Article

Journal of Family History

2020, Vol. 45(3) 315-333
ª 2020 The Author(s)
From Virginity to Orgasm: Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
Marriage and Sexuality in DOI: 10.1177/0363199020906852
journals.sagepub.com/home/jfh
Twentieth-century Greece
Efi Avdela1 , Kostis Gotsinas2, Despo Kritsotaki3
and Dimitra Vassiliadou4

Abstract
This article charts the gradual sexualization of marriage in twentieth-century Greece, exploring
both expert and lay ideas. First, through official writings and marital correspondence, it sketches
the subtle transformation of the nineteenth-century ideal of conjugal love into a more sexualized
emotion by the turn of the century. Then, it analyzes the writings of “sex experts” and the cor-
respondence with their clients, showcasing how sexual pleasure became a priority within marriage
after World War II. Lastly, the records of a postwar mental health service show that by the late
1970s, the consensus on the importance of mutual sexual satisfaction was being established.

Keywords
marriage, sexuality, Greece, twentieth century, sexology, sexual experts, psychiatry, marital
correspondence

Not long ago, Victoria Harris has remarked that “the history of sexuality is still very much a history
of the margins,” in the sense that it is mostly engaged with exceptional forms of sexual practices.1
While sex in marriage, a central institution in Western societies, has recently attracted the interest of
historians of sexuality,2 it is still less explored than sex outside marriage, especially for the twentieth
century. We know more about the nineteenth century. Important research conducted in the last four
decades has repeatedly shown that the sexual ideal of the nineteenth century, apparently heterosex-
ual, was firmly based on three pillars. First, on marital stability, with divorces being scarce at the
time. Second, on widespread scientific and lay assumptions about the hypoactive female sexuality,
with “prostitutes” and “hysterics” acting as loud exceptions to this essentialist rule; to the predomi-
nance, finally, of the “double standard,” which allowed men to resort regularly to (mainly paid) pre-
and extramarital sex without endangering their reputation, whereas women had to preserve their

1
University of Crete, Rethymnon, Greece
2
French School at Athens, Greece
3
Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, Paris, France
4
Hellenic Open University, Patras, Greece

Corresponding Author:
Efi Avdela, University of Crete, Campus Gallou, Rethymnon 74100, Greece.
Email: [email protected]
316 Journal of Family History 45(3)

moral and sexual purity at any cost.3 The distinct conceptualizations of male and female sexuality
were, as most of the gendered hierarchies of the nineteenth century, based on biased perceptions of
human biology, nature, and God. Despite the few revisionist voices that emerged in the 1980s to
claim that Victorian couples, contrary to the dominant restrained sexual morals, managed to combine
love, sex, and erotic pleasure,4 most historians today agree that nineteenth-century middle-class
Western marriage was, above all, a spiritual relationship.5 As a lifelong relation, conjugality was
based on physical intimacy, shared interests, spiritual affinity, and a set of responsibilities that
stemmed from the separate spheres’ doctrine.6 Intercourse was recognized as an integral part of the
marital bond but mainly as a necessity and obligation primarily geared toward procreation. Sexual
passion was a matter of great concern, even within marriage, and, as almost any passion, was con-
sidered harmful and immoral.7
However, already by the turn of the nineteenth century, things were changing: physicians and
other experts on marriage began to recognize the importance of married women’s sexual satisfaction,
while expressing concerns of the dangers inherent in according it too much importance.8 Dagmar
Herzog and others have highlighted the importance that mutual sexual satisfaction acquired for a
successful marriage in the course of the twentieth century. Physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists,
and increasingly the new experts of sexology highlighted that the suppression of the sexual instinct
could cause bodily and mental illness not only to men but also to women. Within an increasing sex-
ualization of women and marriage, anxiety over “frigid wives” was all the more present in the inter-
war and postwar period in the Western world. Marriage manuals and counseling centers were
expanding in Europe and the United States, dispersing advice on sex technique and the relief of
female frigidity.9 At the same time, for the greater part of the twentieth century, experts thought that
it was up to men to arouse and satisfy the sexual desires of their wives. In contrast to men, women,
although sexualized, were perceived as sexually passive and were discouraged from complete pre-
marital sexual relationships.10 The double standard was challenged only in the 1970s, when in many
Western societies sex was becoming an autonomous activity of pleasure and expression, disen-
tangled from marriage and reproduction, and women who expressed their sexuality in public and
outside marriage became more socially acceptable.11
Such accounts of twentieth-century marital sexuality are mostly based on a limited number of
national cases, such as Britain, France, and the United States, where substantial research has been
conducted.12 Greece has been absent in this historiography. Research on Greek history of sexuality
started to emerge lately, but marriage has remained, as elsewhere, a marginal theme.13 It is also true
that sources are scarce. They are mainly prescriptive texts or specialists’ writings addressed to the
middle and upper social classes. Marriage as the precondition for a healthy and moral sexual life, the
belief on women’s hyposexuality, and the admission of the moral double standard continued to be
the dominant features of the Greek model in spite of their changes in the course of the century. Indi-
cations of actual sexual practices—male or female, inside and outside marriage—and the ways that
they were perceived and experienced are sparse. We know even less about sexual practices of the
urban popular strata or the vast rural population.14
Taking into consideration these limits of the bibliography and sources, we propose a first broad
approach of the history of marital sexuality in twentieth-century Greece. Focusing on the middle
classes,15 we argue that in the course of the century, the sexual dimensions of marriage gradually
and increasingly became a matter of concern and discussion. Based on a variety of sources, both
official and from below, we attempt to approach prescriptive discourses along with the beliefs and
experiences of individuals—men and women, sometimes clients of sexologists or mental health
experts. The first part of the article, based on medical and pedagogical writings as well as marital
correspondence, sketches the subtle transformation of the nineteenth-century ideal of conjugal love,
primarily spiritual, into a more sexualized emotion, surfacing in the early twentieth century. In the
second part, we focus on the growing literature on sexual matters and the gradual establishment of
Avdela et al. 317

“sexual experts,” from the beginning of the century to the end of the 1970s. While sexologists crys-
talized the dominant model of marital sexuality, at the same time, because of the importance that
they conferred to the “sexual instinct,” they allowed the expression of concerns about sexual mat-
ters—and especially about women’s sexual pleasure—as their correspondence with patients indi-
cates. The third part illustrates this growing concern about marital sexuality, focusing on the
example of a postwar mental health service. Based on case records, this part examines how experts
(mainly psychiatrists and psychiatric social workers) dealt with sex in marriage and how this was
perceived by their male and female clients. By combining these aspects, we argue that the main
change in marital sexuality in twentieth-century Greece was the gradual recognition of women’s
sexual pleasure as a precondition for a successful marital relationship, not only by physicians, sex-
ologists, and other experts but also by married women themselves, yet not necessarily by their
spouses.

Nineteenth-century Moral Legacy: Love against Lust

Even late in the twentieth century, marital sexuality in Greece was routinely recognized as the sex-
ual norm for both men and women.16 However, its understanding did not remain the same in time.
A sketchy comparison between public discourses on the hygienic and moral aspects of marriage,
and nineteenth-century love letters, shows that they shared at least one common element: the
opposition between marital love and erotic attraction. Greek upper- and middle-class couples of
the late nineteenth century did not express freely their sexual desires and experiences. Conjugality
was steadily organized around the emotion of “love,” primarily recognized as spiritual bonding.17
Among many others, almost identical love letters of the period, the numismatist Alekos Meleto-
poulos, for example, wrote in 1884 to his fiancée Maria Kambani—whom he had just met—the
following: “I cannot live without you no more. And how could I, […] since our two souls have
been so tied up together.”18 Up until the last decades of the nineteenth century even in the letters
between engaged or recently married upper- and middle-class couples, references to sexuality are
missing. Marital correspondence systematically obscured sexual desire, and intercourse was
acceptable only within marriage. To understand this absence, we must turn to the dominant ideas
that first imposed the conjugal love/lust divide and to the identification of sexual desire as an
unruly and uncontrollable emotion.
The pervasive silence over marital sexuality does not imply that couples were not having sex,
sometimes even before marriage. Unexpected pregnancies, a solid proof of premarital sexual activ-
ity, affirmed that practices did not always conform to dominant moral codes. This was the case, for
example, in a letter Marigo Makka addressed to her husband in 1866, when she was mentioning that
a lady friend of the family had to be hastily married since she was already “in the family way”;19
similarly, in a letter exchanged a decade later between the young Valaoritis brothers, the older,
Nanos, was writing about a common close friend: “the poor man […], he liked a young girl and
asked her to marry him,” but eventually he changed his mind, and “now her relatives are putting
so much pressure, the girl is pregnant, and he is still having second thoughts.”20 Limited knowledge
on methods of contraception, even within the educated middle classes, was probably the reason
behind this inevitable, at times unwanted, outcome. Nevertheless, it seems that for the most part
of the nineteenth century, Greek middle classes did not abstain altogether from premarital sex, espe-
cially during long engagement periods. We also know that both premarital and extramarital inter-
course were not uncommon in the lower urban and rural classes.21
Apart from the few translated foreign manuals, Greek texts on the “hygiene of marriage” or “sex-
ual hygiene” were scarce, with just three publications issued during the second half of the century.22
Willing to disarm erotic desire from its threatening potential, the few Greek authors routinely
acknowledged marriage as a mutual spiritual and mental contact. Furthermore, all references to
318 Journal of Family History 45(3)

