Nymphomania

A lively and fascinating exploration of the surprising, contradictory, and illuminating history of nymphomania. Nymphomania--organic disease, psychological disorder, legal construct, and locker-room joke. Throughout history, it's been all these and more. Today images of sexually available women permeate our culture, and curiosity about nymphomania appears to be as insatiable as the stereotypical nymphomaniac herself. Doctors in the nineteenth century treated nymphomania as an organic disease, while in this century psychologists and psychoanalysts have looked to low self-esteem or an unresolved Oedipal complex to explain it. Nymphomania found its way into courtrooms when defense attorneys painted rape victims as so sexually twisted that they fantasized a sexual attack, or so voracious that they provoked it. Some sex experts dismissed the label altogether: Kinsey claimed that a nymphomaniac was simply "someone who has more sex than you do." Contemporary popular culture considers a woman's desire for sex so healthy that "nympho" can be a teasing compliment. At the same time, female sexual addiction has captured the public's imagination and entered the therapist's vocabulary. Carol Groneman explores the idea of nymphomania over the last two hundred years, unraveling questions about how much is too much sex for women--and who decides.