Lena Levine
Encyclopedia
Lena Levine (May 17, 1903 – January 9, 1965) was an American
psychiatrist
and gynecologist. She was a pioneering figure in the development of both marriage counseling and birth control
. She was a close colleague of Margaret Sanger
. At the time of her death she was director of the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau of New York and consulting gynecologist at the hygiene clinic of Brooklyn Jewish Hospital.
Among the views expressed in her writings a lectures were advocacy women's right to sexual enjoyment, free access to birth control, and frank discussion of sexual techniques. One of her concepts was "an annual checkup on marriage" comparable to a medical checkup. Her frank advocacy of sex education
and her openly positive view of pre-marital sex have made her a target of sexual conservatives to this day.
, New York
and raised in Brooklyn's Brownsville
neighborhood. Her parents Sophie and Morris H. Levine were Russian Jews from Lithuania
who immigrated to the United States in the 1890s. Morris was a successful clothing manufacturer.
Levine attended New York City Public Schools including Brooklyn's Girls High School; she received her A.B. degree from Hunter College
(1923) and her M.D. from Bellevue College (1927). She married fellow medical student Louis Ferber, who became a general practitioner while she became a gynecologist and obstetrician
. Both did their residencies at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. She always used her maiden name professionally, somewhat unusual for the era. She then went on to study psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University
.
She gave birth to two children. Ellen (born 1939) would eventually become an academic and small press publisher; along with Len Fulton, at Dustbooks, in the 1970s and 1980s, Ellen edited and published directories of small presses that led to the definition of small presses as a well-defined sector of American and international publishing. Michael (born 1942), had a severe viral encephalitis as an infant, which left him mentally retarded; from the age of five he was institutionalized; Levine visited him regularly for the rest of her life.
Levine's husband, Louis Ferber died prematurely in 1942 of a heart attack. With her husband's death and her son's retardation, she gave up obstetrics, at least in part because, as a single mother, she did not want to have to deal with the need to run off suddenly to attend to births. Her housekeeper, Pearl Harrison, helped raise Ellen, and remained with the family until Levine died. Her interests also turned at this time to Freudian psychotherapy
. She underwent analysis with Sándor Radó and opened a private practice at 30 Fifth Avenue
, Manhattan
, while continuing her gynecological practice in Brooklyn, where she lived; she would eventually move to a brownstone
in Greenwich Village and consolidate her practice.
Levine's interest in birth control dated from the 1920s, when she had met Margaret Sanger
. In the 1930s she worked for the Birth Control Federation of America (later Planned Parenthood Federation of America) and became medical secretary of the International Planned Parenthood Federation
based in London
, and worked at the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau, where she became the assistant director under Abraham Stone. Sicherman and Green say that she was "probably more prominent as an international advocate for birth control than she was in the United States."
At the time she was becoming a psychoanalyst, she was already involved in marriage counseling. She was in a practice with Hannah
and Abraham Stone, authors of A Marriage Manual (1935). After Hannah's 1941 death, Levine and Abraham Stone organized the first U.S. group counseling program on sex and contraception, under the sponsorship of Planned Parenthood
. She later went on to run group therapy
sessions for sexual problems and, according to Brody, "ran a consultant bureau for pregnant women." Sicherman and Green in Notable American Women say more straightforwardly that the Special Consultation Bureau included abortion
referrals, illegal at the time.
An author and lecturer, who made quite a few appearances on American television and radio, her works included five books on marriage and sex problems (some of them with co-authors) and many pamphlets and papers on women's medical and psychological problems, both for lay and professional audiences, the topics that she wrote about. Her work was cited in Ernest Gräfenberg's original paper on the G-spot
.
Politically, she was an ardent New Deal
er; Sicherman and Green describe her as "sympathetic as well to socialist
ideas. In 1964, she was one of the 100 women invited by then-Peace Corps
director Sargent Shriver
for a conference on Lyndon Johnson's anti-poverty program.
"great contributions…seem greater the more later scholars build upon them"; on the other:
Levine lived through the early portion of the sexual revolution
, died just as second-wave feminism
was getting under way, and did not live to see heteronormativity
called into question. Her own writings are, in many ways, precursors to (or early examples of) difference feminism
.
She believed in the importance both of being honest to oneself about one's feelings and of controlling their expression: "reasonable restraint" rather than "complete suppression" of one's feelings. She puts this in motherly terms by saying that one should say to a child, "I know how angry you are at your baby sister, but don't poke her eye out," acknowledging the child's anger, while insisting that the child must control its expression. Mastering expression of strong feelings may be difficult but "…who promised you that life would be easy?"
