(1961) The Chapman Report

by Irving Wallace

  now, he was determined that the unusual man behind the desk, piercing eyes, monstrous nose, foul corncob, be made to understand the basic worth of their crusade.

  “Yes, I suppose you are qualified,” said Paul. “What beats me, Dr. Jonas-“

  “Excuse me, but would it offend you to get on a first name basis? Otherwise, it’s as if the referee said, Mister Dempsey, this is Mister Tunney, who’s going to try to knock your head off.”

  Paul laughed. “All right.”

  “Not that I anticipate any real Donnybrook. This is my study, and the word here is gemiitlichkeit. If we’re going to belabor each other, let’s make it a friendly pummeling. I’m sorry I interrupted you, Paul. You were saying?”

  “Okay, Victor.” Paul had been prepared to make a high-level defense, but now it seemed pompous, and he tried hastily to revise and slant what he had to say to the informality of the occasion. “I read a good deal of your writings on our bachelor report. I agreed with you, still do, about a lot of minor shortcomings. But it always 6eemed to me you missed the forest for the trees. Since the Mayflower, people in this country have been living in a dreary house behind a puritanical curtain. They’ve grown up in this cold, stark house built by John Calvin of Geneva, and the sign on the door, sternly printed by Jonathan Edwards, read, ‘No frolicking.’ The best parts of their lives have been lived in this dark, unlighted house, and it is unhealthy and unwholesome, and we’ve merely been trying to get rid of that curtain and let some light in.”

  “How have you done that?”

  “How? By gathering data-information on a little-known subject-and we’ve done this on a scale never before attempted. As Dr. Chapman says, we’re the fact-gatherers.”

  “Not enough,” said Dr. Jonas placidly. “You add up your digits, and you spew them out, and you say that does good. I wonder. As someone said of another such reportI think it was Simpson in The Humanist-just looking up and counting stars never achieved the science of astronomy, and just collating what married women say on their sexual behavior won’t give us real insight into this behavior.”

  “Well, I disagree with you,” said Paul warmly. “We’re making a giant first step. The very idea of removing sex from scrawlings on lavatory walls to frank, sensible, open discussion will do infinite good. I remember Dr. Robert Dickinson saying that the enemies of

  sex freedom were conception, infection, detection. True. But we’ve controlled most of these. Still, we are left to fight one more enemy rarely challenged-ignorance-and ignorance thrives on silence.”

  Dr. Jonas banged his corncob on the cork center of his circular metal ash tray. When the bowl was empty, he dipped it into the humidor again. “You are persuasive,” he said. “I grant you that the final enemy is ignorance. But I believe Dr. Chapman is fighting that enemy the wrong way. He has done much good, of course, but he has done a greater amount of mischief.” He ran a flaming match over the rim of the pipe and then blew the match out and dropped it into the tray. “Of course, you are dealing with married people in our society, and that makes research even more difficult. I suppose man was really meant to be polygamous, but then monogamy was imposed upon him-as were a hundred other unnatural customs and credos like turn-the-other-cheek, love-thy-neighbor, fair play, sportsmanship, and so forth. He is burdened with all sorts of pressures inconsistent with his real nature. But, by accepting this, he receives certain benefits, and so the pressures are the price for being civilized and advanced. Man sets his own rules, then tries to make them work, unnatural though they may often be. Sex is one form of behavior that suffers gravely.” “I don’t deny that.”

  “Making sex work, under these repressive circumstances, is a delicate assignment. You think it can be done by simply counting noses?”

  “I don’t think so and neither does Dr. Chapman. No, I’d say we’re going so far, as far as we can, and others will go further.”

  “Yes, Paul, yes,” said Dr. Jonas. “But the problem, as I see it, is this-you know you are going so far and no further. You understand this, but your public doesn’t. The vast public has been propagandized to believe that whatever science says is so. They believe science is some mystical society, with a direct line to God, that cannot be quite understood but must be believed. Naturally, they accept Dr. Chapman’s reports as the Final Word on sexual behavior. They do not know that the data are raw and uncooked. They think the findings are ready for consumption, and Dr. Chapman does not tell them otherwise. So the readers read the reports and act accordingly. Misinformation is added to ignorance, and the result is harmful.”

