The Karezza Method (1931)

“Karezza” comes from the Italian “carezza”, meaning “caress”. I first learned of this book when a longtime friend recommended it to me while I was undergoing Tantra training, presenting it as a “Western version of Tantra”. And, after studying it, yes, that’s essentially what it is.

Titled “The Karezza Method — Or Magnetation: The Art of Connubial Love” (a work by anarchist and sexual theorist J. William Lloyd, published in 1931), this book had a profound impact on me — even more so than other manuals like “Kama Sutra” or “The Perfumed Garden” — precisely because it recontextualized a very specific view of sexuality using a discourse and frame of reference that felt more recognizable and contemporary.

An idea born between wars

There is a historical dimension to this work (and to this line of thought) that particularly fascinates me and that I haven’t seen mentioned much in the reviews I’ve read.

This is a practice with ancient roots. Millennia-old Eastern traditions already recognized a spiritual dimension to sex. Classical Tantra, for instance, is not — as contemporary popular culture would have us believe — merely a sexual practice consisting solely of massage techniques or complex positions. It is an entire worldview and philosophy of relationships in which the body is sacred, sexual energy is vital, and physical union can serve as a gateway to transcendental states of consciousness.

However, Karezza (or “coitus reservatus”) is, as my friend put it, a form of Western Tantra. It emerged in a specific era and context: 19th-century America, at the height of the Industrial Revolution. It was John Humphrey Noyes who, in 1844, developed the concept he termed “male sexual continence” within the Oneida Community, a utopian society that practiced free love. Noyes arrived at his method for deeply personal reasons: his wife had experienced five pregnancies in their first six years of marriage, four of which were unsuccessful. Thus, at a time when medical resources were scarce, what he discovered was, in its own way, a new act of love.

Inspired by Noyes’s ideas, Alice Bunker Stockham — the fifth woman to become a physician in the United States — published the book “Karezza: Ethics of Marriage” in 1896. She coined the term and sought to democratize the practice with very specific goals: preventing unwanted pregnancies, forced marital sex, infidelity, and divorce. Yet, at the age of 72, she was convicted of distributing “obscene literature”. The Vatican expressly banned the practice in 1951 on the grounds that it served as a “contraceptive method”.

But in this book by J. William, the concept takes on a more holistic dimension — encompassing the behavioral, social, cultural, and spiritual realms. Published after the First World War, it captured a world emerging from unprecedented industrial carnage and drifting, unwittingly, toward another. In that context, a book speaking of slow sex, calm love, and two bodies at peace with one another was more than just an erotic manual; it was a revolutionary act. It represented a rejection of violence — including the violence of haste, forced conquest, and orgasmic “explosions”.

The industrial tyranny of metrics

Following the Industrial Revolution, human relations changed. This shift was driven not only by changes in lifestyles — characterized by greater resources, higher demands, and more structured societal organization — but above all by the way we began to mechanize and quantify every aspect of daily life.

One such uncompromising imposition was metric standardization.

As routines became industrialized, quantitative demands took on significance regarding not only physical dimensions but also time. Time was now measured against factory schedules, distances and transportation, commercial and statistical figures, and expenses and revenues.

Quantification, timing, and profit became integral parts of not only our working lives but also our personal lives and relationships.

It was based on these criteria that the social sciences and humanities emerged — notably psychoanalysis and sociology — alongside major political and social movements. From that point on, we began to treat behaviors as statistics.

Today, the orgasm has also become a statistic. We regularly read that women have fewer orgasms than men, that there is an “orgasm gap” that urgently needs closing, and that gender equality entails not just the right but the “duty” to have as many orgasms as one’s partner. It is an important conversation, to be sure, but there is something about this obsession with metric equality that doesn’t quite add up.

After all, what is actually being measured? Muscle contractions, dopamine spikes, neurological discharges. All of this is real and may even stem from pleasurable sensations, but reducing eroticism to an orgasm count is a bit like evaluating a fine meal by the number of burps. We focus on the consequences rather than the experience.

And there is a curious irony in this tally: many of the male orgasms included in the statistics are unwanted — they are involuntary. They occur as a reflex, a physiological accident, or “prematurely”, without necessarily corresponding to a peak of emotional pleasure. Those “orgasms” count, but what do they account for?

Perhaps because he was a man, J. William Lloyd grasped this; contrary to Alice’s medical intentions, he decided to transform Karezza into a method of sexual intercourse where ejaculation was suppressed — not for preventive reasons, but to foster a greater capacity for affective and erotic connection between couples by removing the pressure to reach orgasm.

In fact, in his book, he even argues that the orgasm can be, paradoxically, a “love-destroyer”. The sudden release can leave a wake of indifference, lassitude, or a faint melancholy. And that is an extraordinary insight. For often, this is precisely what causes the magic of an intimate relationship to vanish in an instant, desire to dissolve, and the entire erotic engagement to become superfluous once the primary goal has been reached.

The Karezza method does not propose the denial of pleasure, but rather its amplification. It is about trading an explosion for a slow-burning fire; it is realizing that what fuels the connection between two bodies is not the climax, but the process — the journey itself — without a concrete objective or any rush to reach the end.

The pleasure a couple seeks to give one another is not meant to be measured; it is meant to be felt.

What matters most is never immediate

Today, we increasingly live life in a rush. Almost all our needs are met in an instant. Food is ordered with a click, content is consumed via infinite scrolling, and relationships begin and end with a swipe on a screen. Attention has become a scarce resource, and sex is not immune to this logic of rapid consumption.

Even in a text nearly a century old, J. William Lloyd writes about this with disarming elegance: “The Karezza artist sublimates a portion of his sexual passion into a more refined, intellectual, poetic, and sweet sentimental expression, thereby preventing it from reaching that peak of localized intensity that demands an explosive discharge... (...) Such is the relationship of Karezza to orgasm. It is art, intellect, morality, and aestheticism in sexual pleasure, rather than crude and reckless appetite.”

It may sound like romantic nostalgia, but it is actually a profound understanding of human physiology and eroticism. This connection between the intellect, the sensory, and the transcendental — forged through prolonged contact, attention to the whole body (not just the genitals), synchronized breathing, steady and present eye contact, art, and creativity — stimulates the production of oxytocin, the hormone of love, bonding, and constructive empathy.

At its core, Karezza is a practice centered on time, attention, and presence — perhaps the rarest human commodities of the 21st century.

J. William describes sessions that can last for hours. Hours of caresses, words, and quiet, motionless penetration; of two bodies learning to exist together without needing to go anywhere. A state where orgasm is not the most important element and may not even be part of the equation.

Today, these are radical, alternative concepts, reserved for “Tantric” or unconventional experiences. When applied to men, these ideas are sometimes even labeled “retrograde”, “conservative”, or “nonsensical”. But the message isn’t that the orgasm doesn’t matter; it’s exactly the opposite. Precisely because it is important, it deserves to be valued rather than squandered — approached not with haste or metrics, but with pace, dedication and genuine pleasure.

Rating: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 (4/5)

Interested? There is no Portuguese edition, but you can read the original English version here!