A Mind of Its Own

Customer Reviews

• A humorous but well-documented history of the penis  May 18, 2002 (74 of 76 found this helpful)

  It is hard to write a book about the penis without dealing in euphemisms and double entendres. Yet this book uses them well to show the role the penis has played in the development of western culture. The book is a cultural history of the penis, and explores human (mostly men's) thinking about the male reproductive organs.

  The first chapter, The Demon Rod, explores the moral view of the penis as it developed from ancient times through Christianized Western European thought. Is the penis a gift of the gods or man's link with the devil? This is the question that is explored in this chapter. From the phallic cults of ancient Sumer, Egypt, Greece and Rome, through the Jewish circumcision pact, to the demonization of the penis by Christian thinkers like Augustine, the role of the penis in the relationship of man to his god is explored.

  Chapter Two, The Gear Shift, starts with Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical dissections and examines the early attempts of western science to discover the biological rather than the mythical aspects of the penis. The period covered is the 16th through the 19th century. Most of the science, though well-intentioned, is colored by the moral thinking of the time. Although much is learned, many false theories coexist with newly discovered anatomical facts.

  The next chapter is called The Measuring Stick and is a look at the theories surrounding Racism and penis size. It outlines the history of the belief that males of African heritage have greater penile size than any other race. From Noah to Mapplethorp, the fascination and fear associated with this concept and the racial theories that developed along side it are well laid out.

  The Cigar is Chapter Four and it explores the influence of the penis on Freud and psychoanalytical thought. Here we move from the physical manifestation of the penis to its effects on the psyche, both in the individual and the culture. With quotes from Freud's writings, we see his development of the theories of the Oedipus Complex and the vaginal orgasm, and their effects on modern society.

  Chapter Five, entitled The Battering Ram, is a look at the feminist reaction of the 1960s to the Freudian emphasis on the penis and vaginal orgasm. These feminist thinkers shift the focus to the clitoris as the center of satisfying sexual relationships for women. From Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique to Andrea Dworkin's Pornography, the link between the penis and sexual violence in feminist writings is outlined in wonderful detail.

  The final chapter, The Punctureproof Balloon returns to the physiological study of the penis that started in chapter two. However, this chapter picks up with the 19th Century with its quacks and misinformed physicians and takes us up to the present day's modern medical marvels. Here we see urologists taking the study of impotence away from psychoanalysts and developing medical treatments. This is a wonderful historic outline of the creation and cultural impact of Viagra and other pharmaceutical treatments for Erectile Dysfunction.

  All in all this is a fascinating popular treatment of a topic that tends to either not be discussed or is discussed so informally as to have little regard for the facts. This book tells it all and backs up the facts with 35 pages of Notes to the bibliographic sources. To help the reader find the facts a 12 page Index ends the book. Eight pages of black and white pictures illustrate some of the topics described in the book. This book is entertaining and informative reading for anyone who has ever wanted to know about this organ and its role in society.

• It really rises to the occasion!  Oct 31, 2001 (45 of 48 found this helpful)

  Feminists have been bashing "phallocentric" culture for a couple of decades now, but most have not bothered to examine or explicate the central element of such culture, namely the male organ itself. David M. Friedman has written a well-researched, admirably forthright account of Western culture's alternating aversion toward and obsession with the penis. Friedman tracks this evolution from the semen-drenched religious texts of ancient Sumer (where the word for semen is the same as water, and the gods literally bathe the world in sperm) through the ancient Greeks and then how the organ was "demonized" by St. Augustine and the Catholic church. Other chapters consider how racism has centered for centuries on white male fear of macrophallic African men, as well as Freud's attempt to "universalize" penis envy and castration anxiety. While one might quibble with a scholarly detail here and there (notably Friedman's acceptance of Foucault's theories about Greek sexuality, which have been notably contradicted by more recent scholarship), this is such a well-researched and engagingly written study that it deserves to be widely read. Men and women alike will gain a clearer understanding of why we put fig-leaves on statues and why a cigar is not always just a good smoke.

• NOT a sex book, a cultural history, as per the title  Jan 5, 2002 (32 of 34 found this helpful)

  Though the store had it filed under pornography, this book is not at all pertinent to that smarmiest of genres. It's a cultural summary of the significance of the male genitals around the world and throughout history. Sometimes anthropological, sometimes psychological, sometimes medical (perhaps to a fault), and often exhibiting wry humor, the book is modest in scope and level of analysis, and certainly a good read.
  My personal interests, as an anthropologist, were the sections which discuss the ancient and religious history of the genitals, up through the Middle Ages and into the well-meaning pseudo-science of the nineteenth century. Not so engrossing, I thought, are the later chapters. "The Measuring Stick" goes a bit too far and graphically into homosexual fantasy, and the last chapter was a downright disappointment, as its discussion of modern views on the male genitals becomes a scientific tract on testicular surgery with way too many medical details and terminology.
  In the end, the book begins well, ends not so well, and in my opinion, is well-written enough throughout that it remains for the most part pleasing.

• The Genious of Penious  Dec 10, 2001 (20 of 22 found this helpful)

  The other night I was telling a friend of mine ...--to go along with an omniverous intellect and particular interests in the sciences--why he would like this book. I explained that the author had done a remarkable job of synthesizing medical information and cultural ideas of various disciplines from throughout Western civilization (from the Greeks to the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, right though the modern era) as they pertain to what turns out to be the fantastically rich vehicle of the male organ. It's the kind of book you want to read passages of aloud to a friend, because they're edifying and illuminating ("testify" comes from testes), not to mention off-handedly hilarious. More than simply a good read, "A Mind of Its Own" is thought-provoking; we live in an era of incurable sexually transmitted diseases and a headlong commitment to creating the bulletproof penis. Friedman's book limns this penile paradox, and their precedents over the last couple of millennia. I'll be giving this book as a Christmas gift to friends who will get a kick out of the topic, and appreciate the serious and witty way it is handled.

• More Than Expected  Oct 20, 2003 (9 of 10 found this helpful)

  I had seen this book on Amazon before and by-passed it, thinking that it would be little more than an anthology of dick stories, past and present. Do not make that mistake. This is a well-researched book that investigates the religious, scientific, racial, political and psychological dimensions - pun intended- of the penis throughout Western History, from Ancient Greece to Viagra. On the other hand, do not fret that it is a dry tome;the author presents the material in an entertaining manner with just the right amount of ribaldry. So interesting is the book that I read the entire 300+ pages in two sittings.