Intimacy, Sex, and Art
Intimacy,
Sex, and Art
That
what we are and can be as persons is bound up completely with the quality of
our most important personal relationships should be so obvious as to need no
proof. (Guntrip, p. 194)
This
is an article I wrote for young people who are starting to grapple with the
issues of human relatedness. It was
published by Kendall Hunt in a textbook that is used in college level human
sexuality courses. Having been
dissatisfied with the presentation of the article in that venue, I decided to
repost it here, with some revisions.
The
three topics: intimacy, sex, and art, are closely related. In fact, I see them as variants on a long
spectrum of modes of communication of the inward heart. Because intimacy is the most profound form of
human relating and basic to the other two types, it will serve as the starting
point for this discussion. Keep in mind
that intimacy is essentially communication, and it is communication of the inward
heart. By this I mean the sharing of our private inner world of thoughts,
feelings, sensations, intentions, dreams, fantasies, or ideas that are in most
circumstances experienced and held private within ourselves. We all have an inner life. We all experience the world and each other
subjectively. That is, we not only have
sensations and gather information by means of our senses, but we react to those
experiences, we interpret them and respond to them, in light of our previous
experiences and conditioning events. These
reactions and understandings and judgments we make about our experience is not
readily evident to others, although those that are closely attuned to us may
have a sense of our inner states. But
this is acquired through repeated experience and careful attention. Our bodies and our demeanor may yield some
clues to some of our inner states, but most of our thoughts, feelings,
intentions, and imaginings are experienced privately within ourselves. The sharing of that private world with
another person or persons is intimacy.
We
live in a culture that does not value the inner life of individuals and is
uneasy with the exploration and sharing of that inner life. Americans are very outward looking and outward
directed. We like action rather than
reflection. But intimate communication
and the quality of that communication is the foundation of our personal lives
and our closest relationships. It
affects the social and intellectual development of children, and is a powerful
motivator in all aspects of human activity.
Intimate communication reveals the structure and style of one's
personality. It requires at least two
people to be intimate, but intimacy can include more than two. There are many ways to share our inner
experience: speech, touching, movements, gestures, actions, artworks, and sex
are all modes of intimate communication.
One can think of intimacy as emotional and psychological disrobing.
A
persona is a mode of presenting oneself
publicly in order to promote smooth functioning in society. It is not necessarily false, although
personas can often be very misleading.
At best, it is only a very partial revelation of who we are. A persona is like a suit of clothes that we
wear to meet expectations others have of us. It is only the top layer, which allows us to
carry out daily activities without causing disturbance. There is much that goes on within us that is
not revealed in how we present ourselves publicly even to close friends and
family members. Intimacy is the process
of revealing those deeper layers of our inner life. The audience for such revelations is
typically small, although art is an intimate revelation that aims for a wide
audience, or an undefined audience. We
will discuss the peculiar qualities of artistic communication a little further
on. But for now we will think of
intimacy as communication of the inner self occurring within an interpersonal
context.
Intimacy
has degrees. In an interpersonal relationship
intimacy is usually reciprocal to some extent, although that reciprocity will
vary. Intimacy is rarely balanced and it
is never perfect and it is never complete.
A mother's intimacy with her infant or young child is weighted toward
the child. The mother has greater
awareness of the child's needs than the child has of the mother's. The intimacy of a doctor or a psychiatrist
with a patient is weighted toward the patient.
In every personal relationship the degree of transparency and opacity
will vary considerably from one area to another. I like to think of relationships as having
doors and windows that open and close.
Some doors open and some remain closed.
Some are closed after they have once been open. Some windows you can see through and some you
can't. This is intimacy. It is highly variable depending on the person
and on the relationship.
We
should avoid formulating an ideal of what intimacy should be like. Such ideals and expectations tend to be used
to criticize and evaluate, and this tends to undermine intimacy. Intimacy depends on acceptance, which is a relaxation of our defenses, expectations,
and preconceptions. Openness and
receptivity are prerequisites to intimacy.
One must suspend one's assumptions and expectations of another person in
order to be intimate. Intimacy is always
full of surprises, because you really know very little of what is inside another
person, and a person's inner landscape is always in flux. To maintain an intimate connection with
another person you have to pay attention.
