SEXUALITY. LIBIDO

As Otto Kernberg wrote, it takes many years for a person to reach the phase of mature sexual love. Experiencing it occupies one of the leading places on the Olympus of human presence on the earth. All the more, to come to an understanding of the mental world of male, a researcher needs to live a long life without losing interest to constantly observe and study the question he is interested in.

Brief etymology of the main concepts: sex, sexuality, libido

One of the symbols of the 20^th century was a concept of stress, and the symbolism of the 21^st century includes the concept of sex. And it is likely not a coincidence. A stress-saturated human life of the 20^th century resulted in a sex-saturated human life of the 21^st century. Sex became the most available (irrespective of place, situation, time and money) way to discharge stress and derive pleasure. No wonder there appeared “sex with friends”, “sex – a pleasant pastime”, “sex – mutually agreed”, “safe sex”.

In the last century Berdyaev wrote: “Only our era allowed the exposure of sex life. And the man was laid out on the sections. This is Freud and psychoanalysis, this is the modern novel. This is the shamelessness of the modern era but also a great enrichment of knowledge about human”. Freud, so that to less shock the Puritan society of his time, used to tell that the accurate scientific study did not imply moral categories or an appeal to the idea of human integrity, because scientific study always led to a partial (model) representation of the object. The purpose of science is not to frighten or to console.

Today one can smile remembering the flow of profanity showered on television, and the Internet is the fount of readable, audible and visible “shamelessness”. Strong language is bravado of emancipation from morality and virtue. But this is at one terminal, at the other one – are the past centuries, in communion between man and woman. And between them is the largest cluster of people, who preserve a reasonable balance of word usage and action.

Sex. Translated from the French (“sexe”) and English (“sex”) it means no more than – “gender”. This word appeared in Latin (“sexus”), indicating human activity in order to obtain a set of mental and physiological reactions, feelings and actions related to the manifestation and satisfaction of a sexual desire or a desire to continue the race. The word “Sex” (Lat. “sexus” – “gender, male or female) comes from the word “seccare”, which means to “cut, split”, because according to the ancient myth, the gods divided the first people on the two halves, which must seek each other around the world. Oddly enough, but the word “sex” in the sense of “sexual intercourse” came into wide usage only recently. Sexual intercourse predetermines female sex organ (vagina) and that of male (penis) (“pistil and stamen”). Sex is an act, action aimed at discharge, deriving pleasure via sex and need to continue the race.

For the first time the term “sex” in the meaning of “coitus” (“sexual intercourse”) was recorded in 1929. Modern dictionaries decipher the word “sex” as “all that relates to the sphere of sexual relations”. Synonyms for sex are intimacy, sex, bed, sexuality, intercourse. In the British comedy series “The Black Adder 3” principal character Edmund once said to writer Samuel Johnson that people would peep into his famous dictionary of intimate lexicon solely in search for obscene words. True or not, but the interest in such words certainly exists, and there is no getting around it. Sexual intercourse is carried out through genitals – vagina and penis.

Vagina (Lat. “vagina” – “sheath”). The old meaning of the Russian word vagina is “sheath”.

Penis (Lat. “pendere” – “hang”). The origin of this word, denoting a male penis is not as straightforward as it might seem at a first glance. The fact that this part of the body is hanging is clear, but ancient Romans often used this word to call the tail of the animals, so it was an allegory. The Greeks were more straightforward – to indicate male sexual organ they used the unequivocal word “peos”, although there was also the word “phallus” (“the phallus”) in their language, which denoted intense penis. It is doubtful whether one in the army barracks could be satisfied with the “tail”. Many men, especially soldiers, willingly identified their dignity with the word “gladius” (Lat. – “sword»), especially against the background of the origin of the word vagina.

Sexuality. The language problem faced by Freud is that the word “die Sexualität” is ambiguous in its content and indicates both the quality of an object and function of the body itself. This duality is well perceived in the Russian language when comparing such expressions as “sexual girl” and “sexual dysfunction” (sounds a bit different in English – “sexy girl” and “sexual dysfunction”). Sexuality as the quality is demonstration of personal orientation on own capabilities and the desire to have sex (the phenomenon of “Macho”) by means of facial expression, pantomime (gestures), clothing, behavior, figure, anecdotes, humor. It is an inherent desire to manifest your inner libido, transforming it into an external manifestation of behavior. This is purely a personal orientation, which is made up of own fantasies, fashion requirements, imposed standards. In the modern world, the functions of sexuality and reproduction rarely coincide completely.