marital sexuality in a variety of nineteenth-century popular texts denounced sexual pleasure and
excessive erotic desire as abnormal and disastrous. “Moderation” was proposed as the norm for
successful conjugal relationships. For example, the physician Georgios Kyriakidis in the 1900 edi-
tion of his book The Mysteries of Spousal Love, Namely the Couple’s Physiology and Hygiene was
asserting that “the pleasures that both spouses enjoy are divine, only if they do not exceed the
bounds of reason.”23 The uncomfortable coexistence of sexual passion and conjugal love allowed
only a normative perception of sexuality. At the same time, middle-class prudishness, especially
for women, and the ideal of respectability must have been also responsible for the prevailing
silence over sexual desire, even within wedlock. In this light, marital sexuality was gradually
expelling its bodily, sensual features, to turn, paradoxically enough, into a “nonsexual” sexuality.
This purified sexual desire was a direct product of conjugal love and was sanctified through its
central role in reproduction.
Aikaterini Laskaridou, one of the most renowned nineteenth-century girls’ educators, wrote,
amongst many other subjects, on “physical love.” In her unpublished essay Thoughts on Romantic
Love, written in 1872, one can easily detect the moral character of the text, its theological origins,
and the explicit distinction between love and sexual desire.24 It is equally evident that her writings
were primarily addressed to girls, those considered the weak link in the game of romantic love. Las-
karidou supported a popular idea that contradicted true/moral/spiritual love to fake/immoral/somatic
love, in order to fight extramarital “temporary […] carnal appetites, not for the purposes of procrea-
tion […] but simply for vulgar enjoyment and instant pleasure.”25 Her aim was to ensure the lifelong
commitment of marital relationships and avert the dangers of occasional sex.
Laskaridou’s views were not uncommon. In her statement “Here is a soul that falls in love with
another soul whom it desires, and only through her feels complete,” one could decipher a perception
of love as spiritual and psychic mutual relation which owed much to Christian morality.26 Having
been strongly influenced by the ethical imperatives and prohibitions of the ecclesiastical vocabulary,
public commentators of the time normalized sexual desire by equating it to the emotion of love. In
their prose, they described it as an essentialist feeling of high moral value. “Is romantic love bad?”
the well-known contemporary theologian Michael Galanos was wandering, only to conclude: “This
is a ridiculous question. An emotion born by nature, an emotion that leads to marriage, can be noth-
ing but sacred.”27 The love/lust divide was also supported by middle-class women, fervent feminists
of the first-wave generation: “True love, lasting, stable love is based only to reason, good taste and
mutual trust. Outside these limits, it is merely a passion, which we must fight and triumph over
of.”28 Finally, specialized treatises on family life emphasized the “unique character” of marital rela-
tionship, for it was not a “simple physical union,” but the means of fulfilling the divine command-
ment of “be fruitful, and multiply.”29
However, the first decades of the twentieth century witnessed a gradual shift in public and private
discourses on sexuality. In literary works of contemporary women writers, for example, one could
now decipher the importance of sexual experience, seen primarily as somatic pleasure.30 In the inter-
war years, the very first poems and novels with male and female homoerotic hints appeared.31 As
the following section shows in detail, medical and hygienic publications on marital sexuality prolif-
erated, paving the way for the emergence of postwar sexology. Within this climate that encouraged a
dynamic discursive production on sexuality, middle-class couples started to bridge over the dis-
tances between conjugal love and sensuality. The following passage, from a young army officer’s
diary, addressed figuratively to his future wife, is quite indicative of this development, among many
others that surface with minor variations in love letters of the period: “If you gave yourself to me,
and I have asked for even more, it is because my beliefs on the subject are well-known. Besides, the
word ‘soul’, that we are searching to fall in love with, is something connected to the body and not
something spiritual.”32
Avdela et al. 319

Marriage and Sex: The “Scientific” Point of View

The shift in discourses on sexuality during the early twentieth century was both expressed and
amplified by an increasing number of scientific publications dealing with sexual matters. Alongside
the republication of previous marriage manuals and the numerous translated authors ranging from
Havelock Ellis to Wilhelm Reich, the interwar period witnessed more than twenty original publica-
tions.33 A new generation of writers took an interest in this domain, some attempting to establish
themselves as experts, following a larger European/Northern American trend of physicians and psy-
chiatrists mainly laying scientific claims to the issues of sexuality.34 To be sure, there was no abrupt
shift in the thought of the self-proclaimed “specialists of sex” in comparison to nineteenth-century
manuals on marriage. For instance, they largely subscribed to the double-standard perspective, or
they expressed moral judgments on a number of sexual practices. Such continuities, together with
the fact that many scholars were writing for decades and scientific and popularizing texts were cir-
culating long after their publication date, make periodization attempts hazardous. However, we
could argue that the interwar period was in many respects a transitory one, when “old” and “new”
ideas about sex in marriage coexisted and marriage was being all the more sexualized, and that the
1940s constituted a turning point toward a postwar period in which good sex for both spouses
became increasingly a prerequisite for a successful marriage. Periodization set apart, the
twentieth-century scientific texts on sexual matters compared with previous ones presented some
significant differences that became more pronounced in the postwar period.
First of all, they postulated that the sexual instinct or “genital drive” was determinant in human
life and societies for both men and women. Accordingly, underestimating or neglecting it altogether
was a mistake, imputed to moralists or adepts of religion. For example, Nikolaos Drakoulides, a der-
matologist specializing in venereal diseases, who published extensively on sexual issues, claimed in
a lecture given at 1930: “The sexual instinct is the most powerful, but also the most important of all
instincts and of all functions of the human organism.”35 It is no coincidence that Drakoulides later
became interested in psychoanalysis, which made progress in postwar Greece, although still
opposed by large segments of society, the Church, and many psychiatrists. The idea that the inhibi-
tion of the sexual instinct was responsible for many mental disorders, mainly neuroses, which were
seen as the principal postwar diseases, influenced significantly expert attitudes toward marriage and
sex.36
Second and related to the first, contrary to earlier authors seeking warrant in religious or literary
texts, twentieth-century Greek scholars took into account recent scientific developments relating to
sexuality, such as the discovery of hormones and the constitution of endocrinology, and referred
increasingly to the works of European (and later also American) sexologists.37 By studying abroad,
by consulting foreign publications and translated texts, by attending international conferences, by
corresponding with well-known scholars, or even by receiving the visit of eminent sexologists,
Greek scholars gained access to a bulk of scientific knowledge on sex that was being developed
in Western and Central Europe since the last decades of the nineteenth century.38
Third, since the first decades of the twentieth century, the socioeconomic and cultural context in
Greece underwent significant changes, which had an impact on attitudes toward sex, both concern-
ing individual practices and scholarly opinions. To be sure, the backdrop of deep-rooted patriarchy, a
strong hold of religion on society, and a widespread conservatism—that from the interwar period
onward was expressed through anti-communist policies and later generated also moral panics about
youth “in moral danger”—remained, as did the unfaltering centrality of marriage in people’s lives.39
However, Greek society was also rapidly changing throughout the century.40 Changes included cit-
ies growing due to urbanization, consumerist culture spreading during the postwar period, and
women gradually participating more actively in professional life and gaining access to political
rights.41
320 Journal of Family History 45(3)