Rather than being something one strives for, intimacy depends on
relaxation and allowing what is normally kept inward to emerge and flow freely
into the mutual awareness between oneself and another. This can be very risky. There are good reasons why we keep many
things private to ourselves. An outlook
on life and on human beings heavily committed to moral strictures and/ or to an
ideal of personal behavior is an impediment to intimacy. When a person fears judgment and censure, it
is hard to be revealing. Creating an
atmosphere where a person can feel comfortable sharing what is habitually kept
inside and not outwardly expressed can take considerable time and skill. In some situations with a new person intimacy
seems to appear suddenly and spontaneously.
It may yield a feeling of elation or exhilaration. But such intimacy is only partial and often
turns out to be temporary. Intimacy has
a developmental line. It can broaden and
deepen over time creating ever greater mutual awareness and interdependence, or
it can shrink. It can ebb and flow like
a tide that rises and falls. Relationships
that have become dull or boring, that seem have lost their vitality, have probably lost their intimate connection. Small rejections and disappointments cause
the doors and windows of intimacy to close.
These small alterations in the avenues of inward communication
accumulate over time. They are quite
often so small and subtle that they often go unnoticed. But their cumulative effect is that the
couple begins to lose interest in one another.
One or the other might start to look elsewhere for the kind of
connection they need.
Intimacy
in an interpersonal context is habitual communication which creates a bond of
the emotions and one's inner personhood.
Repeated contact maintains and enhances this bond. Intimacy tends to establish patterns of
relating, small unspoken understandings and agreements. An intimate connection that has fallen into
neglect can be revived, but disuse can allow alterations in ones internal
configuration to establish themselves that may make a revival of a previous
intimacy difficult.
Intimacy
should probably be distinguished from dependence, which is very common. Emotional dependence, the need for the
reassuring presence of another, the need for constant attention, the desperate clinging
to the attention and presence of another in response to a largely unconscious
premonition of abandonment or loss, is a form of one-sided intimacy akin to
that of a mother with her children.
Communication and understanding flow mostly in one direction. This kind of connection is narcissistic in
the negative sense, which I will explain a little further on. It is an
unbalanced form of intimacy.
Despite
the many obstacles to intimacy, it is something that occurs spontaneously and
naturally among people. People want to
be closely and emotionally connected to one another. Even the most paranoid or schizoid person
wants to be understood and accepted on his or her own terms. These great public conflagrations of rage and
despair such as Adam Lanza's, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's, Seung-Hui Cho's,
are meant to communicate with the entire society. The perpetrators of these spectacles don't
want to just die, they want to be noticed.
I doubt if there is any hope or expectation of understanding left in
such people. Understanding is something
they have had very little of in their lives and have long given up on. These actions are spectacular exhibitions of
destruction and despair. Mass murder is
intimate because it communicates and reveals the inward heart. The bond it creates with its victims and
society is its continuing legacy of destruction.
Empathy
Intimacy
in its most mature form is related to empathy.
Empathy is the ability to accurately grasp the inner life of another
person, to understand how another person feels
in a particular situation, to grasp the logic of their motives, to be able to
anticipate their reactions or behavior.
Empathy is not to be confused with sympathy,
which is an attitude of benevolence or compassion toward another person. Empathy is strictly informative. It says nothing about how this accurate
understanding another person's inner life will be applied. Salesmen need empathy, politicians need
empathy, con men need empathy, torturers need empathy. And so do doctors, mothers, artists, and
lovers. Empathy is only a tool. Like a hammer, it can be used to build a
house, or to kill somebody.
Because
empathy informs one of strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities in another,
intimacy informed by empathy carries considerable risk. One becomes vulnerable in an intimate
relationship. A person who knows you
well can hurt you, and they know best how to do it. Exposure of one's inner self carries with it
natural vulnerability. It takes courage
and self-confidence to be intimate. Many
people who lack such inner strength and confidence have difficulty becoming
intimate with another person. Some
people reach a certain level of intimacy and then panic at the realization of
their own vulnerability. They may
inexplicably withdraw at the very moment when the relationship seems to be
close and deepening. Because of the high
level of vulnerability entailed by intimacy, trust is an important ingredient
in any intimate relationship. It is
almost a prerequisite. People who are
unable to trust others due to past injuries or painful relationships have
difficulty forming intimate connections to others.
