientific approach to religion illuminate contemporary mysticism in ways unavailable to the traditional Freudian psychoanalytic approach. The epistemological implications of the mystical attitude are considered, in both the religious and the scientific enterprises.