Greek sexologists—as experts on sexual matters soon started calling themselves—acknowledged

the impact of those changes upon the lives and sexual behavior of individuals. They also perceived
the new problems that these changes generated, summarized by Alexandros Tsakiris, a physician
who authored a Great Sexology published in the second half of the 1940s. Tsakiris on the one hand
endorsed the opinion that “marriage is the only union ensuring completely the most harmonious
relation of soul and body.” On the other hand, he observed that, compared to inhabitants of rural
regions, people in urban areas tended to get married later because men were becoming less easily
economically independent or women were working in order to contribute to their family’s income.
In his opinion, “late marriage” constituted a problem, since sexual urges that appeared during ado-
lescence could not find an immediate outlet through marriage, leaving individuals with the options
of chastity, masturbation, or “free love”—namely premarital sex.42 However, the latter option did
not have the same implications for men and women as Tsakiris conceded: “Society disregards men’s
misbehaviour. They have nothing to lose. They represent the sterner sex. Woman is treated differ-
ently. She is the fair and transparent creation of nature. And she is crumpled and shredded by what-
ever affects her chastity.”43
In other words, chastity for men meant merely abstinence from sexual relations, while for
women, it raised the key issue of virginity. The latter was a central concern in nineteenth-century
manuals of marital sex guidance (the aforementioned G. Kyriakidis called it the “ornament of mor-
ality”). Virginity remained a key issue and was addressed by scholars well into the twentieth cen-
tury: in 1944 the doctor Nikolaos Gyras called it “the most precious asset of a girl.”44 However,
medical texts and sexology treatises focused increasingly less on the moral aspects of virginity and
more on its anatomical characteristics. Typically, sexology treatises included a chapter dedicated to
the description of the female reproductive system and the hymen, listing medical cases where the
latter was accidentally ruptured, seemingly ruptured, flexible, and so on.45 This information was
considered crucial in cases where women were accused after their “first night” of having been
“spoiled.” Scholars also referred to the medical interventions to restore ruptured hymens (hymeno-
plasty) to which a number of girls apparently resorted up to the late 1960s in order to avoid a scandal
during the “first night,” since the woman’s virginity largely remained a prerequisite for marriage.46
Most authors disapproved of the still prevalent mores, especially in rural areas, requiring for the
bride to prove her “maidenhood”—and the groom his “vigor”—by exposing the following day in
public their bloodstained marital sheets. Such practices were deemed anachronistic, but the concept
of virginity was far from dismissed. It remained very powerful in Greek society even after World
War II as we can see through various sources ranging from judicial archives regarding trials for
“crimes of honor” to the letters sent to “sex experts,” an increasingly common practice, or to the
answers offered by gynecologists, pathologists, psychiatrists, and so on to their readers in popular
magazines. These sources show that the issue of virginity was a major source of anxiety not only for
women but also for their paternal family. Female correspondents often asked the “specialists”
whether their relations with their fiancé, boyfriend, relative, and so on could have been detrimental
to their “integrity.” Such anxieties were linked both with the possibility of an undesirable pregnancy
and with future husbands discovering previous sexual relations (consenting or forced) of their part-
ners. Doctor Nikos Zakopoulos received a sizable correspondence when he collaborated with the
magazine Woman and Home in the 1950s and 1960s, and the selection of 155 letters that he pre-
sented in his book Counselor of Sexual Relations showcases how common these anxieties were even
so late in the century, leading often to despair: “I am dying of agony,” “there is nothing left for me
but to commit suicide,” “my case is the most tragic one.”47 The other side of these anxieties, how-
ever, as these examples and many others from the same sources show, is that premarital sexual rela-
tions were actually quite common in the postwar years. Yet, when they did not end in marriage, as
they were supposed to, recourse to justice or even to violence could follow.48
Avdela et al. 321

While sex experts tried to comfort the anxieties of their correspondents, at the same time, they
criticized prolonged abstinence related to late marriages and the psychological pressure for the cou-
ple to “perform well” during the first night of married life.49 They considered these as possible
causes of future sexual dysfunctions, namely “impotence” for men and “frigidity” for women.50 Sex
experts claimed that the interest in “frigidity” was itself a sign of shifting mentalities, since, as an
anonymous psychoanalyst put it in 1951, “50 years ago it was considered almost natural and ‘moral’
for women not to participate too actively in sexual intercourse.”51 Frigidity, to which we will return
in the last part of this article, was construed as a pathology applied only to women. Some authors
even made attempts to estimate the percentage of “frigid women” in the general population. The
sexologist Georgios Zouraris, a student of Magnus Hirschfeld, reviewing the relevant international
literature, considered Kinsey’s recent findings on female “frigidity” as excessive and claimed that
three out of the ten women were partially or totally frigid. According to other Greek writers, how-
ever, the percentage was even higher.52
Both “impotence” and “frigidity” were considered threats to a successful marriage. The latter was
deemed by experts and lay people alike as an imperative step in human life, the “natural” destination
for both sexes, associated with childbearing and the creation of a family. Not only early-twentieth-
century authors but also later writers, especially those related with religious circles, like the psychia-
trist Aristos Aspiotis, believed that a woman’s “trajectory of love” led to “her female destination,”
that is, marriage.53 But even a postwar sexologist affiliated to the communist party, like Zouraris,
subscribed to the idea that “The solution to the sexual problem of humanity must be the union
through marriage of two sexually contracting parties.”54 Indeed, after World War II, Greece, as
many countries, witnessed the reaffirmation of conservative, traditional, and Christian values of mar-
riage as fears about the latter’s alleged crisis spread. Official state, law, and Church discourses
emphasized the tripartite “homeland-religion-family,” which dated already back to the end of the
nineteenth century.55
Sexologists were fervent supporters of marriage. They were concerned that late marriage left
men, but also now women, vulnerable toward “undesirable situations,” ranging from venereal dis-
eases that could be contracted by sexual intercourse with “common women” to indulging in prac-
tices that diverged from sexual norms. Such practices included many of sexology’s favorite topics,
like same-sex love or masturbation, which were termed “perversions.” For example, in a 1950 pop-
ular magazine, the editor of a column on gynecological issues replied to a woman seeking advice on
how to get rid of a habit with “devastating results for the spirit and body,” presumably masturbation,
that “The best therapy is your marriage.”56 Consequently, as part of a larger project to promote sex-
ual education, sexologists aspired to guide safely their public to the haven of marriage and to prepare
women and men for the requirements of their maternal or paternal role, dispensing advice on how to
become a “good wife” or a “good husband” as early in life as possible. Such advice was not limited
to pointing out the “ideal” age of marriage, namely a difference of ten to twenty years between the
future husband and wife (and many letters addressed to sexologists suggest that age difference was
not uncommon).57 Recommendations also comprised instructions on how to attain orgasm and
descriptions of the human body’s erogenous zones, including the anus or the clitoris, which, accord-
ing to Zakopoulos, needed to be stimulated “in some way, in order for the woman to also reach the
final sexual pleasure-satisfaction.”58 Women’s correspondence offers an insight in what practices the
couples had recourse to, although sometimes reluctantly: “I avoid this [biting] as long as my hus-
band’s other affections, despite the fact that I extremely like them, thinking that they are bad, and
anti-Christian, and unhealthy actions.”59
All in all, postwar sexologists subscribed to the importance of sexual pleasure within marriage.
Irrespectively of their overall progressive or conservative attitude toward sexual matters, they all
came to concede that when sexual relations were not satisfactory for both the husband and the wife,
the entire edifice of marriage was jeopardized. In a 1955 text addressed to the married couple, Anna
322 Journal of Family History 45(3)

Katsigra, one of the first women to be accepted in the Medical School of the University of Athens
and one of the first experts on sexual matters, albeit heavily moralizing, wrote: “Although pleasure
during intercourse is not necessary for happiness in married life, a prolonged abstinence cannot but
provoke coldness in the married couple’s life.”60 Therefore, gradually, and more explicitly in the
postwar years, mutual sexual pleasure was legitimized and acknowledged as an important factor
among others for the health, stability, well-being, and happiness of the married couple. These factors
were epitomized by George Igoumenakis, a dermatologist and specialist in venereal deceases, in the
1950s, in the following order: psychic (psychological) contact, solid financial foundations, absence
of hereditary maladies, and, last but not least, “complete mutual sexual satisfaction of husband and
wife.”61 At about the same time, Georgios Zouraris went even further, suggesting around 1958–
1959 that “intercourse does not always aim at procreation […], but at love, at the reinforcement
of pleasure and at the psychic and bodily connection of the couple, for the embellishment of married
life.”62
In other words, by the 1950s and 1960s, physicians, psychiatrists, and, above all, sexologists had
become convinced that the love/lust divide was irrelevant and that sexual relations providing satis-
faction to both husband and wife contributed to strengthening their feelings to each other and thus
ensuring marital stability and success. This opinion was not confined to the limited circles of experts
but was now popularized to the larger public, for example, through magazines.63
Everything indicates that the readers of such publications increasingly adhered to the promotion
of sexual pleasure in marriage and regarded its absence as a menace for their matrimony. Two exam-
ples, taken from the more than fifty letters conserved in the personal archive of Angelos Doxas (pen
name of N. Drakoulides), showcase the ascendancy of this opinion in the postwar years upon the
public. In a 1957 letter, a “miserable husband” regretted that after a month he had still not managed
to accomplish his “marital duties” and wondered if “there is any other solution to this terrible sit-
uation except from divorce.”64 The second example dates from as late as 1980, what we consider
the extreme chronological limit of our argument: by that time, not only correspondence was declin-
ing as a means of communication between experts and public but sexual knowledge was becoming
more widespread in Greek society.65 In this letter, a married woman from a small town in Northern
Greece confided that after twelve years of marriage, she experienced “sexual frigidity that at times
even submits [her] marriage to a crisis.” As a result, “the relations with [her] husband have become
very problematic” and “twenty days ago [they] arrived at the verge of divorce. Perhaps one of the
reasons for this situation is the sexual issue.”66 Besides familiarity with female anatomy (the corre-
spondent talked of the labia) and the specialized vocabulary of sexology (she referred to “clitoral
arousal”), this last example shows that in the span of a quarter of a century, scientific views and
knowledge on sexuality had become common and had reached even remote areas. To better assess
the extent of these changes, one needs to focus more closely on the interaction between specialists,
such as sexologists or psychiatrists, and their “patients,” bringing thus into view individual experi-
ences and everyday practices of married couples.

