Dominance and Sexual Behavior: A Hypothesis

VIRGINIA ABERNETHYAuthors Info & Affiliations

Publication: American Journal of Psychiatry

Volume 131, Number 7

https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.131.7.813

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Abstract

Primatological, ethnographic, and psychiatric data suggest the hypothesis that male dominance facilitates male-female copulatory behavior while female dominance inhibits it. The author discusses a mother-son pair of rhesus macaques in which two incestuous episodes took place, several human societies in which the wife is economically independent of her husband and has higher status in the home, and the significance of maternal dominance in the dynamics of male homosexuality. Presentation of these data is followed by suggestions for testing the hypothesis and a discussion of the social and therapeutic implications of the observed relationships.

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Information & Authors

Information

Published In

American Journal of Psychiatry

Volume 131 • Number 7 • July 1974

Pages: 813 - 817

PubMed: 4209744

History

Published in print: July 1974

Published online: 12 February 2015

Authors

Details

VIRGINIA ABERNETHY

Associate in Psychiatry (Anthropology), Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

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Dominance and Sexual Behavior: A Hypothesis

Abstract

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