Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique is a famous popular scientific treatise and self-help book published in London in 1926 by Dutch gynecologist Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde, retired director of the Gynecological Clinic in Haarlem, and "one of the major writers on human sexuality during the early twentieth century" (Frayser & Whitby, p. 300). It was the best-known work on its subject for several decades, and was reprinted 46 times in the original edition. After World-War Two, it sold over a half-million copies. A revised edition was published in 1965. and a subsequent one in 2000 (Melody & Pearson, p. 96).
It proclaimed the "critical goal of marriage consists of sexual pleasure shared by husband and wife" (Melody and Person, p. 93). A 2000 edition of the book described itself as concentrating "on the cultivation of the technique of eroticism as an art in marriage."
Frederica Mathewes-Green, in the National Review, described it as
the best-selling sex manual of all time. Over half a million copies were sold in the United States alone, and it enjoyed equal success in Europe. ...This is not a prude's book. Young couples who grab a used copy off the Internet may have even as much fun with it as their great-grandparents did.The first printing had an insert: "The sale of this book is strictly limited to members of the medical profession, Psychoanalysts, Scholars, and to such adults as may have a definite position in the field of Physiological, Psychological, or Social Research." It was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1931.
Famous quotes containing the words ideal, physiology and/or technique:
“An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband.”
—Booth Tarkington (1869–1946)
“If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realise that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“The audience is the most revered member of the theater. Without an audience there is no theater. Every technique learned by the actor, every curtain, every flat on the stage, every careful analysis by the director, every coordinated scene, is for the enjoyment of the audience. They are our guests, our evaluators, and the last spoke in the wheel which can then begin to roll. They make the performance meaningful.”
—Viola Spolin (b. 1911)