Marital Sexuality in “Psy” Practice

The increasing sexualization of marriage in postwar Greece was also manifested in the ways that
“psy” professionals and their clients were discussing the latters’ marital problems in person in men-
tal health services. We will use here the example of the Centre for Mental Health and Research of
Thessaloniki, whose professionals were inspired by and drew on psychoanalysis.67 In the early
period of the Centre, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the clients of the Social Aid Station
had mostly material and practical needs, discussions of sex problems were less frequent and were
usually framed by the professionals as aspects of “not harmonious interfamilial relationships,” fea-
turing recurrent and sometimes violent fights. Since the mid-1960s, when the Psychiatric
Avdela et al. 323

Counselling Department was founded and work lost its welfare aspect,68 the clientele became
mostly middle class.69 This is the period on which we focus, as then sex problems became more
commonly and openly discussed, shifting in meaning and in some cases, by the late 1970s, gaining
priority among other marital problems. Our main source is clients’ case files, which allow to study in
parallel the views of professionals and clients: although professionals were the ones to ask the ques-
tions and decide what to record and how, yet, patients’ voices can be heard; their grievances, views,
and demands were dully noted, even if not always respected.
Both husbands and wives discussed sex with the Centre’s personnel but in different ways. Hus-
bands voiced mainly two types of complaints regarding sex: they were uncertain of their wives’
morality, and they were not sexually satisfied. Suspicions of premarital sex or adultery of the wife
caused upheavals in the emotional state, everyday life, and marital relationships of husbands, some-
times leading to separation.70 25-year-old Vangelis, who wanted to become a priest, had an arranged
marriage but soon broke it, because, as he said to the social worker in 1968, “in his opinion his wife
had not been ‘virgin’.” Although he had a doctor certify her virginity, he still was not convinced that
she was “pure.” He was preoccupied with this idea and he related it to his inexperience with women,
which was associated with his religious beliefs and guilt on sex.71 Such concerns over the virginity
and fidelity of the wife, even if they were deemed by professionals and sometimes by clients them-
selves to be nonrealistic or even pathological, reflected sex stereotypes prevailing at least up to the
late 1960s, which valued women’s purity and made men feel threatened by the sexuality of their
wives.
Men’s insistence on virginity became less common in the 1970s in urban middle-class strata. The
case of a 41-year-old man, who as late as 1974 presented as a reason for not having married the
inability to find a moral wife, seems more like an exception.72 In contrast to virginity, fidelity per-
sisted as a central concern of men, although in the 1970s some husbands became more willing to
accept the paranoid nature of their jealousy and to put themselves to therapy.73 But this was not
always the case. In 1973, 43-year-old Yannis, who was an alcoholic and frequently quarreled with
his wife, believed that she was unfaithful to him because, he thought, she did not want him around in
the house and was unwilling to “fulfil his [sexual] desire.”74
Indeed, often husbands complained about not having (enough) sex with their wives. 34-year-old
Alex, despite being very satisfied with his marriage and loving his wife, told the social worker in
1977 that his wife objected his “need to make love every day” because she was afraid of another
pregnancy.75 Even husbands with more moderate sexual demands did not always readily accept
abstinence, a common contraception method at the time, and longed for sexual satisfaction, without
caring for contraception. They equally discarded bodily grievances of wives as reasons for refusal of
sex. In 1967, a 29-year-old man, who suffered from various physical and mental symptoms, pre-
sented as his main problem the “sexual”: his 25-year-old wife, who complained of general fatigue
but also pain after sex, did not want to have any sexual relationship with him, and, when she rarely
and unwillingly accepted, she did not participate. They had many quarrels on this, and he said he
was “forced” to go to prostitutes. The professionals diagnosed “marital problems” because of “lack
of communication.” Translating the couple’s problems into psychiatric discourse, they assessed that
the husband had a “passive personality” and was hostile toward the wife, who had “hysterical” and
“hypochondriac” tendencies and “problems of sexual adjustment,” namely “frigidity” and
“inhibition.”76
On their side, women who were not interested in sex rarely worried whether they were “frigid,”
especially when they had various physical and mental troubles such as headaches, fatigue, despair,
stress, and “nerves” (mostly meaning irritability) or serious difficulties with indifferent, unstable,
and violent husbands. These women were mainly concerned about how to alleviate their daily prob-
lems and handle difficult situations at home.77 In addition, they were anxious not to have more chil-
dren, and the safest contraception—at a time when information on and spread of other contraceptive
324 Journal of Family History 45(3)

methods was scarce—was avoiding sex altogether, especially when husbands “did not care about the
need to take precautions.”78
Under these circumstances, although mental health experts generally acknowledged the problem
of female frigidity, they usually refrained from labeling as “frigid” women with grave familial and
psychological problems. For instance, 35-year-old Eleni had a “nervous breakdown” after her father
died, and among other symptoms, she had been disgusted by her husband, and avoided sex, pretend-
ing that she ached. The psychiatrist and the social worker did not describe her as frigid, although she
claimed that she had never been “the type of sexual woman.” Instead, they placed the “troubles of
marital and sexual adjustment” in the frame of depression and proposed counseling work and group
psychotherapy.79
While married women with no sexual interest appeared repeatedly throughout the period, since
the late 1960s, the incidence of married women eager to improve their sex life and asking for the
help of the Centre’s experts was increasing. Among their problems, they included the lack of sexual
satisfaction but also their feelings of fear, disgust, dullness, and guilt toward sex.80 Women attrib-
uted these problems to their strict upbringing, as they were not allowed to go out and meet boys, and
were deprived of any knowledge on sex. Apart for their parents, women also found their husbands at
fault, when they were uncaring or when they treated their wives as children, took all initiative, and
did not consider their wives’ sexual satisfaction. In some women’s words, their husbands had an
“oriental mentality” or “old-fashioned principles.”81 In the course of the 1970s, more women who
talked about sexual dissatisfaction complained about being in a submitted position.82
Some husbands did not understand or approve their wives’ new pursuits, arguing they were irra-
tional and spent money to doctors for no reason. Stavroula, 41 years old in 1967, longed for “psy-
chic contact”—meaning a more satisfied sexual relation—and a more equal relationship with her
husband and complained that she rarely had an orgasm. Her husband, on the other hand, told the
social worker that he just wanted to find his wife “smiling and carefree” when he got home. Stav-
roula fantasized of other men but was keen on improving sex with her husband, sometimes even
trying newspapers’ advice. Once, she said, she read an article entitled “How to be your husband’s
mistress” and then “caressed him as in the old days,” but things did not change. She yearned for a
more profound change in her relationship with her husband, which she did not achieve despite long
psychotherapy, including couple therapy, in the Centre and elsewhere. In Stavroula’s case, as in
other cases of women blaming their husbands, the professionals thought that the key to improvement
was acceptance, communication, and compromise between husband and wife.83 They tended to
attribute sexual difficulties, like marital disharmony in general, to neuroses generated from child-
hood conflicts,84 and thus, they proposed counseling or medication. On the other hand, they seemed
to understand why some women had extramarital affairs. At a time when the still powerful double
standard brought shame and social outcry to adulterous women much more than to men, mental
health experts construed female infidelity as a response to “serious marital problems” and unsatis-
fied “needs of sex or tenderness.”85 Indeed, through their new sexual experiences, some women rea-
lized that they were not as sexually satisfied by their husbands as they previously thought.86
Therefore, in the late 1960s married women spoke more about and were becoming more demand-
ing of their sex lives. This tendency became more prominent in the 1970s. 44-year-old Hara visited
the Centre in 1974 because of tightening sensations in the chest, exhaustion of the nerves, and con-
stant crying. She was unhappy about her family life: since she married, she was constantly inside the
house, doing “whatever the husband ordered.” Her husband, a man of “old-fashioned principles,”
believed that women were only suited for the household. He did not give her enough money to cover
the family needs, and they never went out to have fun. Their marriage was arranged, and Hara had
never been attracted by him nor had she formed a psychical bond to him. He was a good family
man, but he was never tender to her, not even during sex, twice a year: “he was acting completely
mechanically, without caring about her satisfaction.” She never discussed her problems with him
Avdela et al. 325

