SEX AND CENSORSHIP: THE
ETERNAL CONFLICT
THEODORE SCHROEDER
NEW YORK
Reprinted from the
Medical Journal and Record
Incorporating the
New York Medical Journal
Philadelphia Medical Journal
Medical Record and Medical News
Vol. CXXVI. 600-603
November 16, 1927
_SEX AND CENSORSHIP: THE
ETERNAL CONFLICT
THEODORE SCHROEDER
NEW YORK
Reprinted front the
Medical Journal and Record
Incorporating the
New York Medical Journal
Philadelphia Medical Journal
Medical Record and Medical News
Vol. CXXVI. 600-603
November 16, 1927
Theodore Schroeder, of Cos Cob, Conn., dis-
cusses Sex and Censorship in an interesting manner.
Mr. Schroeder's intellectual output has appeared in
over one hundred and forty different periodicals,
none of them of the socalled popular variety, and
published in four languages. There are also five
volumes dealing with free speech problems. He says
that his best education came from unusually diversi-
fied living, made intelligible through submitting (in
1914) to psychoanalysis by Dr. William A. White.
In between, he attended the University of Wisconsin,
where he studied mechanical engineering, and later
graduated in civil engineering and law. All this later
education should not be accounted against him, he
claims, because his intellect escaped without stand-
ardization. Since 1914 he has used psychoanalytic
technic as a method of research. In his essays since
1914 his greatest emphasis has been put upon the
psychology and the erotogenesis of religion. His
more general task is that of introducing the psycho-
analytic approach to all the social sciences. Accord-
ing to his own sense of values his most important
work will be the future formulation of the subjective
aspect of evolution in our intellectual methods.
He disclaims any pastime, occupation or hobby
other than what is implied in the foregoing state-
ments, namely: always to live his life at the maturest
intellectual level of which he is capable. He asserts
that a well unified personality needs no other ambi-
tion, in relation to anything that can confront one.
Reprinted from the Medical Journal and Record
for November 16, 1927
SEX AND CENSORSHIP: THE ETERNAL
CONFLICT
THEODORE SCHROEDER
New York
Every little while we repeat a spasmodic exhibition
of virtue, over the socalled sexy theatre. After a lull
there come some hysterical convulsions stimulated by
sexy books, sexy magazines, and other similar mate-
rial. When all this has become stale, we may turn
to a revival of religion, perhaps with the help of our
sanctified Amy Semple McPherson. Thereby even
the hypersensual Puritan can explode his eroticism,
and at the same time advertise his socalled virtuous
erotic morbidity, as spiritual love or the experience
of God. When this becomes stale we begin again
with the theatre. In viewing these seemingly eternal
conflicts over sex and censorship, some psychologists
find little more than unconscious manifestations or
symptoms of irreconcilable, morbidly intense, psycho-
sexual impulses.
I wish to give the inarticulate minority who have
a fairly healthy minded attitude toward sex a more
conscious attitude of self appreciation, so that they
may not fall such easy victims to the varying moral-
istic hysterical ananifestations of the noisy contes-
tants. I also hope to help them toward a better ap-
praisal of all those who are so vociferously engaged
over the eternal conflict about our sex censorship. I
cannot convince any of the distressed ones. They
need a mental cure. I expect only to describe my
position, largely in dogmatic form, and with the sole
hope of increasing a socially useful consciousness of
worthiness in the small minority of healthy minded
sensualists.
Copyright, 1927, by A. R. Elliott Publishing Company.
4
Schroeder: Sear and Censorship
A LOOK INTO THE NURSERY
Let me begin with the beginnings of the difficulty
in the nursery. I can only make a brief and over-
simplified statement of the origin, development, and
behavior of our inner conflict of impulse, as that may
be related to the ever present disputes over our sex
censorship. Every infant and every child has some
unhappy moments over the attempt of the elders to
discipline it, for the development of cleanliness,
wholesomeness and social habits. Those unhappy
moments of infancy already involve factors which
later unconsciously exert an important influence upon
our conflict over the sexual impulse. In its internal
aspects it all begins as a conflict between the young-
ster’s desire to perpetuate its infantile habits and wil-
fulness, as if to the point of a relative omnipotence,
and yet at the same time craving the approval of the
elders who are curbing and thwarting the infantile
will to power. As between different youngsters, this
universal conflict has an involvement of very differ-
ent degrees of emotional intensity. The trick of
raising healthy minded children consists mainly in
minimizing that emotionalism, without giving up the
maturing discipline. Those who develop the more
intense degrees of emotionalism have the least chance
of going through the stress and storm of adolescence
and pubescence, without becoming psychoneurotics,
and hysterical moralists.

