The Playboy Interview: Sexperts & Sexpots by Ralph Ginzburg & Cindy Crawford Sharon Stone & Mae West Hugh M. Hefner Erica Jong William Masters Virginia Johnson Joan Collins Dr. Ruth Westheimer Dr. Mary Calderone

Author:Ralph Ginzburg & Cindy Crawford Sharon Stone & Mae West, Hugh M. Hefner, Erica Jong, William Masters, Virginia Johnson, Joan Collins, Dr. Ruth Westheimer Dr. Mary Calderone [Ginzburg, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

Playboy: We wondered because Freudianism is an extremely authoritarian discipline. If you’re such an anti-authoritarian, how could you ever get mixed up with a Freudian analyst?

Jong: Mixed up is the key phrase there. I don’t believe in systems, and I don’t believe in breaking the world down into two types of people or two types of orgasms or any of those things. I do not want anybody to feed me any kind of orthodoxy, whether it’s Catholicism or Seventh-day Adventism or Calvinism or Freudianism or anything else. Doctrinaire Marxists bore me. Doctrinaire Gestalt therapists, doctrinaire sexologists bore me.

Playboy: What’s your opinion of Freudian theories about sexuality?

Jong: There are a number of things in Freud’s writing that lead me to believe he was extremely frightened of sexuality, very hung up and guilt-ridden.

Playboy: Specifically, how about one of Freud’s most controversial theories: Do you believe in penis envy?

Jong: That has a certain lilt, like a singing commercial for peanut butter. No, I believe that women envy the power men have in our culture, and well we might: I don’t think we literally envy the organ. We don’t have to; there’s so much else we can envy. We can envy the fact that men make more money; we can envy the fact that society is structured for their benefit; we can envy the fact that they can go out to restaurants unescorted without getting pinched in the ass.

Playboy: We thought you liked getting pinched in the ass, or is that only Isadora’s predilection?

Jong: Isadora likes it. Isadora—she’s incorrigible. I like to be pinched on the ass, but only by some people. And I want to pick the people. Isadora has a lot of weird tastes that I don’t share. Most of her fears, though, are mine. Or were. I’ve outgrown many of them.

Playboy: What besides your fear of flying?

Jong: I’m no longer afraid of being alone. That panic that Isadora feels—“Oh, my God, he’s going to leave me and I’ll be alone”—that actually is the irrational female panic that is ground into us from our earliest days and reaffirmed during our adolescence. God forbid that you should be without a date on Saturday night! God forbid you should be alone on New Year’s Eve! God forbid your man should leave you! And then you discover, well, being alone is pretty nice. I like my own company. If I don’t have a date on Saturday night, I’m reading a terrific book. I’m going out with a woman friend or with a man who is not my lover but whose company I enjoy. It’s not so terrible. Life goes on.

Playboy: You’re in the process of getting a divorce. Why do you think so many marriages are breaking up these days?

Jong: Women are tired of bending, so they break up. I think that in some cases, divorce comes about through a healthy desire to fulfill one’s own individuality. In other cases, it my be part of an endless quest for what is unfulfillable anyway. The things that used to hold the family together don’t exist to the extent that they did.