because she knew he was indifferent. The psychiatrist diagnosed neurotic depression and prescribed
medication, thus moving the focus from the couple’s emotional and sexual issues to Hara’s individ-
ual mental health problems. In other words, while mutual sexual satisfaction was by then considered
a precondition for a successful marriage, when “psy” experts faced sexually unsatisfied women, they
viewed their quest for better sexual relations within the general frame of the wives’ own mental trou-
bles.87 This was certainly connected with the “psy” orientation of the Centre, which dealt with men-
tal health issues primarily and viewed sexual issues as aspects or symptoms of the former.
Women themselves increasingly presented sexual dissatisfaction as an important aspect of their
marital disappointments. However, although they placed more emphasis on the sexual factor than in
previous years, they continued to view sexual pleasure as a form and result of psychic contact, a way
to “feel” themselves and their husbands.88 A 30-year-old dentist, Theano, asked for the Centre’s help
in 1975 and 1976 because she did not have sex with her husband as often as she would have liked.
In addition, her husband had erection problems and ejaculated early. These sexual issues made her
worry that he probably had homosexual tendencies. Nevertheless, eventually Theano realized that
she was more bothered about his overall attitude than his sexual dysfunctions. She described him
as irritable, distant, and introvert. And, even when their sexual life improved, after he had taken
medication to treat his “impotence,” she was still unhappy with him, as she still could not commu-
nicate with him and thought he was dishonest and withdrawn.89
Only a small number of the Centre’s female clients, and only at the end of the period, viewed sex
as the core of their troubles. In 1979, Elpida, a 34-year-old housewife, attributed her bodily and psy-
chic weariness, troubles in sleeping, and want of appetite for life directly to the “lack of sexual satis-
faction” and “frigidity.” The social worker noted: “She has never felt anything[,] sometimes some
pleasure” and she was disgusted when her husband ejaculated. She accepted his demand to make
love, but in spite of his efforts, she did not have an orgasm. However, although Elpida insisted
on the sexual issue, the psychiatrist deemed her “frigidity” as less important than her depression and
prescribed antidepressive medication.90
All in all, since the late 1960s, the discussions of marital sexuality between the Centre’s staff and
their patients intensified and changed. Female chastity and fidelity did not wholly disappear from
husbands’ or wives’ concerns. However, they gradually lost their primacy as sexual intimacy and
pleasure were becoming more widely accepted as preconditions of a healthy life and a happy mar-
riage for both men and women. Although men, women, and mental health professionals were still
thinking in terms of the double standard (women passive and more prone to frigidity—men active
and more prone to extramarital affairs), women were also starting to put sexual problems to the fore-
ground. As they voiced more demands for sexual satisfaction, they usually connected them to the
quality of the relationship with their husbands, who, in most cases, were represented as indifferent
toward their wives’ desires. On their part, professionals, both male psychiatrists and female social
workers, acknowledged these sexual complains and needs and helped women express them, while
viewing them within the broader context of marital disharmony and, increasingly in the 1970s, of
psychological problems. Thus, they proposed a combination of medication and psychotherapy to
alleviate mental and bodily symptoms and enhance the couple’s communication, advising husbands
and wives to compromise more and be accepting of each other. We could conclude, therefore, that
mental health professionals while addressing the distress of the spouses viewed marital stability as a
central aim of their intervention.

Conclusions
The 1980s can be said to constitute a turning point in the ways urban middle-class marital sexuality
was discussed and experienced in Greece. The legalization of contraception and abortion, the liberal-
ization and multiplication of divorce, but also the development of women’s liberation movement did
326 Journal of Family History 45(3)

not necessarily overturn the structural place of marriage in Greek society, the hierarchical gender
relations, or even the normalizing tendencies of sexology. But as the country was moving closer
to elements that were seen as more “European” and “modern” during the last years of the twentieth
century, a clear distancing was taking place from a past marked by authoritarian politics, prevailing
moralism, the central place of the Orthodox Church, and socioeconomic hardships. More research is
needed about the exact links between these developments and their effects on sex in marriage, espe-
cially in respect to the variety of gendered ways in which they were lived and acted upon.
The history of middle-class marital sexuality in twentieth-century Greece is a combination of pro-
found changes in a backdrop of persistent structural continuities. Throughout the century, marriage
continued to be a main goal in people’s lives, while sex experts persisted in considering marital
sexuality, and especially sexuality within a stable and harmonious marriage, as the most “healthy”
and “normal” form of sexual practice. However, aspirations that men and women had from married
life but also scientific perceptions of marital sexuality underwent dramatic changes due to profound
socioeconomic, cultural, and political transformations. As times and mores were changing, public as
well as private discourses increasingly saw sexuality as an integral part of personality, health, and
marriage. This brought forward its somatic aspect and allowed middle-class couples to start instilling
more sensuality into conjugal love as their love letters and their communication with experts testify.
In other words, while men’s and women’s sexuality continued to be perceived in opposite terms
and under the sexual double-standard perspective, marriage became more sexualized, leaving behind
the nineteenth-century love/lust divide. Expert discourses on sexuality, enriched by scientific devel-
opments on the issue abroad, viewing it increasingly as a determinant aspect in human life for both
men and women, influenced new private meanings of sexual desire. In the interwar period, scientific
publications dealing with sexual matters proliferated, feeding literary texts with hints of somatic
pleasure, in spite of the coexistence in public discourses of “old” and “new” ideas about sexuality
and marriage.
This combination of “old” and “new” ideas about marital sexuality was constitutive of sciences
dealing with sex in postwar Greece. In the context of the postwar sociocultural transformations,
amid shifts in the meanings of sexuality, old anxieties faded and new ones appeared. While women’s
virginity continued as late as the 1960s to be considered the bride’s “most precious asset,” late mar-
riage of urban populations was now believed to cause “marital dysfunctions,” namely impotence for
men and frigidity for women. As the discourse of sexologists and other experts on sexual matters
became popularized through magazines and numerous publications, the issue of sexual pleasure
in marriage was increasingly valued by experts and lay people alike as a precondition for a success-
ful and stable marital bond. In fact, the greatest innovation was that now sexologists, psychiatrists,
and other experts, but also increasingly women themselves, gradually acknowledged not only men’s
but also women’s sexual pleasure as an important factor for a healthy marriage. By the 1970s, urban
middle-class couples were more willing to discuss their marital sex problems with experts, seeking
help and cure. While fidelity and sexual availability remained central for men, married women more
often sought to improve their sex life as a means to advancing their relations with their husbands.
All in all, we can detect a double transition in respect to the history of marital sexuality in
twentieth-century Greece. On the one hand, while women’s passivity in sex and their late “sexual
awakening” via male initiative and vigor were viewed throughout the century as part of their phy-
siology, by the 1970s, these same features were transformed into a medical, psychological, and
hence marital problem to be addressed. On the other hand, in both scientific and lay perceptions
of marital sexuality, the focus shifted from concerns over the effects of male abstinence and female
virginity upon marriage to anxieties over the quality of marital sex, and especially toward married
women’s own quest for their orgasm.
Avdela et al. 327

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article: This work was supported by the operational program “Human Resources Development,
Education and Lifelong Learning” by the European Union (European Social Fund) and Greek national funds.

