The Harrad Experiment

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by Robert H. Rimmer




  Table of Contents

  NOVELS BY ROBERT H. RIMMER

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF STANLEY COLE - September, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF SHEILA GROVE - September, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BETH HILLYER - October, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF HARRY SCHACHT - October, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF STANLEY COLE - November, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF SHEILA GROVE - November, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF HARRY SCHACHT - November, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BETH HILLYER - November and December, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF STANLEY COLE - January, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF SHEILA GROVE - December, January, February and March, the ...

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF HARRY SCHACHT - February, March, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BETH HILLYER - April, May and June, the First Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF STANLEY COLE - September, the Second Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF SHEILA GROVE - November, December, January, the Second Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF HARRY SCHACHT - August, after the Second Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BETH HILLYER - March, the Third Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF SHEILA GROVE - October and November, the Fourth Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF STANLEY COLE - January and February, the Fourth Year

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF HARRY SCHACHT - May, the Fourth Year

  A LETTER FROM BETH SCHACHT - December, after the Fourth Year

  THE HARRAD/PREMAR SOLUTION

  Notes

  ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  LOVING, LEARNING, LAUGHTER & LUDAMUS

  NOVELS BY ROBERT H. RIMMER

  That Girl from Boston

  The Rebellion of Yale Marratt

  The Zolotov Affair (also published as The Gold Lovers)

  Proposition 31

  Thursday, My Love

  The Premar Experiments

  Come Live My Life

  Love Me Tomorrow

  The Love Explosion

  The Byrdwhistle Option

  The Immoral Reverend

  The Resurrection of Anne Hutchinson

  (The last two are available from Prometheus Books.)

  NONFICTION

  The Harrad Letters to Robert H. Rimmer

  Adventures in Loving

  You and I... Searching for Tomorrow

  The Love Adventurers

  The X-Rated Videotape Guide, Vols. I & II

  The X-Rated Videotape Guide, Vols. III & IV (with Patrick Riley)

  Raw Talent: The Adult Film Industry as Seen by Its Most Popular Male Star by Jerry Butler as told to Bob Rimmer and Catherine Tavel

  Whips and Kisses: Parting the Leather Curtain by Mistress Jacqueline as told to Catherine Tavel and Robert Rimmer

  Let’s Really Make Love: Sex, the Family, and Education

  in the Twenty-First Century

  Published 1990 by Prometheus Books

  The Harrad Experiment. Copyright © 1990 by Robert Rimmer. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Inquiries should be addressed to Prometheus Books, 59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, New York 14228—2197, 716—691—0133. FAX: 716—691—0137.

  First published by Sherbourne Press in 1966.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90—61598

  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author and publisher are grateful to the following institutions, publishers and individuals for permission to quote from the works described below. These works are copyrighted as indicated.

  John W. Gardner and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for extracts from Renewal in Societies and Men by John W. Gardner, Copyright © 1962 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

  Rudolph Von Urban, M.D. and Dial Press, Inc. for permission to quote from Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness by Rudolph Von Urban, M.D. Copyright © 1949 by Rudolph Von Urban, M.D.

  Archibald Mac Leish and Houghton Mifflin Co. for The End of the World, a poem by Archibald Mac Leish, Copyright © 1952 by Archibald Mac Leish.

  Pantheon Books and Alan Watts for Nature, Man and Woman by Alan Watts, Copyright © 1958 by Alan Watts.

  INTRODUCTION

  Six years ago, my wife Margaret and I wrote a paper for the North American Journal of Sociology, outlining a program designed to achieve sexual sanity. Essentially, our method consisted of teaching a new sexual ethic and moral code by conditioning and indoctrination throughout a four-year period to a select group of male and female college students of unusually sound character and high creative ability.

  The paper was the result of ten years of work in family and marriage counseling and years spent studying the sexual habits and mores of man throughout recorded history.

  My wife and I felt that, in order to survive, Western man must take the long step away from primitive emotions of hate and jealousy and learn the meaning of love and loving as a dynamic process. Such a program would counteract the decadence that is slowly infiltrating our society.

  During their four years of college life, our students would live together, not only under the same roof, but (preselected on the basis of careful psychological tests) heterosexual couples would share the same quarters: a study room, a bathroom, and a bedroom with twin beds.

  This unconventional living arrangement was the keystone of our proposal. The student body should be small, no more than 200 males and 200 females, and would be, in a sense, a pilot study. This study would provide the blueprint for a new sexually oriented aristocracy of individual men and women who were free of sexual inhibitions, repressions, and hate, and were thoroughly educated into the meaning and the art of love as distinguished from the purely sexual relationship.