  “What makes you so positive we are disseminating misinformation?”

  “Your methods. Do you want me to go into them?”

  “Please do.”

  Paul saw that the tobacco in his own pipe had been burned to white ash. He laid the pipe aside and sipped his chartreuse. He regretted his mission. He would like to have known Dr. Jonas under other circumstances. The conversation, not unfamiliar, might have been stimulating, but now, because of what he had been asked to do, it was little more than a waiting, a prelude to a bribe. Still, he told himself, the work was not only Dr. Chapman’s work but his own, his own more than Horace’s or Cass’s, and it must be protected.

  “… is not strictly controlled, not clinically controlled, and I think that it is wrong,” Dr. Jonas was saying.

  Paul gathered his wits tightly, trying to deduce what he had missed. Obviously, Dr. Jonas was discussing the interview technique.

  “This business of groups volunteering does not give you truly representative subjects,” Dr. Jonas continued. “The women who volunteer want to talk-“

  “Is there a better technique?” Paul interrupted. “Would you prefer ringing doorbells or putting advertisements in the paper? Selecting individuals by going through the telephone directory or stopping them on street corners? Or mailing questionnaires that many will not understand or too many easily ignore? The Federal Research Committee approved of our methodological and statistical formula.”

  Dr. Jonas nodded. “You have had approval. And those other methods are not so accurate as the one you employ. But there are better means of finding truth than the one you use. I am certain of that. I don’t want to digress into that now. I prefer to discuss your technique.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Dr. Chapman puts so much dependence upon the representative nature of women’s groups and organizations. I think that is suspect. I have a suspicion that the most representative American women do not belong to any formal groups or clubs at all. They are not joiners, and this makes them quite different from the women you interview, and you are not covering any of them. You are not even getting all the members of the organizations.”

  “Enough. At The Briars, there are 220 married women. Most have volunteered-201, to be exact.”

  “According to my information, Paul, that is exceptionally high. I believe only nine per cent-nine out of every 100 groups you sample-have volunteered one hundred per cent of their membership.”

  “Well, yes-“

  “I contend that the women in those clubs who don’t volunteer are the ones with sexual prejudices and prudery. You get the exhibitionists-I use this in the broadest sense-and the psychologically disturbed women who are eager to talk.”

  “We make allowances for the type.”

  “Not enough, Paul, not enough. I’m sure you’re acquainted with the work of Abraham H. Maslow at Brandeis. He, too, made a sex study employing female volunteers. But he learned something extremely significant. Nine out of ten of the volunteers were tested and found to be high in self-esteem. They were found to be a special type of woman, aggressive and sure of themselves, and generally these were the ones who were not virgins, who were unconventional in their sex behavior, and who were masturbators. The one out of ten who scored very low in self-esteem, representative of the non-volunteering type, was unsure and inhibited, and she was usually a virgin, conservative, and she did not masturbate. I feel Dr. Chapman is ge
tting too ,much of the women who esteem themselves highly, and not enough of the other. Then, there’s the question of memory error in the interview itself-“

  Since Paul had always been troubled by the Maslow study, he decided to ignore it and seized upon the last. “I think I can speak with some personal knowledge about this. Undoubtedly, many women appear determined to withhold the truth, to omit or revise or exaggerate, but when they realize how objective we are, how eager for facts, they usually level with us.” “How can you be sure? Because of your Double Poll?” Paul did not attempt to hide his astonishment. The Double Poll was an informal, private name given the invaluable papers Dr. Chapman had inherited from the late Dr. Julian Gleed, of Massachusetts. Dr. Gleed had been a nineteen-year-old student at Clark University in September 1909 when the controversial Dr. Sigmund Freud had appeared on his only visit to America. So taken was young Gleed by Freud’s Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, especially by the fourth lecture on sexuality, that he forthwith resolved to become an analyst. Once he began his practice, Dr. Gleed found that he was most fascinated by how differently husbands and wives

  viewed the same events in their marriages. Soon, Dr. Gleed was making a specialty of accepting only those cases where he could treat both husband and wife, separately, on his couch. In meticulous hand, he kept voluminous records of these couples-two hundred and three married couples in all-and established a percentage of discrepancy, especially in their free association about their sexual behavior.