ORCID iDs
Efi Avdela https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0225-5851
Despo Kritsotaki https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0694-1365

Notes
1. Victoria Harris, “Sex on the Margins: New Directions in the Historiography of Sexuality and Gender,” The
Historical Journal 54, no. 4 (2010): 1086.
2. Christina Simmons, Making Marriage Modern, Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War
II (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009); Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher, Sex before the Sexual Rev-
olution (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 33–53; Caroline Rusterholz, “‘You Can’t
Dismiss that as Being Less Happy, You See it Is Different’. Sexual Therapy in 1950s England,” Twentieth
Century British History 30, no. 3 (2019): 375–98.
3. Robert Muchembled, Orgasm and the West: A History of Pleasure from the Sixteenth Century to the Pres-
ent, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008), 192; Peter Cryle and Alison Moore, Frigidity: An
Intellectual History (Basingstoke, UK: Routledge Macmillan, 2011), 37–66. For a concise historical survey
of female sexuality in Europe from the eighteenth century to modern times, see Anna Clark, “Female Sexu-
ality,” in The Routledge History of Women in Europe since 1700, ed. Deborah Simonton (New York: Rou-
tledge, 2006), 54–92. For the double standard and “Victorian sexual hypocrisy” see, indicatively, Hera
Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex, and Contraception, 1800-1975 (Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press, 2004), 92–96.
4. Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980); Ellen K. Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America
(New York: Basic Books, 1984). Serious criticism to this assumption was voiced from Steven Seidman,
“The Power of Desire and the Danger of Pleasure: Victorian Sexuality Reconsidered,” Journal of Social
History 24, no. 1 (1990): 48–49, and Marcus Collins, Modern Love: An Intimate History of Men and
Women in Twentieth-century Britain (London, UK: Atlantic 2004), 29–30.
5. Indicatively, Steven Seidman, “The Power of Desire and the Danger of Pleasure: Victorian Sexuality
Reconsidered”, Journal of Social History 24, no. 1 (1990): 47–67; Jesse F. Battan, “The ‘Rights’ of Hus-
bands and the ‘Duties’ of Wives: Power and Desire in the American Bedroom, 1850-1910,” Journal of
Family History 24, no. 2 (1999): 165–86.
6. For separate spheres as a “way of life,” and not merely a sex-difference theory, see Leonore Davidoff and
Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 (London, UK:
Routledge, 2002).
7. Nancy F. Cott, “Passionlessness: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology, 1790-1850,” Signs 4, no.
2 (1978): 219–36.
8. Rachel Mesch, “Housewife or Harlot? Sex and the Married Woman in Nineteenth-century France,” Journal
of the History of Sexuality 18, no. 1 (2009): 65–83.
9. Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-century History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2011); Claire Langhamer, The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013); Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love
328 Journal of Family History 45(3)

Conquered Marriage (New York: Penguin, 2006); George Robb, “Marriage and Reproduction,” in Pal-
grave Advances in the Modern History of Sexuality, ed. H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook (London,
UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 87–108; Chris Waters, “Sexology,” in Palgrave Advances, ed. H. G.
Cocks and Matt Houlbrook, 41–63; Kate Fisher, “Marriage and Companionate Ideals Since 1750,” in The
Routledge History, ed. Deborah Simonton, 328–47; Szreter and Fisher, Sex Before the Sexual Revolution,
2010; Simmons, Making Marriage Modern, 2009.
10. Elizabeth Lunbeck, The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender and Power in Modern America (Prin-
ceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
11. Cas Wouters, “Balancing Sex and Love since the 1960s Sexual Revolution,” Theory, Culture & Society 15,
no. 3–4 (1998): 187–214; Carlfred B. Broderick and Sandra S. Schrader, “The History of Professional Mar-
riage and Family Therapy,” in Handbook of Family Therapy, ed. Alan S. Gurman and David P. Kniskern
(New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981), 5–31.
12. Indicatively, for Britain and the United States, see notes above; for France, Anne-Marie Sohn, Du premier
baiser à l’alcôve: La sexualité des Français au quotidien (1850-1950) (Paris: Aubier, 1996); Véronique
Blanchard, Régis Revenin, and Jean-Jacques Yvorel, eds., Les jeunes et la sexualité. Initiations, interdits,
identités (XIXe–XXIe siècle) (Paris, France: Autrement, 2010).
13. For example, Pothiti Hantzaroula, “Public Discourses on Sexuality and Narratives of Sexual Violence of
Domestic Servants in Greece (1880–1950),” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 18, no. 2 (2008): 283–
310; Kostas Yannakopoulos, “Cultural Meanings of Loneliness: Kinship, Sexuality and (Homo)Sexual
Identity in Contemporary Greece,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 18, no. 2 (2008): 265–82; Nikolaos
Papadogiannis, Militant around the Clock? Youth Politics, Leisure and Sexuality in Post-dictatorship
Greece, 1974–1981 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015).
14. There is a wealth of anthropological research on family and sexuality since the 1960s in Greece. However,
it concerns mainly rural population and not urban middle-class couples that consist the focus of this article.
Indicatively, see John K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Val-
ues in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1964); Marie-Elisabeth Handman, La
violence et la ruse: Hommes et femmes dans un village grec (Aix-en-Provence, France: Edisud, 1983);
Michael Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Peter Loizos and Evthymios Papataxiarchis, ed., Contested Identi-
ties: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
15. We use here the term “middle classes” in a loose sense that includes the educated, more or less well-off,
professional urban dwellers. In the course of the twentieth century, they diversify greatly.
16. For the most part of the twentieth century, Greece had the lowest celibacy rates in Europe. Evthimios Papa-
taxiarchis, “Shaping Modern Times in the Greek Family: A Comparative View of Gender and Kinship
Transformations after 1974,” in State, Society and Economy, ed. A. Dialla and N. Maroniti (Athens,
Greece: Metaichmio, 2012), 230.
17. The few private letters used in this section are exemplary of broader meanings attached to marital sexu-
ality at the time. For a detailed analysis of a larger body of correspondence—almost 1,800 private letters
of five different upper-middle-class families (the Makkas, Valaoritis, Digeni-Douka, Meletopoulos, and
the Levidi-Vassiliadi, dating from 1850 to 1930, all of them kept in the Hellenic Literary and Historical
Archive [ELIA]/National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation [MIET] collections), see Dimitra Vassi-
liadou, Στον τροπικό της γραjής: Οικογενειακοί δεσμοί και συναισθήματα στην αστική Ελλáδα, 1850-
1930 [The tropic of writing: Family ties and emotions in modern Greece, 1850-1930] (Athens, Greece:
Gutenberg, 2018), 83–108. Conjugal correspondence forms a crucial part of these archives and reveals
the shift—at least among the Greek middle and upper middle classes—from a spiritual kind of romantic
love in the nineteenth century to a more sensualized emotion in the interwar period with frequent refer-
ences to the body.
18. Alekos Meletopoulos to Maria Kambani, Piraeus, September 12, 1884, ΕLΙA/MΙΕΤ, Meletopoulou Family
Archives, 1.5.
Avdela et al. 329

