History of Psychiatry

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Book Reviews : Jeffrey Weeks. Making Sexual History. Cambridge: Polity

Press, 2000. Pp. x + 256, ISBN 0-7456-2115-5. 14.99 (Pbk)
Ivan Crozier
History of Psychiatry 2001; 12; 381
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X0101204708
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381

Book Reviews

Jeffrey Weeks. Making Sexual History.

Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Pp. x + 256,
ISBN 0-7456-2115-5. £14.99 (Pbk).

does, say, Adam Phillips (Py-omises,

Promises, Faber & Faber, 2000). Both
Forrester and Phillips sail the dangerous
of the self-collected essay edition
with such apparent ease by keeping two
major points in mind: it is important for
the essays not to overlap too much when
they are collected; and it is also imperative
that the essays do not date too much, for if
they are no longer relevant or current, what
is the reason for republishing them? Both
of these perils are - sadly - occasionally
realized in the volume under review. But
there remain strong rewards in the essay
collection as a suitable form, and such
advantages are brought to fruition in
Weekss Making Sexual History. For
example, there is the opportunity to reprint
pieces which some audiences might not
have read: the introductions to reprints
of Altmans Homosexual Oppression and
Liberation and Hocquenghems Homosexual
Desire, are now happily sitting together in
one
volume. Other people may have
forgotten Weekss excellent essay on the
political motivations behind Havelock Elliss
writing on homosexuality, which was so
much better than other works on Ellis
when it was published in 1977, and which
remained the best piece on the topic until
Chris Nottinghams recent book, The Pursuit
waters

historian of sexuality in the world

must have read something by Jeffrey
Weeks, one of Englands first and most
important academic contributors to this
topic. As the pieces collected in this
volume show, he has covered a wide range
of historical and sociological issues relating
to sexuality in the essay form, addressing
topics as far apart as Havelock Ellis and
nineteenth-century sexual reform, late
twentieth-century gay marriage, AIDS/HIV
and contemporary (homo) sexual behaviour,
and has written introductions to and
commentaries on the ideas of numerous
important people, from Michel Foucault
and Mary McIntosh through to Dennis
Altman and Guy Hocquenghem. Although
his broad range of interests is captured in
the present book, this does not mean that
these essays will replace Weekss important
monographs such as Coming Out! (1977),
Sex, Politics, and Society (2nd edn, 1989)
and Invented Moralities ( 1995) .
There are both advantages and disadvantages in collecting ones essays together
(would it be too cynical to mention the
research exercise points gained for his
department from a new book?). Some of
the finest examples of this type of collection
have recently been published by John
Forrester (see his Dispatches from the Freud
Wars, Harvard UP, 1997). Forrester contributes significantly to the essayists art, as

Every

of Serenity (Amsterdam UP, 1999). (Weekss

essay must nevertheless be remembered

flawed, because it does

as

adequately put
Ellis into either the context of English
medicine or European sexology, which is
the direction that the numerous people

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not

382
interested in Ellis have since taken. The
fact remains, however, that no one else was
doing this with Ellis in 1977.) Most
remarkable of these exegeses of other
peoples ideas is the description of Mary
McIntoshs work, which was thoughtprovoking and nicely placed. Weeks
particularly invites us to read his work as
something of an extension of McIntoshs
work. But the selection of essays can also
be problematic. I think that the introduction
to Foucaults ideas might have safely been
left out of the book, as it does not teach us
anything new about Foucault, an author
who has been introduced so many times in
the past 20 years that it is no longer as
interesting as it might have been in 1982.
More fascinating and useful than the
cribs of Ellis et al. is the way that Weeks
reinvented himself as a sociologist of sexual
behaviour, rather than an historian of ideas
about sex. This protean step was not as
drastic as it sounds, however. Weeks, like
all good historians of sexuality, is interested
in theory - as are many sociologists. And
he demonstrates more than adequately that
he can present both social-theory type
arguments about the sexual revolution,
amongst other topics, as well as providing
significant ethnomethodological evidence
about gay coupledom. As an historian,
Weeks has never really exhibited the
unreconstructed empiricism often found in
many other English historians, although
this is not to suggest that he offers us a
novel theoretical approach to either the
history of past sexual practices or the
history of previous ideas about sex. We can
still return to Foucault for these needs.
What Weeks does give us is a politically
engaged reading of sexual repression and
the responses to such strictures on
homosexual relationships in particular. In
this, Weeks follows some of the trail-blazers
with whom he deals in Part One, such as
Ellis and McIntosh.
One aspect of Weekss work which I
found especially intriguing was the way that

he positioned himself amongst other

historians of sex. While scholars such as
Ken Plummer and Foucault were regularly
cited, other historians working in a less
sociological tradition, such as Lesley Hall
or Gert Hekma, were not mentioned. Chris
Nottinghams aforementioned book that
extends many of Weekss 1977 claims on
Ellis was omitted from the up-dated note
on the Ellis essay, surely only for reasons of
publication date and not excellence, and
David Halperin, who has had much to say
on many of the issues with which Weeks
concerns himself, was barely mentioned, let
alone taken on board. Other comments
about the importance of Ian Hackings or
Arnold Davidsons ideas for many of
Weekss essays could also be made, but
here is not the place to extend such
criticisms. I went away from this book with
the feeling that Weeks was doing much to
consolidate his own position in the fields of
history of sex and homosexual politics
because of the way he addressed these
other scholars (or failed to do so). Nevertheless, I should stress that his work is still
interesting and worth reading.
The outcome of this collection is that
Weeks can show how his seminal works are
all in some way related to his own Gay
Liberation Front (GLF) activism which
began to be exercised when he was a
researcher at the London School of
Economics. One thing that Weeks surely
wants his reader to know is that he was
doing this sort of history before any of the
younger scholars in the field, and that he
has a direct lineage from the sexual liberationists who preceded him in making
sexual history. History, in this sense, can
also be made as propaganda.
IVAN CROZIER
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of
Medicine at University College, London

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