INFANTILE CONTROL OF ADOLESCENCE
With the entering upon adolescence and pubescence
new factors of this prior infantile conflict develop
and partly enter consciousness. New intensities be-
come involved in old associations. These new inten-
sities are derived from the maturing sexual nature.
Unavoidably we carry much of the prior emotional
tones, conflicts and reaction patterns over into the
maturer sexual field. The child that has previously
developed a sufficiently intense emotional conflict
5
Schroeder: Sex and Censorship
over the power or authority exercised by the elders,
may now show a corresponding psychological handi-
cap. As the sexual powers become matured a calm
and calculating prudence concerning sex is, for such
handicapped persons, becoming ever more difficult.
On the one hand is the organically healthy bio-
logical urge for the physiological expression of the
sexual drive. On the other side is the potent desire
to live in harmony with the expectation of the elders,
supported by the thunders and threats of hell fire,
which emanate largely from our hysterical moralists
for revenue. The adolescent cannot satisfy both of
these irreconcilable demands. Accordingly the in-
ternal conflict of emotions will probably grow in
intensity and the victim thereof become ever more
perplexed. Fortunate it is for mental hygiene, that
some still live their childhood lives sufficiently re-
moved from the ethical valuations of our hysterical
moralists, and therefore remain relatively uninflu-
enced by the suggestive and imitative tendency of
their morbid intensities.
whAT Is A SMOKE SCREEN ?
From this excessive emotionalism of the internal
conflict over the sex impulse, many are forced to an
undue concentration of attention upon sex. Perhaps
most of these more morbid sensualists tend to make a
divorce between the physical and the psychologic
aspects of sex. Then they may with seeming safety
deny their own physical lewdness. So begins our
popular sexual hypocrisy. Often it develops into
quite honest selfdeception, if the physiological as-
pects of sex can be almost excluded from conscious-
ness. Now our moral theories will be as extrava-
gantly valued as the intensity of the lewdness and
shame which they conceal. Thus moral values, I be-
lieve all moral valuations, are mere symptoms of
morbidity, and serve as a smoke screen to conceal
our real nature from public inspection. However,
this extravagant lewdness of our hyperfervid moral-
6
Schroeder: Sea and Censorship
ists is manifest to the genetic psychologist in spite of
the smoke screens.
VARIETIES IN SMORE SCREENS
One of these most popular masks for an extrava-
gant sensualism is that of the equally extravagant,
subjectively determined, moral overvaluation of con-
tinence. As a correlate of this, there must exist an
equal overvaluation of the psychological aspect of
their bodily lusts, often under the guise of spiritual-
ity. So came the historical romanticism, which pro-
duced the exaltation of the psychological aspect of
bodily lust as spiritual love. The function of spiritual
love, as a mere smoke screen for bodily lusts, is seen
in the relative depreciation and the frequent as well
as fervent denunciation or denial of the inseparable
physiological aspects of lust. So through the delu-
sional romanticism came theories of metaphysical
love, and the apotheosis of spiritual love and virginity,
or of those who are supposed to possess these quali-
ties. For some persons all this becomes symbolized by
some one deific virgin. Others become so morbidly
subjective as not to allow themselves even an imagi-
nary love object. However, this love is just as sen-
suous as any other. According to the intensity of
their lusts, these will be ashamed of the physical
aspects of sex. With like intensity they tend to
resent being reminded of the physical aspects of their
lusts, because this tends to impair the efficiency of
their smoke screen, as well as to repudiate their
taboos. Many of these resent even the implied dis-
crediting of their smoke screen, and therefore become
enthusiastic censors. This seems necessary to pre-
serve their selfdelusion, and to compel others to
accept their sexual illusions as facts. So they hope
to validate their moralistic smoke screen. Without
that they must be unhappy because ashamed. At
present I know a woman who insists upon proving
her purity by asserting that her child was not begot-
ten by her husband, but by a ghost. The difference
7
Schroeder: Sea and Censorship
between her and her professional purists is but a
slight difference of degree.
ON BECOMING OBSESSED
Those who are the most influenced by the popu-
lar moral hysteria over sex, find it the most difficult
to hold their attention away from it. Just to the
degree that our sexual taboos impress the young with
fear and shame over their own quite healthy sexual
nature, the more they will be impelled to lie about it.
So it is that morbid Puritans help to create both a
morbid concentration upon sex, with its inevitable
increase of sexual irregularities, and at the same time
intensify the needs for becoming a poseur, a hypo-
crite and a liar. The more ashamed we are of our
sexual unconventionalities, the more ostentatious
and enthusiastic will be our probable protestation of
morality. All our institutionalized morality now be-
comes devoted to the cure of conditions which are
mainly of its own creation.
Those who become mentally the most disturbed
and obsessed over their personal sex problem, now
have the greater need for a moralistic smoke screen.