Paranoid and Schizoid Defenses
Paranoia
is an abiding condition of fear coupled with mobilization for defense that has
been established through repeated attacks.
It is the great enemy of intimacy.
Paranoia is a defensive system that operates on the assumption that all
human relations are essentially antagonistic and exploitative. What it is defending against is an extreme sense
of vulnerability, and rage against its many persecutors. Paranoid people simply don't believe in
constructive, nurturing, benevolent relationships. Every good and positive outreach toward them
is converted into something hostile or manipulative. If you succeed in penetrating the formidable
defenses of a severely paranoid person, what you will find is a wounded,
enraged person who sees himself as the victim of attacks from all
directions. You may find yourself
playing a starring role in his persecutory delusions -- not a position you want
to be in.
Another
common defensive system that seems to be increasingly popular in America is the
schizoid. The schizoid person withdraws
from human contact. They attempt to
shrink the emotional life across the board keeping human interactions and
emotional expression to an absolute minimum.
Intimacy tends to be avoided at all costs, and when ventured into is an
area of great difficulty. The schizoid
challenge is disengagement. You can't
reach the person on an intimate level. The
paranoid is engaged, but it is a hostile, destructive engagement.
They [the schizoids] are the people who
have deep-seated doubts about the reality and viability of their very
"self," who are ultimately found to be suffering from varying degrees
of depersonalization, unreality, the dread feeling of "not
belonging," of being fundamentally isolated and out of touch with their
world.
The schizoid problem is the problem of
those "who feel cut off, apart, different, unable to become involved in
any real relationships. (Guntrip, p.
148)
These
two defensive styles in a range of degrees and combinations are very widespread
in American society and have influenced our laws and our culture to the extent
that intimate relationships are difficult to achieve and maintain in
contemporary America. Intimate relations
are seen as hazardous -- which they are -- and this feeds the paranoid's need
for defense and the schizoid's need to withdraw into isolation. Intimate relationships are therefore not encouraged,
or even actively discouraged, and sometimes persecuted -- which tends to
intensify the trend toward isolation.
The
reasons for this increasing cultural trend are deep and complex and would make
a good book, if someone out there wants to write it. But one important piece of evidence, I think,
is the growth and success of science and technology, especially over the last
couple of centuries. Science looks at
the world in a totally impersonal way.
Explanations of natural phenomena are sought in terms of mechanical
causes and effects, not for personal reasons having to do with the human
world. The success of this style of
perceiving and relating to the natural world has enormously extended the human
capacity to exploit, subdue, and control Nature to a degree unimaginable only a
few centuries ago. This success has encouraged
its application to all areas of life. Schizoid
personalities are very common among scientists and mathematicians. "Objectivity" means removing oneself
from the matter at hand, perceiving and understanding a matter apart from one's
personal interest in it. People are
increasingly looking at one another in this depersonalized, utilitarian
fashion.
This
is consistent and very congenial to the values of corporate capitalism which
are focused entirely on externals like production, exchange, transportation,
organization, and profit. The growth of
corporations over the last century and a half, whose sole rationale and purpose
for existence is to maximize profit, with all other values being subordinated
to that overbearing imperative, have devalued the personal life of everyone in
that economic system. Personal
happiness, interpersonal satisfaction, and sexual fulfillment, have no exchange
value and therefore play no role in the economy. Increasingly one's personal life is forced to
the sidelines as earning a living takes an ever greater proportion of time,
energy, and attention. Modern life creates numerous obstacles to
forming intimate relationships and places great challenges upon them, and this
has created a society full of lonely, disconnected people hungry for connection
yet finding it increasingly difficult to make the kind of fulfilling
connections they seek.
What
is the value of intimacy? Why strive for
intimacy in our relations with others?
Intimacy is the antidote to loneliness.
Humans are by nature social. We
are a species that has always survived in groups rather than as isolated
individuals, like, say, orangutans.
