I had the honor of travelling to Vienna to comment on Stefan Ossmann’s Ph.D. project on polyamory at a symposium at the University of Vienna earlier this month. My co-presenters were Christian Klesse of Manchester Metropolitan University and Elisabeth Sheff, formerly of Georgia State University. Stefan, a Communications Ph.D. candidate, undertook an ambitious project in which he conducted content analyses of media articles on polyamory spanning from 2007 to 2017 and interviews of thirty-three people who are part of the polyamory community in Vienna. His work is being supervised by Franz Eder, a Professor of Social and Economic History. Stefan’s dual approach of examining media articles and undertaking interviews enabled him to compare external perceptions of the polyamory community in the German-speaking world to the self-perception of members of the poly community in Vienna.
For the media analysis, he focused on one newspaper database of German language articles called WISO online datenbank. He found 361 relevant articles and also determined that the number of relevant articles is steadily rising every year and that most of the articles were neutral in tone. In terms of the interviews, Steffan Ossmann tried to interview as many members as possible of each poly relationship, or polycule, he encountered. The interviews revealed some very interesting information. For instance, the interviewees tended to want greater societal acceptance of their multiple relationships but, somewhat paradoxically, were reluctant to share the fact of their multiple relationships with family members (especially with parents), with friends other than close friends, and with co-workers. Additionally, legal recognition appeared to be of only minor importance, though there was some interest in recognition of plural marriage and in recognition of multiple partners’ relationships to children. Interestingly, several interviewees independently raised the desire to have a right to visit loved ones in the hospital when they were ill. All in all, this is a fascinating project that will provide invaluable information about Vienna’s poly community, thus adding to the work others, such as Elisabeth Sheff and Hadar Aviram, have done on poly communities in the U.S. and that which Christian Klesse has done on poly communities in England. Stefan also examined whether polyamory was perceived as a sexual orientation in the media or by poly individuals in Vienna, which dovetails with my previous scholarship on polyamory as a sexual orientation. I very much look forward to reading Stefan Ossmann's final product in book form.
Spontaneous free association called to mind Wilhelm Reich’s pioneering if not revolutionary Sex-Hygiene Clinics for Workers and Employees in 1922 Vienna that later were conceived “under the rubric of ‘sex-political work’” (free Sex-Pol clinics*) and which, while related to the academic world, had an invaluable social and political existence beyond the ivory tower and on the ground, as we say:
“In Vienna and its suburbs Reich’s free Sex-Pol clinics extended to the wider municipal community some unusually open medical and educational services and an abbreviated form of psychoanalysis, ‘Free counseling on sexual problems, the rearing of children, and general mental hygiene to those seeking advice’ were available for the taking. [….] Adopting ‘free sexuality within an egalitarian society’ as the motto for their organization, the Sex-Pol team performed a real service by offering valuable one-on-one health education. On a larger scale their outreach efforts promoted awareness of the possibility of far-reaching sexual reforms that, Reich believed, must accompany social change. [….] [Sex-Pol clinics and] centers included individuals and couples counseling, sex education, birth control advice, and gynecological cabins stocked with diaphragms and literature on effective parenting. The waiting rooms were stocked with pamphlets and psychoanalytic classics. And of course they had ample lecture halls where potential patients could listen to Reich expound on sexual guilt, social repression, and personal liberation.”
Reich’s political activism bound up with his views on love and sex might be seen as one conspicuous historical contribution to the preparation of the philosophical, psychological, and cultural groundwork for the eventual emergence of intelligent and frank discussions of polyamory conducted from within and across a variety of fields on intellectual inquiry.
* An excellent introduction to this is provided by Elizabeth Ann Danto (daughter of the late philosopher, Arthur C. Danto) in her book, Freud’s Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis and Social Justice, 1918-1938 (Columbia University Press, 2005).
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | June 25, 2019 at 05:21 PM
Lest anyone draw the wrong inference from my comment, I perhaps should note that, whatever my sympathies and beliefs, I am not speaking as a member of a polyamorous community nor do I practice polyamory, being in a monogamous relationship (in my case, marriage) for roughly forty years now.
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | June 25, 2019 at 05:33 PM
One final remark by way of clarification: a reader might find the phrase “spontaneous free association” redundant (which it is, in one sense), given that free association, by design as it were, is meant to be spontaneous. However, as Freud himself appreciated, such spontaneity cannot be “willed” into existence and thus what initially appears as the verbal result of the analyst’s request for the analysand to say whatever, without inhibition, comes into his or her mind, the request/suggestion itself rarely if ever immediately takes the form of free association as such, which usually comes more or less unbidden, even if triggered by something that later happens, so to speak, on the couch or in the clinic (for example, something the analyst says or the way she says it, or the result of her particular comportment on that day, or something seen in the office, or the analysand’s newfound sense of security or safety, what have you, or some peculiar and fortuitous combination of these). In short, what might in the beginning fall under the prescribed rubric of free association may be that in name only, truly (spontaneous) free association appearing at a later date.
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | June 25, 2019 at 06:24 PM