They project their own obsessions onto the canvas of
the outer world, and then denounce that selfpro-
jection, as if it were the operation of Satan through
and within others, and as if by such a selfprojection
they could avert suspicion from themselves. These
quite often become the most enthusiastic supporters
of the moralists for revenue, in and out of the ortho-
dox churches.
CONCERNING SUBLIMATION
If they accept a conventional moralistic smoke
screen for their sexual worries and shame, then the
more intelligent ones are sometimes soothed with the
assurance that religion, etc., are a sublimation of
sex. This alleged sublimation is purely dialectic,
or else a glorified progression toward greater mor-
bidity. It has nothing to do with sublimation as an
8
Schroeder: Sea and Censorship
evolutionary psychologist might view it. Often it is
a mere rhetorically exalted, psychosexual regression.
When religion has become intellectually unacceptable,
another vicarious expression (or mask) for unusual
sensualism is sometimes found through art. The
artistic smoke screen for sex has been similarly mis-
called a sublimation.
Those whose healthy minded curiosity over sex
has been emotionally intensified by the Puritan yelps
over it, may find it impossible either to satisfy or
outgrow that childish curiosity. Then they must
pursue their ends—morbidly intense ends very often
—through the arts (literature, pictures, theatres,
etc.), or through a phantasmal supernatural sanctity
of the metaphysical and moralistic smoke screen.
That may be secured through contributions to and
affiliations with churches and other societies for pro-
moting and glorifying ethical ostentation. So it
comes that there is much of psychological unity be-
tween the compulsion that impels some toward sexy
plays and others toward churches.
CONCERNING MORAL CRUSADERS
Among the psychoneurotics there will always be
Some whose emotional compulsion and education
combine to prepare them for leadership. Their
dominant emotional need will be so intense as to
compel them toward a boastfulness over their artis-
tic, metaphysical, theological or moralistic sublim-
ated smoke screen for sex. This is equally true of
the theological and nontheological adherents to both
conventional and to unconventional moral creeds, art,
etc. A few, by the boisterous character of the lauda-
tion of their own particular smoke screen, become
accepted by the more timid or stupid ones, as great
moral leaders, purity crusaders, etc. By the in-
tensity of their moral zeal they often furnish quite
accurate standards for judging the intensity with
which they fear selfrevelation. The healthy minded
ones may not be more “pure.” Perhaps they are only
9.
Schroeder: Sea and Censorship
less ashamed. From the psychogenetic and mental
hygiene point of view the only thing to be ashamed
of is shame.
The genetic psychologist finds that these subjective
conflicts of impulse, both consciously and uncon-
sciously, always involve the psychological mechanism
of some depression, some feeling of inadequacy, of
inferiority, of shame, of unworthiness. The ostenta-
tious proclamation of religious humility, illustrates
this point. In other words, to some psychologists
they make it plain that they would be much pained
if their true nature and activity were made public.
That fear is the need for a moralistic and religious
smoke screen and of a redemptive religion. The dif-
ference between moral crusaders and healthy minded
persons lies chiefly in the quality and intensity of the
emotions, the resultant greater need of the former
for a smoke screen, and in the intensity of their devo-
tion to it.
DELUSIONAL COMPENSATION FOR INFERIORITY
Among the afflicted ones, there are always con-
structed delusional compensations for a feeling of
inferiority. These phantasmal compensations can be
largely classified under several heads. Perhaps the
most popular of these is the solace of some ideal-
ized existence after this painful present one has
ended in death. This will usually be accºmpanied by
the assumption of a phantasmal nearness to God or
other supernatural entities, by means of which the
sick mind exalts itself above those who, according to
other more healthy and wordly standards, may be
rated the superior ones. Such spooky superior affilia-
tions come only as a reward for a superior morality
which may now attach itself to a recently professed
repentance and ostentatious protestations of humility.
Witness the “reborn” of all sects.
Another such compensation for inferiority is
money. If one can somehow acquire property way
10
Schroeder: Sea and Censorship
beyond the need of security for a simple, wholesome,
useful life, that excess of property or its ostentatious
waste can supply a delusional testimony of “superior”
achievement. Thus it partially masks or seems to
neutralize the feeling of inferiority. This delusional
valuation placed upon unnecessary riches, or osten-
tatious waste, is helped along by the envy and hatred
of morons and psychoneurotics who have sought but
failed to find a similar neutralizer, and whose in-
feriority feeling is enhanced by that failure.