Humans need connection to others and that need is established in the
earliest interactions between an infant and its mother. The lack of such a connection is experienced
as painful distress. An abandoned infant
will cry until it is exhausted. The need
for reassuring connection to other human beings is deep in our nature and intimacy
fulfills that need for connection. Our
experience of ourselves is from the outset defined and established in relation
to others, first and foremost, to our mothers.
This earliest intimacy with our mothers establishes the development of
our sense of self, the narcissistic structure of our personalities. This defines our need for intimacy and how
that need is expressed and sought.
Narcissism
Narcissism
in the broadest sense refers to how one experiences
oneself as a human being. It refers to
one's feelings about oneself and one's abilities, one's personal appearance,
one's physical capabilities and bodily integrity, and how one sees oneself in
relation to others. It has to do with
how one feels about life in general. Is
it good? Is it bad? It is worthwhile, or not? Should I continue living or not? These are narcissistic issues because they
refer back to the self and the engagement of the self in life.
There
are positive and negative aspects to narcissism. Narcissism in the positive sense is the
regard one feels for oneself and one's own well being. The care one takes of one's own body, one's
attention to grooming and appearance, the sensitivity one has to the impression
one makes on others, the care and attention one gives to one's own health and
well being, the satisfaction one feels in accomplishment or the realization of
ambition, the sense of satisfaction one feels in helping others, teaching
others, giving to others, one's sense of participating and belonging to a
larger group. Good parenting is
narcissism in the positive sense, the satisfaction one takes in seeing one's
children grow up healthy and constructively.
Narcissism in the positive sense is feeling a sense of abundance in
oneself, having the ability and the resources to share with others and enhance
the lives of others. In a word,
self-esteem. The satisfaction one takes
in giving an appropriate gift is a narcissistic satisfaction. On the other hand, an inappropriate gift, a
gift that is overly extravagant, or is otherwise not suited to the recipient
shows a lack of empathy, a lack of understanding of the other person, a gift
given to enhance the giver in his own eyes rather than from an appropriate
understanding of the needs of the receiver is an example of narcissism in the
negative sense, of deficient empathy and using others to enhance one's own self-esteem
or sense of grandiosity. Pathological
narcissism is obliviousness to the needs and feelings of others. It is not necessarily malicious, although it
often comes off that way. It is actually
a deficit in emotional perception. Pathological narcissism cannot see beyond its
own needs and interests because of a great underlying sense of
vulnerability. Pathological narcissism
limits one's capacity for intimacy because one's need to enhance one's own self
image is so great it overwhelms and excludes the ability to be receptive and
open to the needs and feelings of another.
Narcissism in the negative sense tends to exclude empathy or uses
empathy selfishly and unsympathetically without consideration of the needs or
feelings of others. The narcissistic
structure of one's personality determines the degree of intimacy of which one
is capable and the character of the intimate relations one is able to
establish, whether constructive and enhancing, or destructive.
Art
Art
is also communication of the inward heart.
An artist realizes his own inner self, or, let's say, an aspect of it,
in a work or performance that can be viewed or shared by a public audience. This impulse to create and share one's
internal self is a narcissistic need.
Not everyone has this drive to create and share one's inner heart
through external symbolic representations.
It is a peculiarity of artists, the origins of which we will not explore
here. Art is a form of intimacy in the
sense that the artist shares his or her inward self and exposes it to an
external audience. The size of the
audience does not matter. What is
important is that art reaches out for connection. Art is not masturbation. It is not something you do for your own
private comfort or amusement. Art connects you to other people. There is a narcissistic satisfaction in
creating something with great technical skill that others can recognize and
admire. But what is essential to art is
not this narcissistic satisfaction that the artist feels in his creative
accomplishment, but rather the outreach to others from the core of the artist's
inner self that a work of art represents.
By creating something external to oneself, as opposed to simply
daydreaming or fantasizing, one creates the possibility of a connection to
others through their perception of one's artwork. When a person comes into contact with a work
of art, they are coming into contact with a representation of the inner self of
the artist who created it. One does not create
randomly. This does not mean that a
viewer can readily grasp the emotional and psychological meaning of a work of
art upon encountering it. It takes
considerable time and experience to understand an artistic language, and
artists are often deliberately obscure and idiosyncratic in how they present
themselves in their work. However, it is
my view that artistic effectiveness is related to communicative effectiveness
rather than to obscurity.
