In my last post, I alluded to some of the evidence from psychoanalysis which supports the position of primary sexual non-exclusivity taken in Sex at Dawn. In this post, I would like to throw out another idea. (*)
I have mentioned before Robert Stoller’s work on the erotic imagination (here and here) and have just now finished reading the chapter on erotic fantasy in Esther Perel’s superb Mating in Captivity, to which I shall return in a future post Reading this, it occurs to me that we have no good answer to the following question: why is the experience of repressed aggression or of humiliation sexualized even when it is not obviously sexual in origin? That is, why do we make specifically sexual fantasies out of these experiences and wish to reenact them in a sexual context? One could perfectly well reenact them in other contexts, and as a practical matter this may often be far easier to do; yet the erotic persona often seems diametrically opposed to the public persona. There is of course a Freudian, “developmental” answer to this question, but it is in this regard circular: it begs the underlying question of why exactly sex is so important to the ego.
So what is the link between sex, aggression and status and why is it so powerful? After all, in plenty of primate species sex has no particular importance: it is casual, episodic and short-lived. Given the insignificant role of sex in such species, it is hard to imagine that they spend anything like the proportion of their time thinking about it which humans do. In fact there is only one primate species for which it is easy to conceive of its possessing an active erotic imagination and one in which sex and aggression are closely linked: the bonobo.
For bonobos, sex plays a rich and unique social role. Let’s listen to Frans de Waal: “Bonobo sex often occurs in aggressive contexts … A jealous male might chase another away from a female, after which the two males reunite and engage in scrotal rubbing. Or after a female hits a juvenile, the latter’s mother may lunge at the aggressor, an action that is immediately followed by genital rubbing between the two adults.”
Just like “make-up” sex which anecdotally is a frequent occurrence in human dyadic relationships, sex for bonobos plays a role of reestablishing social connections after emotions have gotten a little out of hand.
Now let’s imagine a bonobo which for some reason (forced induction into human “civilization” for example) is not allowed to use sex to bring reconciliation in a certain range of contexts and is also sex-deprived generally. The experience of aggression in these contexts is still, presumably, going to provoke in him or her an erotic reaction. Absent the opportunity to act on this impulse, one can well imagine its becoming, by the standard mechanism, a neurotic script whereby the circumstances which originally sollicited the reaction non-exclusively, now become integral to it and required for it to take place.
That is, we may hypothesize that the ability to make aggression into a core element within the erotic imagination requires a significant primary link between sexuality and aggression in the social life of the species. Aggression and sexuality are in a subtle and continuous balance in bonobo society, the purpose of which is to sustain cooperation within the tribe.
My purpose, of course, is not to suggest that human sexuality is not much more sophisticated than that of bonobos: it clearly is. Yet it is appealing to imagine, even if it is only the embryo of an idea requiring further research, that we share this archetypal association, as it would illuminate what remains otherwise, to my mind, somewhat of a mystery.
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(*) Note: as readers of the book will be aware, the theme of a link between the erotic imagination and primary sexuality is already present in Sex at Dawn, where the authors discuss the appeal of multi-male pornography to men. This contribution is in a similar spirit.
It might be natural after all then….nice thought at least!
Thanks for your comment. Just to clarify, it is not my view that paraphilia would have characterized ancestral sexuality (see the separate article on paraphilia to which this one links). It is simply that the perverse script relies on a primary (non-perverse) association. This is a rather technical psychodynamic argument which should not be overinterpreted. In any case, as a general disclaimer I should add that I of course do not offer advice on the blog and am not a professionally trained psychotherapist. Understanding can promote self-compassion and healing, but at the same time, as a general matter, it seems to me that extreme behavior and extreme fantasies are always indicative of deep trauma which, because it has many damaging collateral consequences, should be professionally addressed.
I am just treating the symptoms (ie getting flogged every now and then), but I suppose one day they will be able to treat us….anyway, I was kidding a bit – I know, well hope, there is a gap between what we humans do and what our ancestors did…if ancestors they are.
I don’t think what I am saying contradicts your thesis here at all. But I would like to add that part of what happens is that almost everything about sex, in our repressed culture, has to be inserted (heh heh) into a narrative of shame, humiliation, degradation, immorality. The result is that shame has itself become sexualized, This is most apparent in pornography, in which every possible sexual impulse, act, or permutation tends to be portrayed, narrated, and captioned in degrading and shameful–and more often than not misogynistic–terms.
The process you describe might fuel these hybridizations of power and sexuality, domination and sexuality, shame and sexuality, etc, but as you suggest the connections are conditioned, not essential. For example, outside of patriarchy, I don’t think a man sharing his partner with other men would need to use a shame-spiced narrative of “slutwives” or a cuckolding fetish to explain himself to himself.
The fact that a non-patriarchal community would probably not generate a lot of people into spanking does not mean that spanking is wrong or silly. On the contrary: The last thing we need is to put another layer of “wrongness” on anyone’s erotic imagination. I do hope that the more enlightened kinksters can go into these paraphilias consciously, as roles that they choose to step into and enjoy with awareness, without becoming identified with them,
What I choose to judge a bit would be hypocrisy: The perpetuation of repression and neurosis by the same people who are suffering from and/or enjoying these neuroses. There’s a lot of that, even by people who should know better.
I think we agree. You are right that the article doesn’t talk about shame. I discussed this however in an earlier article, here.