Thanks to Lyris and the promotional efforts of Randy Cassingham and you all forwarded these messages, this list is fast approaching 10,000 people around the world. Ah, the miracles of electronics (I wonder if anyone is yet claiming the internet was given to us by aliens? It's not true, you know. It was invented by Al Gore. Just ask him!)

Tonight on A & E's Unexplained, one of the very best shows out that offers a reasonably balanced treatment of paranormal subjects (and has this year branched out to other topics), the subject is TALKING TO THE DEAD, on which I appear as a guest. I don't know if James Van Praagh will also be appearing, but the topic involves more than just the trite cold reading/warm reading stuff JVP does.

This Sunday, at 2:00pm at Caltech's Baxter Lecture Hall, renowned and controversial bible scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego, will be lecturing on his new book THE HIDDEN BOOK IN THE BIBLE, "the discovery of the first prose masterpiece." As all biblical scholars know, the Bible was written by a number of authors over a long time span, and later edited into the work of which we are all familiar. But now the Bible sleuth and scholar, Richard Elliott Friedman, reveals for the first time his most startling and revolutionary discovery: embedded within the bible is a continuous narrative that had been sliced apart by ancient editors who interlaced it with other stories, laws, and poetry. Using a creative blend of scholarship and detective work, Dr. Friedman has joined together this story from the dawn of written history, what he calls the first prose masterpiece. He will have copies of his book there for signing. Whether he is right or not remains to be seen, but I am always fascinated by how shocked many people are, especially fundamentalist Christians, to learn that the Bible was written and edited by people over a span of time, and not handed down literally in stone.

Check out last Sunday's New York Times Book Review section for a colorful and insightful review of THE TECHNOLOGY OF ORGASM: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, by Rachel P. Maines, Johns Hopkins University Press. The review is well-written, nicely summarizes the book, and ends mildly critical of this feminist interpretation. The reviewer is Sarah Boxer, a NYT's reporter. Who ever would have thought of writing a history of the vibrator, but why not? And it's an interesting one. Maines' thesis is that in the 19th and early 20th century there was little to no understanding, either in the lay public or in the medical community, that women could actually experience sexual satisfaction, orgasm, etc. (I suspect this lack of understanding, if it really existed, was mostly limited to one half of the species.) So what was happening when women experienced such "symptoms" as "anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, nervousness, erotic fantasy, sensations of heaviness in the abdomen, lower pelvic edema and vaginal lubrication"? Obvious, no? No, not to these folks, says Maines. Women were experiencing "hysteria" said the doctors of the day. The cure? Are you sitting down? Here you go: "The cure was effected by vigorous horseback exercise, by movement of the pelvis in a swing, rocking chair or carriage." If that didn't work, she was to go to a doctor or midwife, who would "massage the genitalia with one finger inside, using oil of lilies, musk root, crocus ... and in this way the afflicted woman can be aroused to the paroxysm." Hysterical paroxysm. What a concept.

Since this medical model was devised and promoted by men, Maines calls this "the androcentric paradigm of sexuality" where "normal" sex is a two-step process of penetration and orgasm--male only, of course. Females went to their doctors for "satisfaction." The problem for these beleagured physicians was that they got tired. Or, I should say, their fingers and hands got tired. Enter the vibrator. The earliest models were wind ups, followed by the electro-mechanical version. The 1870s appears to be when it was invented (there is some dispute here). It wasn't until 1952 that the American Psychiatric Association struck hysteria from its list of mental illnesses. But the vibrator lives on.

Boxer is critical of Maines' "androcentric model." Boxer writes (in an absolutely delightful ending to the review, entitled "Batteries Not Included"):

"Contrary to this model, doctors often pointed to male inadequacy and female sexual dissatisfaction as the causes of women's malaise. And plenty of people paid attention to female orgasm. In Tudor and Stuart England, for example, many physicians saw the clitoris as the principle locus of sexual pleasure and believed female orgasm was an incentive for women to risk their lives in pregnancy. So it seems likely that more than 'a handful of medical authorities' knew they were performing sexual favors for their patients. Maines, who says she was "a very angry feminist" when she started this book, sees phallocentrism everywhere. And in that she is right. But does that mean every phallic object and action is suspect? She derides the 13th-century doctors who recommended that widows and nuns use dildoes. And she condemns physicians who 'were apparently conforted by the unsupported assumption that most women masturbate 'by some means approximating coitus.' In battling phallocentrism, she refuses to give an inch to the penis."

I'm with Boxer. Is it really possible that, a handful of patriarchal physicians aside, loving communicating couples throughout America, England, and the continent, could have had years of sexual passion and love making and not figured out the concept of mutual satisfaction? Maybe I'm too blinded by our late-20th century liberal attitudes and openness about sex, but sex is so basic, so fundamental a human need, that I am, well, skeptical that we were the first to figure this out. And even for those patriarchal physicians, I find it difficult to believe that most of them did not know what was really going on. Perhaps the prescription for horseback riding was a selective one. Picture this: into the office walks Sharon Stone. Dr. Feelgood: "Tie up the horse and put away the swing, nurse Ratchet. I'll handle this one myself."

This week's Time magazine, featuring the 100 most important thinkers of the 20th century, features Freud analyzing Einstein on the couch. Never in the history of science has someone who is so wrong become so influential. It never ceases to amaze me. Nevertheless, he provides grist for the critic's mill, and books are being turned out every six months on why Freud was wrong (as if we still aren't quite sure). Skeptic Senior Editor Frank Miele sent along the following on the latest contribution to this growing genre:

MADNESS ON THE COUCH: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis. By Edward Dolnick. (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1998; $25.00).

It is especially good on the 3 cases of Autism, Schizophrenia, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders.

Quotes you might find enlightening:
(1) "Freud 'was quite dogmatic, and did not like disagreement' an ex-patient recalled. 'When I would protest about something, his interpretations, he used the Viennese dialect term, saying: 'You know a SCHMARN about psychoanalysis.' It is hard to translate the word SCHMARN, but a vulgar translation would be 'You know shit about analysis.' He said you don't have the right to query my interpretation.'" (p.21) [Citation on p.21 is to: Todd Dufresne, "An Interview with Joseph Wortis" PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW. 83. No. 4 (Aug. 1996) pp.589-610.]

(2) Freud commenting on the death of defector Alfred Adler at a scientific meeting in Scotland, 25 YEARS AFTER their split: "For a Jew-boy out of a Viennese suburb, a death in Aberdeen is an unheard-of career in itself and a proof of how far he had got on. The world really rewarded him richly for his service in having contradicted psychoanalysis." (p.26) [Citation on p.26 is to: Ernest Jones, THE LIFE AND WORK OF SIGMUND FREUD. Vol.3, p.208.]

The book is especially useful in trashing the reputation (or what's left of it) of Bruno Bettelheim. Typical of this is a frantic call from a woman, pleading with Bettelheim to take her autistic son as a patient:

(3) Mother [pleading]: "Please Dr. Bettelheim. Can't you do something for my son?"
Bettelheim [wise-assed and indigant]: "Haven't YOU done enough already?"