Architectural
blueprints, anatomical diagrams, maps, graphs, are depictions of external
reality. They are meticulous assemblages
of facts, measurements, and objective characteristics that can be seen and
verified by anyone. They are not usually
thought of as art, because they do not reflect the inner self, the maker's subjective reaction or perspective on the
subject presented. When Picasso did his
painting of the Weeping Woman (1937) he was not trying to recreate this woman
in a true to life rendering. Rather,
this image reflects how Picasso saw this
woman and how he chose to depict her out of all the many ways he could have
chosen to do this painting. This
painting is a subjective view of the woman, not an attempt to describe her body
or her character with objective validity.
Art is about illusions. It is
about how the artist needs to see the
world, not necessarily how the world is. And that is entirely based on his personal
psychology. Even the Dutch masters who
drew and painted meticulously accurate portraits of faces and people still had
a personal style of their own. They had
to choose how to portray their subjects, what manner of dress they should wear,
how they should be posed, the circumstances in which they are set, the
intensity and direction of the light, the mood or facial expression to be
portrayed. These are all personal
choices of the artist that go into the creation of a "realistic"
portrait. So in this sense art is always
a reflection of the subjectivity of the artist.
Art is a partial intimacy because what the artist chooses to present of
himself is carefully selected and meticulously prepared for public presentation
to obtain a calculated effect. The
intimacy of art tends to flow in one direction, from the artist to the
viewer. Reciprocity,
that is, the viewer's experience or reaction to the artwork is not usually
experienced directly by the artist, except for admiring applause or negative
reviews. But that is not the most
important impact of art upon its audience. The important and lasting impact of art is
usually not expressed directly, and that is the expansion of the inner
awareness of the viewer of an artwork, or an alteration in his or her
perception and understanding of the external world, or of himself or herself.
I disagree with John Cage that art is
non-intentional, that its purpose is to " sober
and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences."
(John Cage, johncage.org/autobiographical statement ) This conception of artistic purpose rejects
the communicative function of art and is the polar opposite from my own view. My understanding of art is narcissistic in
the sense that it starts from the self of the artist and connects the artist to
other selves through the communicative means of the artwork. Cage's conception of art stems from Zen
Buddhist ideas that seek the annihilation of the self. Art becomes a means of "emptying"
the self, reducing the self towards the ideal of nothingness. Nothing could be further from or more opposed
to the point of view I am advancing here.
My view is that life is a process of the growth of the self and the
enhancement of the self through fulfilling connections to others, as stated in
the epigraph at the outset. Art is a
means toward that enhancement and fulfillment as is intimacy in personal
relationships. Zen Buddhism essentially
elevates the schizoid position of detachment and isolation to an ideal of human
development, a view I am totally out of sympathy with.
What
is the value of art? Art expands one's
awareness of the internal life and enables one to perceive people, the external
world, the social environment, and one's inner life in new ways. Art alters our way of looking at things and
experiencing ourselves. In that sense
art can be educational in that it offers modes of experiencing ourselves and
the external world that might not be available through other channels. Art can change people in that it alters their
perceptions and awakens them to aspects of inner and outer reality of which
they may not be aware. In that sense art
is volatile and can be subversive if it seeks to illuminate that which is
officially suppressed. Art fosters
intimacy by expanding awareness of the inner self and directing attention
toward reflection on the inner life. Failure
to educate in the arts, minimizing attention to the arts, devaluing the arts,
indicate a lack of value placed on the development of the inner self.
Sex
What
does all of this have to do with sex?
Sex is also communication of the inward heart and an expression of the
narcissistic structure of the personality.