  When Dr. Gleed published a brief summary of his findings in a psychiatric journal, one of his most avid readers was Dr. Chapman, then about to begin his bachelor survey. Dr. Chapman promptly initiated a lengthy correspondence with Dr. Gleed and soon had the old analyst’s statistics and the means by which to allow for error in his own future interviews. After Dr. Gleed’s death, his papers were willed to Dr. Chapman, who culled from them what more he needed. The Double Poll, as Gleed’s papers were privately called, was known only to Dr. Chapman and his associates. It had never been published or publicized. It was kept as a secret measuring stick. Yet, Paul told himself incredulously, here Dr. Jonas seemed to know all about it. Paul speculated on how this was possible. At last, he concluded that Dr. Chapman had disclosed all his procedure to the Zollman Foundation, and it had been leaked to Dr. Jonas.

  “Yes, the Double Poll, among other checks,” Paul heard himself say.

  “I’ll concede that you can allow for a certain amount of conscious lying. As a matter of fact, it’s quite clever of Dr. Chapman. But how can you detect unconscious lying and allow for it?”

  “Well-can you be specific?”

  “A married woman comes in to see you tomorrow. You ask your set questions. She replies. She means to be honest, and she answers honestly. Or so she believes, and you believe. But memory of events in childhood or adolescence is clouded, faulty, inaccurate. Reported sexual behavior is not always true sexual behavior. Freud made that clear. You are wrestling with a woman’s unconscious. She cannot deliver what is hidden from herself, what is repressed and latent. She may relate fantasies as facts, and by now believe them to be true. She may be passing along what analysts call screen memories, recent memories overlaid on old ones, so that the old ones are distorted.”

  “Our check questions, each differently worded, usually catch this,” said Paul.

  “I doubt it. She may repeat the same partially false answer a dozen times, to a dozen different questions, because she believes it to be true. Also, she may be blocking out certain events and really be convinced that they never took place. I’m simply saying that the overt, obvious, conscious reply is not enough. It doesn’t say enough, and it’s often not accurate.”

  “It’s accurate often enough,” said Paul doggedly. “What would you suggest? You can’t put each volunteer into full analysis.”

  “I’d trust each one more if she was under amytal narcosis.”

  Paul shook his head. “My God, Victor, it’s tough enough getting three thousand married women to talk sexual behavior without also demanding that they take truth serum. You’d wind up with a handful.”

  “Perhaps a handful would be better than three thousand,” said Dr. Jonas mildly, “if you could count on what they were saying.” He rose, sauntered to the window, and closed it. “You know, I’ve heard out hundreds of married women in my time. I used to be one of the five marriage counselors of the Conciliation Court in Los Angeles. It’s a legal thing. If one of the two parties in a divorce wants a hearing, the other must, under subpoena if necessary, show up and talk it out with a counselor. One year, we undertook a thousand cases-kept half of them married. I’m still in marriage counseling on a private basis.”

  “Do you use amytal narcosis?”

  “When I have to. But infrequently. That’s not the point. My colleagues and myself aren’t digit-hunting like Dr. Chapman. When we take a woman’s sex history, we aren’t interested only in frequency of intercourse and orgasm. We’re concerned with inner emotional degree and gradation more than outer physical sum and amount. That’s the crux of it. That’s where we most violently differ with Dr. Chapman.”

  Paul finished his chartreuse and watched as Dr. Jonas circled the room. He reached the desk and half sat on it. He stared down at Paul. “I was just wondering how to go on without annoying you.”

