All My Children

There are a number of venereal diseases in America and Western Europe. Those which most people know about are called syphilis and gonorrhoea. Another of these diseases which has become increasingly common in Britain is known by the rather long name of non-specific urethritis. There are a few other rare venereal diseases and other minor conditions which can be caught by contact between the sexual organs, but which do not have effects on health nearly as serious as those resulting from syphilis and gonorrhoea.

In the old days a lot of people used to think that you caught V.D. just by having sexual intercourse with somebody to whom you were not married. Some people had superstitious ideas that marriage conferred immunity from venereal disease. Until the last few years it was in fact the case that venereal disease was unusual and caught mainly from prostitutes. But now, owing to the changes in sexual practices which have taken place recently, gonorrhoea at least is the second most common infectious disease in Britain, and a person is unlikely in fact to catch it from a prostitute, prostitutes being particularly well aware of how to avoid gonorrhoea. Continue Reading »

Self-Consciousness and Fear of Illness Several factors make an adolescent uncomfortably aware of himself and worried about his physical and mental health: his rapidly changing body draws his attention inwards. So do his turbulent new feelings. A tendency to guiltiness about sex—even in this day of much greater tolerance— often lies behind his vague fears that he may have harmed his body, that he has acquired a venereal or other disease, that he is losing his mind.

Underlying these factors is the uneasy sense of having lost his earlier identity as a child of the family and of not yet having acquired an independent one as an adult.

A teenager because of such worries has a special need of a sympathetic teacher at school or a social worker, or an understanding doctor or clergyman. Continue Reading »