Levine was very open in terms of what sexual acts may be appropriate within a marriage—"Because mutual sexual desire in marriage is so enjoyable, anything that furthers it is worth trying and anything that blocks it should be avoided. … Any and every form of stimulation which can arouse desire in the partner who does not have it when the other does should be used,"—but considered that a marriage based on "mature love" should be a universal goal: "A single woman, her family, and her friends may give many reasons why she never married … [b]ut under scrutiny they turn out to be excuses…" "Most women have always known that their most important role as adults would be that of wife and mother."
At the same time, she was extremely suspicious of the cliches of romantic love
, "pseudo-love… [in which] the loved one is idolized beyond reasonable limits."
In traditional marriage, she wrote, two people become "'man and wife'… The man remains a man; the woman becomes a wife. … [H]e is still a person, but she is mainly a role." As the role of woman in marriage was evolving from that of a "helpmeet" to that of a "partner", she believed that women's new role was still a matter of some contention. "The real goal of marriage… is for each to take on a new role while retaining individuality."
Levine wrote that "…the emergence of women as sex partners with equal desire has led more and more women to follow the male pattern of sexual behavior," and called for a greater symmetry of expectations; for example, "If a woman is supposed to condone infidelity in a man, why should he not be expected to condone it in her?" Still, she very much saw marriage as the proper locus for sexuality: "Consummation when the emotions are not engaged is a lonely pleasure…", "Infidelity never solved a marriage problem yet…" She perceived an increase in non-marital sex in her time, and saw it almost entirely as a harmless prelude to marriage. "Generally speaking, in America today premarital experience makes little difference either way. Eventually, no doubt the question will become entirely academic." Her support for sex education was always in the context of preparation for marriage.
Her views on homosexuality
were not censorious, but were still a far cry from those of second-wave feminism a few years later. Estimating Lesbian
s at "perhaps 2 percent of the population", she wrote, "[T]here are women who live in a homosexual relationship with another woman and are quite content with it. As with male homosexuals, all they want is to be let alone. The Lesbian is less bothered by the authorities than her male counterpart… Lesbians who are not outrageously offensive in their behavior are almost never arrested."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
psychiatrist
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
and gynecologist. She was a pioneering figure in the development of both marriage counseling and birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
. She was a close colleague of Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American sex educator, nurse, and birth control activist. Sanger coined the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood...
. At the time of her death she was director of the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau of New York and consulting gynecologist at the hygiene clinic of Brooklyn Jewish Hospital.
Among the views expressed in her writings a lectures were advocacy women's right to sexual enjoyment, free access to birth control, and frank discussion of sexual techniques. One of her concepts was "an annual checkup on marriage" comparable to a medical checkup. Her frank advocacy of sex education
Sex education
Sex education refers to formal programs of instruction on a wide range of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, contraception, and...
and her openly positive view of pre-marital sex have made her a target of sexual conservatives to this day.
Life
She was born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and raised in Brooklyn's Brownsville
Brownsville, Brooklyn
Brownsville is a residential neighborhood located in eastern Brooklyn, New York City.The total land area is one square mile, and the ZIP code for the neighborhood is 11212....
neighborhood. Her parents Sophie and Morris H. Levine were Russian Jews from Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
who immigrated to the United States in the 1890s. Morris was a successful clothing manufacturer.
Levine attended New York City Public Schools including Brooklyn's Girls High School; she received her A.B. degree from Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
(1923) and her M.D. from Bellevue College (1927). She married fellow medical student Louis Ferber, who became a general practitioner while she became a gynecologist and obstetrician
Obstetrics
Obstetrics is the medical specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children during pregnancy , childbirth and the postnatal period...
. Both did their residencies at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. She always used her maiden name professionally, somewhat unusual for the era. She then went on to study psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.
She gave birth to two children. Ellen (born 1939) would eventually become an academic and small press publisher; along with Len Fulton, at Dustbooks, in the 1970s and 1980s, Ellen edited and published directories of small presses that led to the definition of small presses as a well-defined sector of American and international publishing. Michael (born 1942), had a severe viral encephalitis as an infant, which left him mentally retarded; from the age of five he was institutionalized; Levine visited him regularly for the rest of her life.
