In the city of Melbourne throughout the 1940s and 1950s, a radical general practitioner provided a nascent form of sexual therapy. It was an unusual treatment programme in a period when counselling of any kind was rare in Australia. Yet Dr Victor Wallace attracted a steady clientele, who were seemingly eager to fix their sexual dysfunctions and establish and maintain a healthy and happy sexuality. His patients, though diverse, were united in their belief that a harmonious sexual life was essential to marriage, the family and the wider social order. Both doctor and patient faced somewhat of a paradox: a broader culture that stressed the importance of an active heterosexuality within marriage, but which had not yet accepted counselling or psychotherapy. So what could be done when sexual pleasure or passion was elusive? This article explores Wallace’s very early form of medical sex therapy, over 20 years before such therapies became commonplace.
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