GREEN WICH VILLAGE AS A GLORIFIED INFANTILISM
A third conspicuous neutralizer for the feeling of
inferiority is the conspicuous and successful living
on the infantile level of sense, feeling and phantasy,
as ends in themselves. These may specialize on the
arts wherein such valuations predominate. Such
persons will strive to become authors of fictive art,
poetry, plays or scenarios, or they will become inter-
ested in graphic arts. If they lack an adequate in-
telligence and creative ability of the conventional
sort they may become modern artists, modern poets,
etc. If they have money for ostentatious waste they
become art collectors. If they combine a psycho-
neurotic need for much money with the craving for
an infantile life of sense, feeling and phantasy, they
may become actors, cinema or theatrical producers,
or publishers of plays, poetry, art books and fiction,
crossword puzzles and theological or moral discourses.
All this helps a delusion of grandeur such as tends
to compensate or neutralize a feeling of inadequacy
in other directions. Very few of the psychopaths
will find it convenient or possible to neutralize their
feeling of inadequacy by means of the use or pro-
motion of an objective or scientific method, as a
means for hastening the democratization of education
and welfare.
These victims of a dual personality will often ex-
hibit both aspects of their Puritan conflict. They
perhaps believe themselves to be sublimating the
11
Schroeder: Sex and Censorship
erotic impulses involved in their subjective conflict,
and its inferiority feeling, while at the same time
neutralizing the latter by expected or actual financial
returns. At least to the genetic psychologist that
conflict will be quite obvious. Sometimes the pious
ones, who manifest almost a sadistic glee in the pur-
suit of the “sinner” who has been found out, or who
publicly defends moral heresy, can yet be quite
humanly sympathetic to the secret sinner, who wears
their own kind of religious or moral mask. This is
one among many illustrations of a subjective conflict.
Likewise the psychoneurotic who combines artistic
and property interests within his morbid valuations,
will also manifest his internal conflict of impulse.
Let me point out how this is done, when it is most
apparent.
THE Psychology of “You ARE ANOTHER”
We have all heard the story of the burglar who
would ward off suspicion by pointing at another and
shouting “stop thief.” By less conscious processes,
the psychoneurotic defender of free speech will show
his suppressed puritanism, by pointing his own finger
of moral reproach at some rival or competitor who
has not yet been attacked by the professional purist.
Like the more conscious Puritan, these must also
sooth a guilty conscience by proclaiming themselves
holier than others.
A publisher finds one of his books condemned or
prosecuted; or, a theatrical producer similarly finds
his play attacked as obscene. The genetic psycholo-
gist will observe whether or not his answer to the
charge is predominantly conditioned by his emotional
needs. If so he will exhibit that fact by the sub-
jectivism of his defense, which often shows itself in
the display of righteous indignation and an evasion
of the objective factors of the problem.
So we find our theatrical producer defending him-
self by denouncing the greater impurity of the output
12
Schroeder: Sex and Censorship
of some magazine and book publisher, or even the
greater obscenity of some competitor's theatrical pro-
duction. So, too, the accused book publisher at
times points to the greater obscenity of the maga-
zines and theatre. When accused persons are ter-
ribly wicked and bold, such persons have often de-
manded the suppression of the Bible as containing
much obscenity and immorality which it is claimed
is far more injurious to the public morals than his
own accused product. No effort is ever made under
such circumstances to justify these comparative judg-
ments by any objectively derived standards of ob-
scenity or purity. The psychoneurotic is very likely
to be content with a mere vehement defense of the
superiority of his own unconsciously and subjectively
determined smoke screen.
EVEN COURTS ARE NOT OBJECTIVE
Even among those psychoneurotics who are nearer
to healthy mindedness, we see this same subjectivism.
For example, not one of the courts that has been
called upon to deal with these cases has ever at-
tempted to define obscenity in terms of any objec-
tively derived standard of either obscenity or purity.
Like our hysterical moralists for revenue, our judges
without a single exception, I believe, have been
actuated by the unconscious psychological processes
which are the working out of their unconsciously
determined and unconsciously working defensive
necessities. In consequence of this, not one of our
courts, nor the lawyers concerned with such cases,
have ever been able to discover that the question of
the influence of a book or play upon the audience is a
highly complicated and technical question for experts
in genetic psychology. None of these could see this
or consider help from such specialists. Probably this
is so because of the unconscious mentation which
will, in many psychoneurotics, create an emotional
disturbance such as always comes into being, when
13
Schroeder: Sea and Censorship
the moral mask and smoke screen are being endan-
gered.
If lawyers or judges had combined healthy mind-
edness, with some psychological intelligence, they
would long ago have discovered that they were no
longer able to consider the issue of obscenity, as one
of art, morals or religion. Under such circumstances
they might have inquired if all these smoke screens
were not merely symptoms of Puritan psychopath-
ology. In that event it might be concluded that the
obscenity exists exclusively in the viewing or reading
mind, and never is a quality of the thing read or
viewed. Then perhaps the alleged potency for evil
is never a quality of the objectional object. But the
legal consequences of such a scientific conclusion
are too terrible for the psychoneurotic leaders of our
moron civilization to contemplate.