It falls within the broader concept of intimacy, but it has peculiarities
that set it apart from other forms of intimate communication. Sex is communication through the body that
seeks the satisfaction of lust. Lust is
a powerful connecting emotion. Lust
impels one to seek contact with another person, and it is contact of a
particular kind, namely contact leading to sexual arousal and genital
contact. However, many other kinds of
touch and many other aspects of intimacy occur within the context of sexual
activity. Touch, physical affection, and
bodily closeness are enormously reassuring and comforting. These needs for comfort, reassurance, and
affection that occur alongside the satisfaction of lust are highly intimate and
satisfy a deep longing for connection and bonding between people. This is perhaps the deepest form of intimacy
because it is a sharing of the most intensely felt bodily and psychological
longings. How one expresses and seeks to
satisfy lust and the need for bodily closeness reflects the narcissistic
structure of one's personality. Sex has
a lot in common with art in that the mode in which one seeks to satisfy lust
reflects one's narcissistic needs just as the art that one produces reflects
the narcissistic structure of the artist's inner self. Sex says a lot about who you are. Sex is not only about the satisfaction of
lust. Sex is a paradigmatic expression
of narcissism. Because sex is
communication, sex tells you where you are in a relationship with another
person. When sex is going well and
people find satisfaction and mutual pleasure in one another, it signifies a
strong bond and a positive avenue of communication and understanding. Of course this is not the only aspect of a
relationship that is important and it is not all there is to intimate
communication. Some people use sex to
cover up or avoid other issues that may be a source of discomfort. Sex can also be used to conceal and
mislead. A dishonest heart can use sex
to manipulate and destroy. The intimacy
of sex is only partial. Sex is one
aspect of intimacy, but a very important one because it embodies the energetic
connection of lust and sexual arousal. But
do not think that because you have sex with a person you know everything
important about them.
Kissing
There
are numerous theories on the origin of kissing, and kissing can, of course,
have many different meanings. Some
cultures do not kiss at all, or very little.
References to kissing in Western culture go back to ancient times, and the
era of exploration and colonialism, as well as modern media have spread the
practice of kissing around the world.
Psychoanalytic theory sees the propensity to kiss stemming from the
feelings of warmth, safety, nurturing, and well being in the infant's nursing
at the mother's breast. Clamping the
mouth on the nipple is a means of incorporation, of sustenance, dependence and
survival. In adults the meanings and
style of kissing can be many, but kissing always carries a message related to
nurturing or incorporation. Gentle
kisses of affection, pecks on the cheek and so forth, impart a message of
affection, good feeling, warmth, reassurance, and nurturing. Kisses of passion and desire communicate a
will to incorporate, to possess, consume, an emotional neediness, an inner
longing and loneliness for which one is seeking solace in the other. Kissing -- or not kissing -- reveals how
attracted a person is to your body, how much they need you, how much they like
you, their willingness to depend on you, and the degree to which they can
reciprocate your feelings and empathize with your needs. All of this can be communicated through
kissing. Oral sex is a further extension
of these feelings and needs of both giving and incorporating through the mouth,
but applied to the genitals and the emotions of sexual arousal. The use of the mouth as a body connector is a
very powerful and effective means of intimate communication.
Orgasm
Orgasm
is understudied and not well understood.
Most of what is known about orgasm has issued from studies of epilepsy
and people who have had nerve damage, spinal and/or brain injuries. Physiologically, orgasm shares a lot of
characteristics with epileptic seizures.
There is no scientific consensus on the definition of orgasm or how it
should be conceptualized. For this
reason I am putting forward my own conceptualization of it here.
Sexual
desire, lust, sexual arousal, and orgasm are hypnotic processes. They shift our awareness to special subjective
states that mobilize emotional and physical response systems that are normally
dormant during everyday experience.
Sexual desire, or lust, is the perception
of the sexuality of another person. It
is looking at another person and feeling the
possibility of sexual activity, creating a visualization of the other in a
sexual context. It is a conscious
awareness of desirable sexual interaction, which is a continuing state. It is different, from simply perceiving a
person's existence, or the clothes they are wearing, or their ability to
perform some task, or their physical characteristics. What makes it different is that it mobilizes
our personal emotional response system and prepares us for sexual arousal in a
way that other kinds of perception do not, and therefore it is an altered mode
of awareness. Sexual arousal is the next
level of intensification. The body
becomes mobilized in anticipation of sexual activity. Internal physical sensations become more
prominent in our awareness and other considerations that might inhibit sexual
arousal tend to be excluded from consciousness.