  “You’re not annoying me a bit. I’m sold on what I’m doing. I think Dr. Chapman is a human being, but an important one, and I feel privileged to be associated with him. If I sound a little sophomoric, I’m not. I’m thirty-five, and mature in a half-assed sort of way. If I didn’t believe in this, I’d clear out in two minutes. I’d go back to teaching literature or writing books-or something more useful like marriage counseling-if I considered that vocation more

  valuable. No, you’re not annoying me at all. I’ve heard almost everything you’re saying before, but not said as well.”

  “More chartreuse?”

  “No, thanks. The talk is heady enough. As to your remark that we’re after physical sum rather than emotional degree, I think you’re way off base. That’s not the point at all.”

  “Isn’t it? I wonder.” Dr. Jonas returned to his chair.

  “We’re in the business of statistics-not lonelyheart advice.”

  Dr. Jonas frowned. “By publishing for the layman, you’re in both.” He held a silver letter opener before his nose, regarded it fixedly, then placed it on the desk blotter. “Your Dr. Chapman is primarily a biologist. As such, he brings his special point of view to the survey. What he is interested in is numbers. I’m not. I’m a psychologist. I want to know about feelings and relationships.” He found a magazine on the desk. He opened it, and Paul saw that it was Encounter. “I was reading an article by Geoffrey Gorer, the English anthropologist. Witty and profound. He speaks of these sex surveys, one in particular. By the standards of the interviewers he says-” Dr. Jonas sought the quotation, and then, finger on the page, read aloud-” ‘Sex becomes a quite meaningless activity, save as a device for physical relaxation-something like a good sneeze, but involving the lower rather than the higher portions of the body. If tensions build up, one either takes a pinch of snuff or a mistress; it doesn’t matter which.’ ” He lowered the magazine. “You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I am not aware that Dr. Chapman has ever used the word love in print or speech.”

  Paul said nothing.

  “I’m not badgering you,” said Dr. Jonas. “I miss that word. All your diagrams, graphs, tables, are devoted to the physical act-quantity, frequency, how much, how often-yet this doesn’t tell these married women a damn thing about love or happiness. This is separating sex from affection, warmth, tenderness, devotion, and I don’t think it should. Dr. Chapman, like so many in his field, .implies that regular sexual outlet, orgasm, means happiness and health. It doesn’t, believe me. So-called normal physical sex can represent love, but it can also express anxiety, fear, vanity, compulsion. I’m saying that using the physical act of sex as a unit of judgment on no
rmality or happiness or health can be all wrong. Physical sex is one part of the whole man or whole woman. It doesn’t determine character. Rather, a human being’s character determines his or her sexual behavior. Terman put it best. Sexual adjustment in marriage is mostly an expression of the very same factors which enable a man or woman to adjust successfully in any human relationship. Your sex life is the slave of your overall personality. If you are a sufficiently integrated personality, so that you get along happily in career, socially, and so forth, the odds are you’ll get along sexually. If your life is an emotional mess, it may not show up in Dr. Chapman’s impressive charts. A woman may have three magnificent orgasms in a week. This is fine, normal, what all must strive for, Dr. Chapman will say. But this woman may still be miserable, wanting in tender love and joy of life.”

  Paul had been slumping in the plastic-covered chair, long legs outstretched. Now he pulled himself upright. “I won’t deny our limitations,” he said. “How do you measure love? It’s impossible-“

  “Then why pretend that measurement of coitus and orgasm is a measurement of love?”

  “Dr. Chapman doesn’t say that-“

  “But since he says no more, people believe it. If a large number of people show up in his digits as performing intercourse three times a week, then he labels it biologically normal. But suppose my wife and I are not physically and psychologically endowed to perform three times a week. Once a week is fine for us. We read these charts and think we are abnormal, and this implies wrong and guilt and invites suffering. I just don’t believe that because something is shown to be widespread that it is automatically the right thing and the healthy thing.”

  “You’re reading only one side of the coin,” said Paul. “There’s another. Turn it over. Obversely, it reads-well, just the opposite of what you’ve been arguing-that telling everyone certain sex practices are widespread removes the shame and abnormality from them. And I say that this is helpful. It liberates millions from needless repressions and guilts.”