Jan. 27, 2019
What Men Don't Know About Sex-- That Women Could Teach Them / Chuck Spezzano. ; [edited by Eric Taylor] -- [Eastbourne, UK : MyVoice Pub., 2011]. iv, 70 p. (ISBN 9780955469299 : pbk.)
Chuck Spezzano's What Men Don't Know About Sex-- That Women Could Teach Them is a book of Playboy-era dirty jokes, lewd phrases and bad sexual puns wrapped around some inane and pedestrian platitudes regarding sexual relations. The work is aimed at a female readership, telling them how they can manipulate what Spezzano views as the fragile and simple male ego through sex. Spezzano says God will make the women the "quarterback" in the relationship.
This thin monograph seems to be something of a quasi-vanity press print-on-demand effort. It does not appear as a citation in any professional literature and as far as we can determine has never been seriously reviewed. Well, we are not serious reviewers but this will be about as close a treatment as this title will probably ever get.
Our comrade critic Ingeborg first turned our attention to this book when she pointed out Chuck Spezzano's 1960s Rat Pack cocktail napkin humor a few years ago in the New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans forum. Since then the whole #metoomovement has made us more aware of how Spezzano's brand of humor is actually a form of bullying.
OK, let's back up a bit. Spezzano was born on Jan. 2, 1948 in upstate New York and raised in the Bristol, Pennsylvania area. His family life was apparently stressful. But then he "left for the Holy Ghost Father’s seminary in Cornwell Heights, Pa. Here he spent four years reading, studying, playing sports and making friends." "His next year was spent at Ridgefield, Connecticut at a novitiate, after which he took temporary vows and moved to Bethel Park Collegiate seminary, attending Duquesne University. After three and a half years he found that he no longer felt the calling to be a priest, and so he left the seminary, taking a second major in Psychology as well as Philosophy."
So as a young adult he originally was drawn to an occupation that required celibacy. Note that.
Then he moved to Southern California and attained a Ph.D. in "Professional Psychology" which is a strange degree peculiar only to the now extinct private university he attended. Oh, and it was unaccredited by the APA which means his degree bypassed any sort of national standard. What was he thinking? He never became a licensed psychologist.
In this book he claims he was a "civilian psychologist" for the Naval Drug Rehabilitation Center, San Diego. He was apparently employed as a "therapy supervisor, workshop coordinator" but the "psychologist" title as it is universally understood professionally and licensed does not check out.
Anyway, perhaps to make up time for his earlier temporary priestly vows, Chuck by his own admission claims he was a womanizer in the 1970s-early 1980s which landed him in some unhappy situations and destructive relationships. We have another source from that era confirming Chuck's story. Then, at the age of 36 he became Lency's second husband. This is the backdrop to Chuck's book about sex. As you can see, his personal sexual evolution was not typical-- rather it was extreme one way or the other with the added spice of Catholic guilt.
This book is divided into very brief one or two page chapters for the short attention span. The running title along the top includes "Chuck Spezzano PhD" to remind you at every page that someone with an unaccredited worthless degree who can still legally use the "PhD" suffix is hustling this nonsense.
Spezzano has become famous in his "workshops" for not only employing crude, obscene, and coarse humor, but also getting lippy and huggy with his clients. He calls his humor "bawdy" but as we shall see in the course of this review it goes beyond that. Most of his clients are middle-aged women. There is something quite twisted and disturbing taking place here.
Let's start with his introduction:
"I have always been keenly interested in the subject of sex. Hands down, it was my favourite subject. OK, maybe my hands weren't down when it came to sex. When I was a kid, I had such a gift in catching frogs in the creek behind our house that I got to be known as 'the fastest hands in Rockdale.' This was to prove helpful later when I commenced dating."
We're still on page 1. Was this date groping taking place before, during, or after his years of wanting to be priest? But wait, he brings in ethnic humor now:
"I love sex as much as the next man. OK, maybe even more than the next man, because I'm Italian. When I was a kid I enjoyed playing doctor so much I became one when I got older. My wife and I have been married over 23 years. After our first year of marriage, she said the only thing she didn't understand about me was why I had gone into psychology instead of gynaecology. I tried to explain the difference between that which I loved and felt called to do as my life's work, and what I just plain loved. She simply smiled in a knowing way. She does that a lot with me."
Now we are on page two as we continue to set the mood for the rest of this incredibly valuable contribution to Western Civilization.
"In the first workshop that my wife and I taught in Frankfurt, Germany, our interpreter and now close friend Monica Casey, got stumped over something I said. My wife, in an aside to her, said, 'If you ever don't know what Chuck is talking about, just assume it has a sexual reference.' Then with that knowing smile she continued, 'He can't help it; he's Italian.'"
"Furthermore, I'm a guy. I look out at the world with three eyes. A guy's view of the world is limited. It's like he's in a submarine. He doesn't realize that looking at the world through his 'periscope' does not give him the 'whole' perspective. And as we all know: 'Women are from Venus. Men are from Penis.'"
Charming, isn't it?
Throughout the rest of the book Spezzano sprinkles jokes about breasts, oral sex, masturbation and other such topics. "A real laff riot," in the parlance of the 1960s.
Spezzano also overshares about his own sexual experiences in several cringeworthy passages. A mild example:
"Sexual energy generates life energy. I remember the last month before my doctoral dissertation was due, and I was pulling weeks of all-nighters. By two in the morning, I would be exhausted and 'coffeeied-out.' I had done push-ups to wake myself up so many times that it was only working for five minute stretches. Then I thought of my collection of nude magazines. Paging through these gave me enough energy for two hours of continuous work. By four a.m. I was exhausted again but I knew what would work. My thanks to all the ladies who supported me in getting my dissertation finished! Sexual energy can be used to awaken you both literally and figuratively."
Over the years Chuck Spezzano has gone out of his way to condemn "political correctness" to such an extent that it makes one wonder if he has already suffered some grief for his simplistic and crude generalizations regarding both genders.
Stay away from this book. Stay away from Psychology of Vision. Unless of course you are a student of how scams work.
[Update Mar. 12, 2019: Illuminating discussion on the Cult Education Forum regarding this book and the use of "shock talk" in Large Group Awareness Training groups like POV]
https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?4,123604,page=6