Arousal is intensified through physical stimulation of the genitals and
other regions of the body as well as psychic stimuli such as sound, scenario,
internal visualization (fantasy), and perhaps smell. At a certain threshold orgasm is
triggered. Involuntary physical
processes are set in motion accompanied by intense awareness of pleasurable
sensation that excludes nearly everything else.
Orgasm is a state where physical pleasure overwhelms consciousness and
obliterates the ability to attend to other inputs to consciousness. Some people see a relationship between orgasm
and the "loss of self"
reported in some mystical experiences.
My feeling is that orgasm differs from these mystical experiences in
that in orgasm the self does not disintegrate.
The self remains intact. But
normal consciousness, which ordinarily processes input from numerous internal
and external sources simultaneously, becomes overwhelmed during orgasm by
internal physical sensations which become extraordinarily dominant. Other modes of perception and awareness are
not extinguished. One can still see and
hear during orgasm, but, orgasm is a state where interoception (awareness of
the internal state of one's body) is magnified to a unique predominance. This makes it special. One must be able to relax one's external and
internal perceptual apparatus in order to orgasm. Ordinarily we are bombarded by sensate
experience from the external world as well as from our own internal thought
processes. In order to orgasm one must
be able to allow those perceptions to recede from consciousness so that the
physical pleasure of the orgasm occupies one's awareness to the near exclusion
of everything else. This is a hypnotic
process. It is not entirely voluntary,
but it is conditioned by experience. It
is the capability of awareness to shift in a specific way under the conditions
of intense sexual stimulation. One does
not orgasm from driving a car or vacuuming the carpet. Orgasm is a special type of conscious
experience that can only occur under very specialized conditions. In my view, this is the way orgasm should be
understood.
Komisaruk,
et al. (2006) argue that orgasm is not a reflex,
but rather a perception, (p. 237f.)
and I concur with this valuable
insight. That is, orgasm is not
generated by muscular contractions caused by genital stimulation, which, in
turn, lead to a reflexive action in the spinal column. Genital stimulation mobilizes neurons
throughout the body sending greater and greater levels of excitation to the
brain. The muscular contractions are
indeed reflexive and can be elicited in the spinal column even when the spinal
cord is severed. But orgasm is not produced unless those muscular contractions are
perceived by the brain as sensations.
This supports my view that orgasm should be understood as essentially a
psychological phenomenon, not simply as a physical process. The physical concomitants of orgasm are, of
course, noteworthy and important, but Komisaruk and his collaborators have
shown that the physical processes themselves do not constitute orgasm. They can occur without the experience of
orgasm, and orgasm can occur independently of physical arousal. Therefore orgasm must be understood as
essentially a subjective experience, a particular state of altered awareness,
that is usually (although not necessarily) accompanied by specific
physiological processes under the conditions of intense sexual arousal. Orgasm is therefore primarily a narcissistic
experience rather than a communicative one, although sharing orgasms is a
powerful bonding experience, because sharing the special ecstatic state of
orgasm is highly intimate.
Sadism and Masochism
Sadism
is the pleasure we take in the suffering of another. It is a spectrum that extends from gentle
teasing to torturing someone to death.
Sadism reflects ambivalence. It
is essentially a hostile, destructive impulse that is mitigated by feelings of
good will, love, guilt, and perhaps fear.
We need the person toward whom we feel hostility, so we don't want to
destroy them. But it feels good to see
them suffer. It is the expression of the
suppressed hostile impulse that is pleasurable.
The spectrum is defined by the mix of hostile and positive feelings
toward the victim. The greater the
hostility, the greater the cruelty and the darker the expression. As the
mitigating feelings tend toward zero, it becomes simply cruelty. Mild sadism is ordinary and commonplace. Jokes are often mildly sadistic and jokes
that are overly hostile can lose their humor.
Sadism is intimate because it expresses our conflicted feelings toward
another person, and the pleasure we feel in the pain or discomfort of another
is something usually kept private. Sadism
is common in sexual activity to a greater or lesser degree, because sexual
relationships are conflicted and often mixed with hostile aspects.
Masochism
is using adversity to one's advantage and seeking it out for that purpose. I see it as a broader concept than sadism and
it is related to depression and despair.