  This program is in sharp contrast to our present system of segregating boys and girls of seventeen or eighteen, when they are at the first peak of their emotional interest in each other, and forcing them into abnormal living patterns during their college life. Social pressure for prolonged continence often creates fear, anxiety, and actual repulsion between the sexes. The results: too early marriage ending in divorce, unwanted children born out of wedlock, sexual frustration before and continuing into marriage, and a sex-obsessed society with little or no knowledge of what dynamic love is. A society that deeply frustrates human interrelationships creates fear, hate, anxiety, and a feeling of loss of identity which are the keynotes of modem life.

  Students living together under the proposed program would attend classes at established colleges or universities. Arrangements would be made for full accreditation. Functioning in this way, our student body would receive their educational requirements in an unusual social and intellectual environment.

  One important feature of our proposal was a required four year seminar tentatively titled “Human Values.” Every aspect of man’s attempt to organize society religiously, sexually, economically, and politically would be examined. We felt our program would relate to the religious background of most of our students but that it would be wise to seek students who had a liberal religious background. We would be striving not to inculcate any predetermined values, religious or otherwise bu
t rather hoped to open the door for each student to evolve his own philosophy and orientation of his own “self” to the world.

  Since our program encouraged premarital relations among our student body, we would, very early in the course, make a complete study of contraception. Roommates might live together with or without sexual intercourse, and with the possibility, if desired, of having alternate roommates. Any marriage consmitment during this period would be discouraged, but we assumed those students living together in this program would ultimately seek marriage with another student because they would have become so successfully conditioned by the program that they could not easily find an equally mature mate.

  With a sincere belief that each individual should be made conscious of his responsibility to society and to any new life resulting from his mating, our proposal included the stipulation that couples who were responsible for the creation of new life would be dropped from the dormitory program and required to marry.

  We expected that this program, if it continued in existence for any length of time, could lead to a healthy development in marital patterns for many of our graduates.

  According to our predictions, a goodly percentage of our student body would ultimately become involved in monogamous marriage; we believed that there was the possibility that others would become involved in a close and lasting friendship with another couple of the same. background. Because these two couples would have had their college and intellectual training in an atmosphere of controlled sexual freedom, they would be equipped to realize the many advantages of entering into an informal group marriage.

  Without fear, jealousy, repression or inhibition they would recognize their need, not only for sexual varietism, but, even more important the stimulus of living together would add depth, meaning, and breadth to the intellectual crosscurrents of life. Possibly, they would move into a common household and pool their financial as well as intellectual and emotional resources.

  Keep well in mind that we are not recommending either this premarital program or this later possibility of group marriage for society in general. Obviously it would be too startling a change in sex and marriage behavior for the average person in our present culture. The point we made was that the time to begin is now. A start must be made somewhere. Too much is at stake to permit our basic social and family patterns to drift on the currents of haphazard marriage and distorted sex relations.

  Our paper proposing a Premarital Living Program at the college level met with a great deal of unfavorable reaction. Margaret and I did not expect any definite action to result from our proposal, at least in our lifetime.

  To our surprise, five years ago, and more than a year after the original article was published, John Carnsworth approached us with the offer to support such a program with an initial contribution from the Carnsworth Foundation of $10,000,000. In the past six years we have had the privilege of working closely with John Carnsworth. Without his guidance and perspicacity, undoubtedly Margaret and I would have made many unfortunate fumbles in creating Harrad College on the grounds of the Carnsworth Estate in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  When Robert H. Rimmer, who has been closely associated with John Carnsworth, approached us with the suggestion of telling the story through the journals of actual students at Harrad, we gave a great deal of thought to the idea. The journals are kept by the students as a private record of their reactions and feelings to the Harrad Experiment. There were a great many advantages in permitting the outside public to see the Harrad program actually evolving in this way through the minds of the students. It became immediately apparent, however, that in making the selection from the wealth of material in these journals the students have freely turned over to us we could be accused of selectivity to prove our thesis. Rereading the journals that we have chosen from the various journals given to us by the first graduating class, I think we have avoided this pitfall. At times all Harrad students have had great doubts as to whether they were being educated in a sound environment. They too often wondered, especially in their freshman and sophomore years, whether the microcosmic society we have created at Harrad would be valid in the outside world. Occasionally, the program for individual students created its own insecure world, but largely the individual graduates of this first class discovered the roots of their insecurity and mastered them in a way that would be impossible in what we now label a normal premarital environment.