The function of sexuality is treated as a set of biological, psycho-physiological, mental, and emotional reactions, feelings and human actions related to the manifestation and satisfaction of sexual desire (G. B. Deriagin). Sexuality is an inherent need and function of the human body like the processes of respiration, digestion. Man is born with a certain physiological sexual potential, then sexuality is formed within the scope of individual life experience. On the whole human sexuality is determined by the integrated interaction of biological, mental and socio-cultural factors.

Libido (Lat. “libido” – “lust”) is a sexual desire. In more general terms, libido is manifestation of life, which includes strivings, desires, attractions, mental drive, usually associated with sexual instinct. It is the energy, but the special one, which can be transformed assuming any kind of human activity, which is not directly related to the sexual instinct. Freud borrowed the term “libido” from A. Moll (1898), who defined two components in it, which are the manifestation of the true sexuality: the desire to touch, inducing to the physical (hugging, kissing) and spiritual communication with an individual of the opposite sex, and the desire to relax encouraging to achieve changes in the genitals, associated with vasomotor and muscular processes, following ejaculation in men and orgasm in both sexes. In fact, originally there was a sign of equality between the libido and sexuality. Rooted understanding of sexuality and libido, as analogs of a function of genital organs was and remains dominant in the minds of both researchers and people, resulting in a constant substitution of one concept by the other. Freud himself did not escape this, and therefore became a target of criticism for his pansexuality, at a time when it was not about the sexual instinct but about the principle of pleasure. E. Fromm, in his monograph “Greatness and limitations of Freud’s theory”, wrote: “Freud did not come to the concept of “social character”, because on such a narrow basis as sex, such a concept could not develop”. However, in everyday life the term “libido” has preserved its original meaning, given by Freud – sexual passion and in the consciousness of modern man it has only one definition: sexuality.

Libido, sexuality, sex – is a chain of linguistic concepts reflecting links of a single biological function, the genetic program of which is realization of the reproductive instinct with the purpose of procreation, pleasure and stress relief.

Sexual arousal and its satisfaction occupy a completely special central place among other affective states in the psychological experience of human, especially of male. It is impossible to study and understand sexuality at some particular stage of research in isolation from the context, the psychological world of the individual, social and cultural world of the society and the evolution. Due to the dominating in the medieval Europe attitude towards manifestations of sexuality as a grave sin, the development of sexology for a long time turned out impossible. At that time the human body was considered as a source of “dirty” lusts and desires, and sexuality, love – as a sin between man and woman.

Among all pioneers and founders of the scientific study of sexuality, the most well-known figure is, of course, Sigmund Freud. It was Freud who first drew public’s attention to the role of sexual and sexuality on the whole in the personal life of man, his development, peculiarities and inclinations, his life together with other people. He, considering sexuality as a basis of human existence understood it otherwise than representatives of the science of that time, the community of the past and present. He has changed the concept of “sexual”, having separated first of all sexuality from too close association with the genitals, regarding it as a more general bodily function having the aim of pleasure and only indirectly serving the purpose of reproduction. He clearly distinguished between the concepts of “sexual” and “sex”. The first concept is much broader and includes many manifestations having nothing to do with the genitals. According to Freud, the sexual life (not sex) does not begin with the onset of puberty but shortly after birth and includes a function of obtaining pleasure from the various areas of the body; the function, which was subsequently used by the body for the purpose of reproduction.

In the course of his further research and therapeutic activities, Freud specified his initial ideas about the prevailing principle of regulating mental activity and correlated it with the “principle of pleasure/displeasure”, which was considered by him as the “economic principle” of functioning of the psyche. In the article “The formulation of the two principles of mental activity” (1911) he wrote: “Apparently, there is a general tendency of our mental apparatus, which can be attributed to the economic principle of conservation: it is revealed in the stubborn clinging to its available sources of pleasure and difficulties in denial of the latter”.

