The International Academy of Sex Research: in the beginning.

Abstract

I am delighted to return to Cambridge University and to Caius College where, through the good offices of Joe Herbert , I was privileged to spend a sabbatical year. But this pleasure is overshadowed by a n o t h e r t h i s meeting marks the first decade of the International Academy of Sex Research. Attending this meeting is very significant for me. It was also difficult. To be here, I sacrificed lecture and study time from my first weeks as a student at the Yale Law School. Only somewhat confused in this new venture when I left two days ago, I expect to be totally bewildered when I return two days hence. But whatever the course of ms; career during the hext years, I will always reflect with pride on two professional accomplishments. These are paramount to me because they are my l egac ies they will live beyond my hour upon this s t a g e or the grander one. One accomplishment was the founding of the journal, Archives of Sexual Behavior. The other was the founding of the organization, the International Academy of Sex Research. At last year's meeting, the ninth, it became apparent to me that the Academy had come of age. It is so well established and "taken for granted" that many newer members know little of its inception. At that meeting, individual members told me they had just learned that I had "started this whole thing." I was shocked, realizing that history becomes "ancient" so quickly. This, then, is a good time for memorializing the inception of the Academy. Why and how was it started? Who were the first members? What were the earliest goals? In the beginning, there was the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex. Then there was the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and TheraNsts. (I saw them and said thev were not "~ood.") These or~anizations'