ABSTRACT
Western culture, at least since the advent of Christianity, has been looked upon as a sex-negative culture, one in which sexual activities have been regarded with suspicion if not hostility. The source of this Western hostility to sex has been traced to Greek dualistic thought which divided the world into two opposing forces, the spiritual vs. the material, resulting in man having two natures, the higher and the lower, or alternately, in having a soul and a body. Since sexual consummation was the prime pandering to the indwelling Furies, every symbol relating to it had to be repudiated. Copulation lowered a man to the frenzied passions characteristic of beasts, and for this reason Plato relegated sexual desire to the lowest element of the psyche. Gnostic interpreters of Christianity based much of their antagonism to sex upon a Fifth Gospel, The Gospel According to the Egyptians, only fragments of which have survived.