  While the Harrad College Experiment will now for the first time be made public and subject to the winds of controversy, we are continuing our policy of not exposing our student body to the public eye. How students at Harrad are living their personal lives in this new environment, who present Harrad students are and where their homes are, and the kind of parents that have permitted their children to attend Harrad will continue to be closely guarded information. The material from the journals of Harrad. students which comprise the body of this book has been carefully disguised both as to the names of the students as well as to any reference to local institutions or other points that might make identity possible.

  Harrad College is no more than what we accomplish for the individual In this book you have the rare privilege of meeting exceptional individuals embarking on a voyage into an unexplored land where the premise is that man is innately good and can lift himself by his bootstraps into an infinitely better world. Margaret and I hope a glimpse of this kind of world will enrich your life; and, while you personally may have not been educated in the manner of this Harrad Experiment, you may give the option of leading a full premarital life to your children.

  PHILLIP TENHAUSEN

  Harrad College

  Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  The journals selected for presentation here are only four, culled from seventy-six possibilities. But since these four journals cover the activities of six individuals whose lives become irrevocably intimate and integrated, they are even more significantly indicative of the Harrad College Experiment.

  No one journal is presented in its entirety. To do so would involve many volumes, since each student entering Harrad is asked to keep as detailed a record as possible.

  As the reader will note, the journals are on an almost day-to-day basis for the first year at Harrad College. This frequently drops as we approach the third and final years, largely because the students have “adjusted” to the Harrad goals and are quite at ease in discussing ideas and reactions with one another, rather than setting them down on paper. Also, as the exchange of intimacy and ideas increases, the individual students tend to be less concerned about the privacy of their innermost feelings.

  The only editing given the journals has been to remove complete days and months. But the continuity is accurate, and the journal entries presented here have not been altered in any other way.

  THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF STANLEY COLE

  September, the First Year

  So this is Harrad College ... ye Gods! How did I ever get myself in this place? My friends back in Public School 133 would call it mad. Strictly mad ... or just plain kooky.

  Following instructions from the Tenhausens, all students at Harrad are expected to keep a journal ... strictly private stuff of their reactions. Phil Tenhausen is a nice guy, a little owlish behind those glasses, and his wife Margaret ... wow! Since when did Ph.D.’s come in such nice packages?

  This morning we got the big indoctrination lecture in the Little Theatre, a new modernistic building located across the quadrangle from the Harrad dormitories.

  “You are entering a new phase of you life, quite at variance, not only from your past emotional life, but from what present day society calls the norm.” Phil Tenhausen told us. “After this meeting I’d like all of you to pick up spiral bound notebooks at the bookstore, and use these to keep a journal of the emotional and intellectual history of your days at Harrad. Write down who you are, your joys, your fears, your reactions to your roommate, your reactions to the Harrad E
xperiment. These journals do not have to be works of art. They are your private place to blow off steam. As time goes by we think they will be particularly helpful to you in assessing your growth, and the meanings and purposes of your life. While we don’t make it compulsory, we do hope that someday before graduation, or after your graduate, you will turn your journals over to Harrad to be used, not only for improving our program, but also as guideposts as to what we have achieved or failed to achieve for you.”

  So, okay, Phil and Margaret, I am writing! Hunched over her desk is Sheila Grove, my roommate ... a girl. A girl ... with breasts, and a fanny, and a pussy, trapped with me! While I knew it was going to happen, I can’t quite believe it. Some of the time Sheila is writing ... when I look in her direction ... but mostly she’s staring out the window. The sun has almost disappeared, just a few rays catching at the upper branches of the elm trees that tower over all the grounds and seem to hide this building and the Carnsworth gardens. Maybe Sheila and I are lost in some magic forest, and outside the world has stopped.

  Back to this morning. I might as well write down what Phil said. Who knows? Someday a thousand years from now if some one discovers this journal I may go down in history as the man who chronicled an upheaval in the male and female relationship. Phil’s wordsl

  Phil sat informally on the edge of the stage as he talked to us. “The purpose of this meeting is to get you into the Harrad groove. Many of you, in coming weeks, are going to wonder if the groove is a rut and if we actually know what we are doing, or if we have a definite program at all. Admittedly, some of our approaches in this first year are tenuous. You are in the enviable position of creating a new approach to life with us. If it doesn’t work with this group, the project will probably be abandoned. Both as a group and as individuals you have the possibility of making our pipe dream come true or puncturing it rudely. After studying your scholastic aptitude scores and your various achievement tests, I can tell you that Margaret and I are more than a little frightened. I doubt if anywhere in the world there is an equivalent group of a hundred students who have a scholastic ability equal to this group. How this pairs with your emotional development remains to be seen.

 

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