Levine's husband, Louis Ferber died prematurely in 1942 of a heart attack. With her husband's death and her son's retardation, she gave up obstetrics, at least in part because, as a single mother, she did not want to have to deal with the need to run off suddenly to attend to births. Her housekeeper, Pearl Harrison, helped raise Ellen, and remained with the family until Levine died. Her interests also turned at this time to Freudian psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
. She underwent analysis with Sándor Radó and opened a private practice at 30 Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue (Manhattan)
Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The section of Fifth Avenue that crosses Midtown Manhattan, especially that between 49th Street and 60th Street, is lined with prestigious shops and is consistently ranked among...
, Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, while continuing her gynecological practice in Brooklyn, where she lived; she would eventually move to a brownstone
Brownstone
Brownstone is a brown Triassic or Jurassic sandstone which was once a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States to refer to a terraced house clad in this material.-Types:-Apostle Island brownstone:...
in Greenwich Village and consolidate her practice.
Levine's interest in birth control dated from the 1920s, when she had met Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American sex educator, nurse, and birth control activist. Sanger coined the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood...
. In the 1930s she worked for the Birth Control Federation of America (later Planned Parenthood Federation of America) and became medical secretary of the International Planned Parenthood Federation
International Planned Parenthood Federation
The International Planned Parenthood Federation is a global non-governmental organization with the broad aims of promoting sexual and reproductive health, and advocating the right of individuals to make their own choices in family planning. It was first formed in 1952 in Bombay, India, and now...
based in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and worked at the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau, where she became the assistant director under Abraham Stone. Sicherman and Green say that she was "probably more prominent as an international advocate for birth control than she was in the United States."
At the time she was becoming a psychoanalyst, she was already involved in marriage counseling. She was in a practice with Hannah
Hannah Stone
Hannah Stone is a Welsh Harpist from Swansea, Wales.- Personal life :Stone was born in Swansea and grew up in Treboeth and Mumbles. She is engaged to Welsh Baritone Gary Griffiths.- Education :...
and Abraham Stone, authors of A Marriage Manual (1935). After Hannah's 1941 death, Levine and Abraham Stone organized the first U.S. group counseling program on sex and contraception, under the sponsorship of Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood Federation of America , commonly shortened to Planned Parenthood, is the U.S. affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and one of its larger members. PPFA is a non-profit organization providing reproductive health and maternal and child health services. The...
. She later went on to run group therapy
Group therapy
Group psychotherapy or group therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which one or more therapists treat a small group of clients together as a group...
sessions for sexual problems and, according to Brody, "ran a consultant bureau for pregnant women." Sicherman and Green in Notable American Women say more straightforwardly that the Special Consultation Bureau included abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
referrals, illegal at the time.
An author and lecturer, who made quite a few appearances on American television and radio, her works included five books on marriage and sex problems (some of them with co-authors) and many pamphlets and papers on women's medical and psychological problems, both for lay and professional audiences, the topics that she wrote about. Her work was cited in Ernest Gräfenberg's original paper on the G-spot
G-spot
The Gräfenberg Spot, often called the G-Spot, is a bean-shaped area of the vagina. Many women report that it is an erogenous zone which, when stimulated, can lead to strong sexual arousal, powerful orgasms and female ejaculation...
.
Politically, she was an ardent New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
er; Sicherman and Green describe her as "sympathetic as well to socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
ideas. In 1964, she was one of the 100 women invited by then-Peace Corps
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...
director Sargent Shriver
Sargent Shriver
Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr., known as Sargent Shriver, R. Sargent Shriver, or, from childhood, Sarge, was an American statesman and activist. As the husband of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, he was part of the Kennedy family, serving in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations...
for a conference on Lyndon Johnson's anti-poverty program.
Views
Within the world of psychoanalysis, Levine was a mildly dissenting Freudian. On the one hand, she wrote that Freud'sSigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
"great contributions…seem greater the more later scholars build upon them"; on the other:
Because Freud was a product of a heavily patriarchalPatriarchyPatriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
society, his allegation that the castration complex and penis envyPenis envyPenis envy in Freudian psychoanalysis refers to the theorized reaction of a girl during her psychosexual development to the realization that she does not have a penis....
are inevitable seemed to have more foundation in his own time than it does now. … Later researchers have contributed theories that do not coincide completely with Freud's. They describe personality development in terms of emotional security and maturity rather than libidinal satisfactionsLibidoLibido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
."
