The Johns Hopkins Hospital May 13, 1920.
Dear Miss Turner,
Neither the Chief nor I got a copy of the report of Sex Hygiene Conference à la Y.W.C.A. I found a copy in the waste basket of Dr. John B. Watson, our Prof. of Psychology. I presume it is the one to which you refer - the conferences held in Jan. Feb. & Mar. in N.Y.C. Chicago & Los Angeles? Let me ease your mind at once as to the thought that I spoke at any of these meetings. I spoke on Oct. 4th before the section on Nervous & Mental Disease of the Internation. Conference of Women Physicians under the auspices of the Y.W. to be sure. I have not as yet been hypnotized into addressing any gathering on the subject of sex. The sponsor of this report is your friend Dr. Kristen Mann. She stopped off here on her way west to ask the Chief to take part in the discussion. He refused. Dr. Mann has given up her N.Y. work to work under the banner of the Y.
Now for the report. I think its defect lies in the fact that these people emphasize adaptive difficulties in the sex matters as the one great struggle in life which human beings have, particularly adolescent. Whereas I see in patients & people at large a dozen other twists of personal behavior that are just as & even more serious in their results. Why comfort on sex difficulties as if they were merely a question of a gland or two in their chemical & biological significance? The thing has a larger setting: It involves a study of individual cravings, sources of satisfactions, goal of ambition & achievement & many other factors that balance the personality. Last year the local Y. asked me to give a series of lectures on sex hygiene to follow the work of Dr. Ulrich. I went down to meet the board. I tried to show them that sporadic dissemination of the technique of reproduction was a waste of time. I offered to give them a course of 4 or 5 lectures dealing with habits of life & through which tend to make human beings break down. Would they have them? no indeed. That would favor [?] of "mental disease" & insult the children. (I see from the report that the psychiatrist is to masquerade as somebody else for the same reason.) So I told the Y to go to Hell, or words to that effect.
Let me have your views.
Last night there was a meeting of the Md. Graduate Nurses Organization - a sort of rally to get girls to enter the profession. Dr. W. H. Welch spoke & alluded to the Rockefeller investigation of training schools saying that it ought to yield valuable results since it was in the hands of a sane, intelligent group of people. Said he thought nurses should have less maid's drudgery & more instruction in theories of work. He favors separate endowments for T. Schools.
Much love
Esther