Masochism is an adaptation of people who are habituated to suffering and
adversity. The erotic aspect of it,
feeling sexual arousal in response to pain, or pain as an intensifier of erotic
feeling, comes from associating sexual arousal or love with painful
experiences, neglect, disappointment, and abuse. One learns that to love, or to be aroused, hurts,
and one comes to expect, or even to need, that conjunction of feelings. In my eyes, masochism is harder to understand
than sadism because in order to understand it one must grasp a lifetime of
painful experiences that may not be easily accessible. In an erotic context it is not a neat
complement to sadism, in general. It is
much more complicated, whereas sadism, although conflicted, is relatively
straightforward. For that reason I don't
like the term 'sadomasochism'. It
squashes together two things that I think are very different and don't
necessarily complement one another.
Love
Love
is a word that is used in many different ways to mean many different
things. I tend to avoid it because I
always fear that I am giving the wrong impression. People attach very different meanings to 'love'
and it raises all sorts of expectations that may not be realistic. However, it is enormously reassuring and
people love to hear it, so we must deal with it.
I
will start with my definition of love in the best sense. Mature love is good will guided by empathy and
tempered with a respect for the
separateness and individuality of the other person. Empathy is very important. Empathy means you understand how the other
person feels and what his or her real needs are. Most of what is called 'love' is not empathic
and this leads to all sorts of turmoil.
I disagree with defining love in terms of a willingness to sacrifice on
behalf of the beloved. This is
masochistic. It implies that you are
giving up something you would rather not in order to benefit the beloved. You are inflicting some suffering upon
yourself in order that your loved one may enjoy some benefit. Love is certainly characterized by a giving
spirit and a desire to enhance and bestow advantage upon one's beloved. But rather than self denial, love represents
a sharing of the abundance of one's
physical and emotional resources. It
does not necessarily expect anything in return, but it embodies a hope for
attachment and good will and an intertwining with the life of the beloved. Love is an expansion of the self, an attempt to complete the self through
emotional resonances and attachment to what is valued and idealized in the
other. Whatever is done out of love does
not occur beyond good and evil, as
Nietzsche once suggested (Beyond Good and
Evil, 153). Love can never be an
excuse for reckless or destructive actions.
Love lies squarely within the framework of our values and constructive
human relationships. Mature love is
closely related to respect for others and responsibility for oneself.
Our
common notion of "romantic" love is characterized by strong emotion,
passion, elation, anticipation, despair, jealousy, possessiveness, dependence
and obsessive preoccupation with the beloved.
This is what people usually mean by being "in love." This kind of love tends to be self-centered
and unempathic, often lacking a realistic perception of the beloved as a
complete person, sometimes ignoring serious character flaws in the other, and
often a maintaining distorted understanding of the relationship itself. It is sometimes manifest as a furious,
psychological dependence that devours and emotionally destroys the other
through insatiable demands for attention and control. This is not mature love, in any way, shape,
or form. However, these experiences can
have great emotional and psychological significance. Relationships that start out this way can
sometimes evolve into more mature forms of love without losing the passion and
zest with which they began. This
romantic kind of love brings people together, but it is not what keeps them
together in a satisfying relationship over a long period of time. Empathy, good will, and respect are much more
important for healthy, durable loving relationships than "love." Intimacy is an important element in a healthy
loving relationship because intimacy informs and bonds. Intimacy enables one to be close to another
person, to know the other person in depth, to be in touch with the other
person's feelings, concerns, and needs.
Intimacy gives a sense of connection, mutual dependence, and
support. We do not face the world alone,
we face it together as a couple giving strength and support to one another,
informed by our intimate knowledge of one another and energized by lust and
sexual pleasure. It's a good way to
live, if you can achieve it.
Notes
Cage,
John (1990) johncage.org/autobiographical statement.
Guntrip,
Harry (1973) Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and the Self. New York:
Basic Books.
Kirshenbaum,
Sheril (2011) The Science of Kissing: What Our
Lips are Telling Us. New York: Hachette Book Group.
Komisaruk,
Barry. R.; Beyer-Flores, Carlos; & Whipple, Beverly. (2006) The
Science of Orgasm. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Nietzsche,
Freidrich (1989 [1886]) Beyond Good and Evil. Translated
by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vinage/Random House.