Levine lived through the early portion of the sexual revolution
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...
, died just as second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism
The Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
was getting under way, and did not live to see heteronormativity
Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity is a term invented in 1991 to describe any of a set of lifestyle norms that hold that people fall into distinct and complementary genders with natural roles in life. It also holds that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and states that sexual and marital relations...
called into question. Her own writings are, in many ways, precursors to (or early examples of) difference feminism
Difference feminism
Difference feminism is a philosophy that stresses that men and women are ontologically different versions of the human being. Many Catholics adhere to and have written on the philosophy, though the philosophy is not specifically Catholic....
.
The fundamental fact about woman is that she is a female person. Femaleness is a biological fact. FemininityWhile she wrote, "The emotional differences between men and women are largely created by society not anatomy.", she defended the more "emotional", "intuitive", "warmhearted" female personality: the changing role of women and the decline of patriarchy "does not mean that [woman] must try to acquire [male] feelings."FemininityFemininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...
is a term whose meaning, defined by society is constantly changing. It is time to scrap it. It is time to recognize woman as a distinct personality, different from man mainly in that she has a special function in bearing, delivering, and nursing children, while he is stronger muscularly.
She believed in the importance both of being honest to oneself about one's feelings and of controlling their expression: "reasonable restraint" rather than "complete suppression" of one's feelings. She puts this in motherly terms by saying that one should say to a child, "I know how angry you are at your baby sister, but don't poke her eye out," acknowledging the child's anger, while insisting that the child must control its expression. Mastering expression of strong feelings may be difficult but "…who promised you that life would be easy?"
Levine was very open in terms of what sexual acts may be appropriate within a marriage—"Because mutual sexual desire in marriage is so enjoyable, anything that furthers it is worth trying and anything that blocks it should be avoided. … Any and every form of stimulation which can arouse desire in the partner who does not have it when the other does should be used,"—but considered that a marriage based on "mature love" should be a universal goal: "A single woman, her family, and her friends may give many reasons why she never married … [b]ut under scrutiny they turn out to be excuses…" "Most women have always known that their most important role as adults would be that of wife and mother."
At the same time, she was extremely suspicious of the cliches of romantic love
Romantic love
Romance is the pleasurable feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually implies an expression of one's love, or one's deep emotional desires to connect with another person....
, "pseudo-love… [in which] the loved one is idolized beyond reasonable limits."
In traditional marriage, she wrote, two people become "'man and wife'… The man remains a man; the woman becomes a wife. … [H]e is still a person, but she is mainly a role." As the role of woman in marriage was evolving from that of a "helpmeet" to that of a "partner", she believed that women's new role was still a matter of some contention. "The real goal of marriage… is for each to take on a new role while retaining individuality."
Levine wrote that "…the emergence of women as sex partners with equal desire has led more and more women to follow the male pattern of sexual behavior," and called for a greater symmetry of expectations; for example, "If a woman is supposed to condone infidelity in a man, why should he not be expected to condone it in her?" Still, she very much saw marriage as the proper locus for sexuality: "Consummation when the emotions are not engaged is a lonely pleasure…", "Infidelity never solved a marriage problem yet…" She perceived an increase in non-marital sex in her time, and saw it almost entirely as a harmless prelude to marriage. "Generally speaking, in America today premarital experience makes little difference either way. Eventually, no doubt the question will become entirely academic." Her support for sex education was always in the context of preparation for marriage.
Her views on homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
were not censorious, but were still a far cry from those of second-wave feminism a few years later. Estimating Lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
s at "perhaps 2 percent of the population", she wrote, "[T]here are women who live in a homosexual relationship with another woman and are quite content with it. As with male homosexuals, all they want is to be let alone. The Lesbian is less bothered by the authorities than her male counterpart… Lesbians who are not outrageously offensive in their behavior are almost never arrested."
Works
- The Doctor Talks With the Bride (pamphlet). Planned Parenthood Federation of America (Second Edition 1938)
- The menopause, with Beka Doherty. Random House, 1952.
- The premarital consultation : a manual for physicians, with Abraham Stone. Grune & Stratton, 1956.
- The modern book of marriage: A practical guide to marital happiness. Bartholomew House, 1957.
- The frigid wife; her way to sexual fulfillment, with David Goldsmith Loth. Messner, 1962.
- The emotional sex: why women are the way they are today, with David Goldsmith Loth. W. Morrow, 1964.