19. Marigo Makka to Georgios Makkas, Athens, July 1866, ELIA/MIET, Makka Family Archives, 2.3.
20. Nanos Valaoritis to Emilios Valaoritis, Athens, October 13, 1874, ELIA/MIET, Valaoritis Family Archives,
9.2.
21. Statistical data on nineteenth-century illegitimacy are highly fragmented and rather unreliable. For the
years 1866–1884, they document a proportion of out-of-wedlock births somewhere between 0.81 and
1.40 percent (Ministère de l’Intérieur, Statistique de la Grèce, Mouvement de la population pendant les
années 1865, 1866 et 1867, Athènes, Imprimerie Nationale, 1869, ix; Ministère de l’Intérieur, Statistique
de la Grèce, Mouvement de la population pendant les années 1870, 1871, 1872 et 1873, Athènes,
Imprimerie Nationale, 1876, v; Ministère de l’Intérieur, Statistique de la Grèce, Mouvement de la pop-
ulation année 1884, Athènes, Imprimerie Nationale, 1888, xx). The exact rates must have been much
higher. Although it is impossible to measure the extent of extramarital pregnancies during the nineteenth
century in Greece, Evthymios Papataxiarchis’s research on Lesvos Island shows that they were not infre-
quent among the specific rural populations, a hypothesis deriving from the repeated efforts of the local
Orthodox Church to thwart them. Evthymios Papataxiarchis, “La valeur du ménage. Classes sociales,
stratégies matrimoniales et lois ecclésiastiques à Lesbos au XIXe siècle,” in Espaces et familles dans
l’Europe du sud à l’âge moderne, ed. Stuart Joseph Woolf (Paris, France: Maison des Sciences de
l’Homme, 1993), 109–41.
22. The French best seller of Auguste Debay, Hygiène et physiologie du mariage; histoire naturelle et médicale
de l’homme et de la femme mariés, originally published in Paris in 1848, came out in Greek in 1864, and
would be reprinted at least six times during the second half of the nineteenth century. See also, A. Χ. Ζ.,
Εγχειρίδιο υγιεινής των εγγáμων [A manual of spousal hygiene] (Athens, Greece: Hermou, 1874); Georgios
Kyriakidis, Τα μυστήρια του συζυγικού έρωτος, ήτοι Φυσιολογία και Υγιεινή των συZύγων [The mysteries of
spousal love, namely the couple’s physiology and hygiene] (1865; repr., Athens, Greece: Ι. Nikolaïdes,
1900); Markos Komninos, Υγιεινή της γενετησίου ορμής [The sexual urge hygiene] (Athens, Greece: Ana-
stasios Fexis, 1900).
23. Kyriakidis, The Mysteries of Spousal Love, 50.
24. Aikaterini Laskaridou, “Σκέψεις περί έρωτος” [Thoughts on romantic love] (January 20, 1872), Aikaterini
and Eirini Laskaridou Archives, ELIA/MIET.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid. William Reddy compares Christian Europe, India, and China (ninth–twelfth centuries) to argue that
the transformation of medieval courtly love to romantic love in modern societies and the strict distinction
between love and sexual desire are a Western phenomenon: William M. Reddy, The Making of Romantic
Love. Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900-1200 CE (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2012), 44.
27. Michael I. Galanos, Κοινωνικαί μελέται περί έρωτος, γáμου και οικογενειακού βίου [Social studies on
romantic love, marriage and family life] (Athens, Greece: Kollaraki and Triantafyllou, 1888), 9.
28. Annie Mitchell, “Τι είναι συμπάθεια και τι πάθος” [What is affinity and what is passion], Εjημερίς των
Κυριών [The Ladies’ Journal] 134 (October 1, 1889): 5.
29. Pantias M. Karalis, Περί οικογενείας και γáμου [On family and marriage] (Athens, Greece: n.p., 1873), 8.
30. Maria Nikolopoulou’s research on the first decade of the twentieth century focuses on five women writers
who wrote prose and poetry and addressed openly, for the very first time, issues of female sexual desire in
Greece: Irene Megapanou, Myrtiotissa, Galateia Kazanjaki, Lora Dafne, and Lilika Betsika. See, for
instance, Myrtiotissas’s poems, primarily focusing on female body and sexuality, and Galateia Kazanjakis’s
prose, featuring femmes fatales subjugating men. Maria Nikolopoulou, “Γυναικεία σεξουαλικότητα και
γραjή στα περιοδικά λόγου και τέχνης (1900-1920)” [Female sexuality and writing in literature and art
journals (1900-1920)], http://www.eens.org/?page_id=1582, accessed August 17, 2019.
31. Dimitris Papanikolaou, “Σαν κ’ εμένα καμωμένοι.” Ο ομοjυλόjιλος Καβájης και η ποιητική της σεξουα-
λικότητας [“Those people made like me”: Queer Cavafy and the Poetics of Sexuality] (Athens, Greece:
330 Journal of Family History 45(3)

Patakis, 2014), 91–158; Dora Rozeti, Η ερωμένη της [Her lover], ed. Christina Dounia (Athens, Greece:
Metaichmio, 2005).
32. Stefanos Doukas Diary, Digeni-Doukas Family Archive, Athens, October 15, 1936, ELIA/MIET. During
the interwar years, references to the body and somatic pleasure are making their appearance in conjugal
correspondence, see Vassiliadou, The Tropic of Writing, 103–8.
33. Although the translations of foreign manuals, especially in inexpensive editions, were widely diffused and
read, for the purposes of this research, we have focused on the texts of Greek authors. Most of them were
trained as physicians and practiced as gynecologists, obstetricians, dermatologists, venerologists, or psy-
chiatrists. Unfortunately, except for a few prominent cases, we lack further biographical information.
34. Waters, “Sexology,” 43–50; Harry Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the
Making of Sexual Identity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 31–42.
35. Nikolaos Drakoulides, Η σεξουαλική διαπαιδαγώγησις [Sexual education] (Athens, Greece: Kontomaris,
1930), 3–4.
36. Photis Skouras, Σύγχρονος ψυχιατρική [Modern psychiatry] (Athens, Greece: A. Karavias, 1952), 7–8, 57;
Dimitrios Kouretas, “Η ψυχική υγιεινή στην καθημερινή Ζωή” [Mental hygiene in everyday life], Κοινω-
νική Πρόνοια [Social Welfare] 10 (1958).
37. Vern Bullough, Science in the Bedroom: A History of Sex Research (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 124–32.
38. For example, in March 1932, the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld visited Athens and gave two lec-
tures as part of a world tour. See Panayiotis Vyras, “Magnus Hirschfeld in Greece,” Journal of Homosexu-
ality 34, no. 1 (1997): 17–29.
39. For the postwar period, see Efi Avdela, “‘Corrupting and Uncontrollable Activities’: Moral Panic about
Youth in Post-Civil-War Greece,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 1 (January 2008): 25–44;
Avdela, “Youth ‘in Moral Danger’: (Re)Conceptualizing Delinquency in post-Civil-War Greece,” Social
History 42, no. 1 (2017): 73–93.
40. Thomas Gallant, Modern Greece (London, UK: Arnold, 2001), 99, 145–50, 188–91.
41. Greek women (when literate and over thirty years of age) gained the right to vote in the municipal elections
in 1930 and full political rights in 1952. For the long process that led to the recognition of women’s polit-
ical rights, see Dimitra Samiou, Τα πολιτικá δικαιώματα των Ελληνίδων, 1864-1952 [Greek women’s polit-
ical rights, 1864-1952] (Athens, Greece: Sakkoulas, 2013).
42. Alexandros Tsakiris, Μεγáλη σεξολογία: ανικανότης, στείρωσις και η σύγχρονη θεραπεία των [Great sexol-
ogy: Impotence, sterility and their modern therapy] (Athens, Greece: n.p., 1954), 656–63 (quote on 662).
43. Ibid., 680.
44. Kyriakidis, The Mysteries of Spousal Love, 35; Nikolaos Gyras, Πριν και μετá το γáμο [Before and after
marriage] (1938; repr., Athens, Greece: P. Dimitrakos, 1944), 37.
45. Anna Katsigra, Γενετήσια αγωγή α’: Προετοιμασία του κοριτσιού [Genital education A: Preparation of the
girl], 2nd ed. (Athens, Greece: n.p., n.d.), 38–41; Tsakiris, Great Sexology, 263–78; Nikos Zakopoulos, Σύμ-
βουλος σεξουαλικών σχέσεων [Counselor of sexual relations] (Athens, Greece: Chr. Giovanis, n.d.), 111–12.
46. In an undated book that was probably published in the 1950s, Anna Katsigra declared: “I am not ashamed
to say that I myself perform it [hymenoplasty] and, what is more, quite often for free”: Anna Katsigra,
Γενετήσια αγωγή για τους αρραβωνιασμένους και τους νιόπαντρους [Genital education for the engaged and
the newlyweds] (Athens, Greece: n.p., n.d.), 24. However, we lack information on the extent of this prac-
tice or the profile of women who resorted to it.
47. Zakopoulos, Counselor of Sexual Relations, 145, 153, 158.
48. Efi Avdela, Δια λόγους τιμής: Bία, συναισθήματα και αξίες στη μετεμjυλιακή Ελλáδα [For reasons of hon-
our: Violence, emotions and values in post-war Greece] (Athens, Greece: Nepheli, 2002).
49. A. Sygkelakis, Η απόκρυjη υγιεινή της γυναικός [Woman’s intimate hygiene] (Alexandria, Egypt: n.p.,
1927), 38–44; Tsakiris, Great Sexology, 273–78; Zakopoulos, Counselor of Sexual Relations, 415–599.
50. Frigidity came to replace earlier notions, like “anaphrodisiac,” used as late as the mid-twentieth century,
with a more scientific hue. See Τα αjροδίσια πáθη (Πρακτικαί οδηγίαι και συμβουλαί - Προjυλáξεις και
Avdela et al. 331

