How much did Alfred Kinsey know or believe in the works of Freud?

by vertexoflife
prehensilefoot

On the whole, little. Remember that Kinsey's expertise was as an entomologist who specialized in gall wasps, and so his work on human sexuality was informed more by the biology, zoology, and botany. Freud had little bearing on Kinsey's studies of female/male sexuality--whereas Freud derived his studies from deep analysis of admittedly unusual patients under his care for psychological issues, Kinsey was more informed by the reported practices of "typical" adults. While there are many criticisms to be had about his sample sizes/populations, Kinsey's approach has little resemblance to Freud's approach. While it's almost certain he would have known of him--by the 1920s, Freud's name would have been cemented in the US popular culture, and his death did not go unnoticed in 1939--nothing in Kinsey's work indicates any significant intellectual debt to Freud.