θεραπείαι) [Venereal diseases (practical instructions and advice—Precautions and therapies)] (Athens,
Greece: Papadimitriou Bros, 1928), 28.
51. “H ‘ψυχρή’ γυναίκα” [The ‘frigid’ woman], Η γυναίκα και το σπίτι [Woman and Home], 44 (September 26,
1951): 36.
52. Georgios Zouraris, Η σεξουαλική συμπεριjορá των ανθρώπων: η ελληνική επιστήμη απαντá εις τον Κίνσεϋ,
2nd ed. [Human sexual behaviour: Greek science responds to Kinsey] (Athens, Greece: Melissa, n.d.), 31;
Skouras, Modern Psychiatry, 57.
53. Aristos Aspiotis, Η συνáντησις με το áλλο jύλον [Meeting the other sex] (Athens, Greece: Institute of Med-
icine, Psychology and Psychic Hygiene, 1956), 9.
54. Zouraris, Human Sexual Behaviour, 230 (emphasis by Zouraris).
55. Research on the influence of the Orthodox Church on everyday behavior and mores is lacking for the twen-
tieth century. For its discourse on moral issues, see Efi Gazi, Πατρίς, θρησκεία, οικογένεια. Ιστορία ενός
συνθήματος 1880-1930 [Homeland, religion, family. History of a slogan 1880-1930] (Athens, Greece:
Polis, 2011). The military dictatorship (1967–1974) adopted this traditionalist emphasis on religion, family,
and homeland, although it did not develop a political program to support it. For the Church’s interventions
to and concerns about the laxing morals in postwar Greece, see Avdela, For Reasons of Honour, 190–92;
Kostas Katsapis, ’Hχοι και απόηχοι. Κοινωνική ιστορία του ροκ εν ρολ jαινομένου στην Ελλáδα, 1956-
1967 [Sounds and overtones: Social history of the rock’ n’ roll phenomenon in Greece 1956–1967]
(Athens, Greece: General Secretariat for Youth, Historical Archive of Greek Youth, National Hellenic
Research Foundation. Institute of Hellenic Studies, 2007).
56. “Ο γυναικολόγος απαντά” [The gynecologist replies], Η γυναίκα και το σπίτι [Woman and Home], 18
(October 4, 1950): 54.
57. Nikolaos Drakoulides, Οι 12 σταθμοί της ζωής μας [The twelve milestones of our life] (Athens, Greece:
Korydallos, 1944), 56–57. Twenty years later, the same author, responding as an expert to readers of a pop-
ular magazine, assured a male correspondent who was about to get married that the ideal age difference
was eighteen years (“Ο σεξολόγος-ψυχοτεχνικός συμβουλεύει” [The psychologist-psychotecnhician
advises], Καρδιοχτύπι [Heartbeat] 1, no. 3 [1965]: 74). Age played also a part in the conceptualization
of frigidity, as sexologists viewed the decline of women’s sexual drive after a certain age, usually after
menopause, as normal. Indeed, women’s letters to sexologists highlight that “frigidity” preoccupied
younger women (often married to older men), who thought that it was not normal for their age not to
be sexually aroused or not to find sexual pleasure.
58. Tsakiris, Great Sexology, 468–69; Zakopoulos, Counselor of Sexual Relations, 299.
59. Ibid, 367.
60. Anna Katsigra, Για τους παντρεμένους [For the married] (n.p., 1955), 53.
61. Georgios Igoumenakis in Konstantinos Katsaras, Pόδα κι’ αγκáθια της σεξουαλικής ζωής [Roses and thorns
of sexual life] (Athens, Greece: I. Zacharopoulos, n.d.), 45–46.
62. Georgios Zouraris, Σεξουαλική ζωή: αυνανισμός, αποχή, εγκρáτεια, ακολασία και η εξασθένησις της ορμής,
6th ed. [Sexual life: Onanism, abstinence, chastity, debauchery and weakening of sexual drive] (Athens,
Greece: Melissa, n.d.), 238 (emphasis by Zouraris).
63. “Ο σεξουαλισμός ως παράγων οικογενειακής ευτυχίας” [Sexualism as a factor for family happiness], Η
γυναίκα και το σπίτι [Woman and Home], 19 (October 18, 1950): 29.
64. Letter dated April 9, 1957, Angelos Doxas Archive (unsorted), ELIA/MIET. Drakoulides replied through
the pages of the magazine Χτυποκáρδι [Heartbeat] that the “miserable husband” should not have been mar-
ried before having tested his “performance” and should now seek psychotherapy (“Οι απαντήσεις του ειδι-
κού” [The specialist’s responses], Χτυποκáρδι [Heartbeat] 1, no. 14 [May 1, 1957]: 67).
65. Papadogiannis, Militant around the Clock? 27–31; Panayiotis Zestanakis, “Gender and Sexuality in Three
late-1980s Greek Lifestyle Magazines: Playboy, Status and Click,” Journal of Greek Media & Culture, 3,
no. 1 (2017): 95–115.
66. Letter dated March 15, 1980, Angelos Doxas Archive (unsorted), ELIA/MIET.
332 Journal of Family History 45(3)

67. For a brief history of the Centre, see Despo Kritsotaki, “Initiating Deinstitutionalisation: Early Attempts
of Mental Health Care Reform in Greece, 1950s-1970s,” in Deinstitutionalisation and After. Post-war
Psychiatry in the Western World, ed. Despo Kritsotaki, Vicky Long, and Matthew Smith (Cham, Switzer-
land: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 155–72. It was founded at the end of 1956 in Athens, and by 1958, an
annex in Thessaloniki was in operation. For the purposes of the research, we focus on the latter, where
complete series of patients’ files have been kept. Most of the Centre’s work during this period (late
1950s–1980) was undertaken by social workers and psychiatrists; thus, the views of psychologists are
not presented in the analysis. We consider clients diagnosed with mild and temporary disorders, such
as neuroses and “adjustment” problems, rather than those diagnosed with grave psychiatric disorders,
such as schizophrenia, in order to draw attention to aspects of sexuality that were closer to these of the
general population.
68. Despo Kritsotaki, “From ‘Social Aid’ to ‘Social Psychiatry’: Mental Health and Social Welfare in Post-war
Greece (1950s-1960s),” Palgrave Communications 4, no. 1 (2018): 9.
69. The Centre’s services for adults (typically over 16 and usually between 20 and 55 years old) examined
yearly between 150 and 200 cases in the 1960s and early 1970s, and up to 350 cases in the late 1970s.
This means that their clientele was limited in comparison to the sum of patients in more “traditional” psy-
chiatric institutions, namely psychiatric hospitals and private clinics. Therefore, we can conclude that the
Centre did not have an impact to large segments of the population in terms of absolute numbers but was a
“pilot” institution that expressed new ideas and promoted new practices. Its work, however, reflected and
advanced broader social and cultural changes that were taking place in urban Greece of the postwar period.
See Despo Kritsotaki, “Ψυχική υγιεινή,” κοινωνική πρόνοια και ψυχιατρική μεταρρύθµιση στη μεταπο-
λεµική Ελλáδα. Το Κέντρο Ψυχικής Υγιεινής και Ερευνών, 1956–1978 [“Mental hygiene,” social welfare
and psychiatric reform in post-war Greece. The Centre for Mental Health and Research, 1956–1978]
(Athens, Greece: Pedio, 2016), 220–21, 230, 255–60.
70. Thessaloniki (Psychiatric Counseling Department (PCD), archive of the Centre for Mental Health and
Research of Thessaloniki, case files 31, 65, and 98).
71. PCD, 31. In order to ensure that the privacy of clients is respected, all names are pseudonyms and every
effort has been made to remove any element that would reveal their identity. The researcher has acquired
the permission of the Centre to have access in case records and publish her findings.
72. PCD, 1072.
73. Ibid., 1174.
74. Ibid., 974.
75. Ibid., 1272.
76. Ibid., 211.
77. Ibid., 11.
78. Ibid., 173. This is a recurrent issue in the historiography. See Bullough, Science in the Bedroom, 185–95;
Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution, 2004.
79. PCD, 273. Eleni asked the Centre’s help in 1968.
80. PCD, 114, 222, 1061, 1409, 1411.
81. Ibid., 222, 1061.
82. Ibid., 1372.
83. Ibid., 222.
84. Efstathios Lymperakis, “Συζυγικά προβλήματα και νευρώσεις” [Marital problems and neuroses], 1964,
Ομιλίαι δι’ ευρύ κοινόν [Lectures for the public], folder Γραjείον εθελοντών, εκπαιδευτικόν πρόγραμμα
[Office of volunteers, educational program], 1958–1965, archive of the Centre for Mental Health and
Research of Thessaloniki.
85. PCD, 370. It is telling that far less women complained about their husbands’ affairs than vice versa.
86. PCD, 1372.
87. Ibid., 1061.
Avdela et al. 333

88. Ibid., 222.

89. Ibid., 1173.
90. Ibid., 1411.

Author Biographies
Efi Avdela is professor Emerita of Contemporary History at the University of Crete. Her research
interests include gender history, history of crime and criminal justice, youth history and the history
of collective action.
Kostis Gotsinas is a fellow at the French School at Athens, working on the leisure time of soldiers
in the Macedonian Front during WWI. His research interests include the history of psychoactive
substances, sexuality, and scientific discourses.
Despo Kritsotaki is a historian of mental health. She is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow
at the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, Paris, France, researching mental
health advocacy in the twentieth century.
Dimitra Vassiliadou teaches at the Hellenic Open University. She also holds a post-doctoral fellow-
ship at the Research Centre for the Humanities (RCH) for her new project, “Ruptured Humans:
Sexual Crimes in Interwar Greece”.