In the opinion of Freud and his followers, the manifestation of sexuality in a child is the pleasure of the excitement experienced by the infant from the mother’s caresses, from the pleasant sensations of the contact with those who care about it. It is this diffuse “excitement” of the skin that Freud and his followers viewed as children’s sexuality. Henceforth its erogenic zones, later cognitively imprinted sexual notions and, finally, the development of unconscious fantasies were described. All these components of sexuality are connected by the intense affect of pleasure and enjoyment activated since infancy, as psychoanalysts considered, and reaching its culmination in the form of cognitive-affective experience. If we move away from the theory of “unconscious sexuality”, discovered by Freud, another viewpoint is possible, namely: caresses as a soothing excitement, most likely, relieve anxiety, alarm. If we estimate this governing principle in newborns by neurophysiological mechanisms, it is more likely that the feeling of “pleasure-displeasure” is an analog of the reaction of deadaptation – adaptation in the form of unconscious primary GAS phase – alarm phase. As we remember, GAS has a discrete character in the form of automatic activation of neuronic sympatho/parasympathetic axis. These fluctuations of the psyche resemble ocean tides on the earth. The world is universal and man has absorbed the laws of the Universe. Replacement of an unpleasant feeling by a pleasant one is carried out by motor acts – kinetics, the set of which is limited. The same movements are used to achieve different goals, and this shows the economic principle of functioning. Already in the early stages of development there is a polymodality of functions. For example: sucking reflex – a life reflex fulfills several functions: satisfaction of hunger (a mechanism for satisfying the food instinct), soothing (“saving pacifier”), obtaining pleasure and the way of the world primary cognition. The kid makes use of the mouth pulling into it everything at first indiscriminately, gradually – only a new toy. This reflects one of the laws of psychophysiology – the law of economy, when one and the same function has several purposes, the number of which increases as the child gets older and as the system of psychosocial adaptation develops together with the development of the social “instincts”.

Canadian neurologist W. Penfield drew a funny man – a homunculus with a huge tongue and lips, big thumbs and toes and small hands, legs and body. This was the first map of “functions and semiotics of lesions”.

In the end, a surrealistic portrait emerged, where the human body was stretched across the surface of the brain.

W. Penfield. “Sensitive homunculus”.

Homunculus is a symbolic representation of motor and sensory zones in the cerebral cortex.

Homunculus has abnormally big hands, fingers, genitals, lips and tongue (and the head as a whole), since these parts are used constantly, from day to day. There is a match between the frequency of functioning and the size of the region in the sensory cortex, responsible for this activity. The more benefits – the greater the area in the sensory cortex.

Homunculus. Somatosensory cortex.

We do love kissing because “the mouth has a large representation in the cortex” and through kisses, touching lips, the subjective world of man, his psychosocial mechanisms of psychological protection and social models of behavior are created in many respects.

Children show a natural interest in their bodies including the genitals, notice anatomical differences between men and women and often play with their genitals. But before they tackle their genitals, which they have to reach, babies first suck their hands, then start playing with legs, trying to shove them into the mouth, drag diapers, suck them, and only when you start to teach them to the pot they detect their genitals, playing with them – reveal “pleasantness”. The latter is usually regarded by adults as masturbation, though it is not. Finding relationship between genitals and “pleasantness” many children are involved in “sexual games”, usually with their friends, brothers or sisters. “Sexual games” include nudity and study of sexual organs of each other. Most likely Freud and his followers were in power of stereotypes of interpreting the behavior of an adult and were led on their string. Baby’s movements were regarded similar to the sexual body movements of an adult (masturbation) and identified them as a manifestation of infantile sexuality. Another misconception is to interpret the seen through the prism of personal experience. The baby’s genitals have not yet been formed, the sexual instinct has not yet been woken up – and the child is already “having sex” masturbating. Freud solved this inconsistency and riddle attributing “sexuality” of this period to the unconscious. So unconscious was discovered, which in the initial stages subjugated the entire human psyche, because it seemed to open the universal core of human personality – the unconscious field in which the sexual instinct “calls the tune”.

In the early school years the interest in “sexual games” slightly reduces despite the fact that children may have romantic feelings for peers. A new wave of increasing sexual interest is observed in the transitional age.

Recent advances in neuroscience confirmed Penfield’s metaphor on the predominant representation in the cortex of “mouth” and “motions” zones in the infant. These two zones stimulate the brain oscillatory activity as a necessary condition of its functioning and development. The kinetic zone and an arsenal of movements with all their seeming diversity are limited and in fact the same motor acts, functions are used to achieve very different effects. As a classical example can serve modern dances, during which the dancers reproduce a set of “sexual movements – dance-masturbation”. The man introduces himself into a trance, which generates sexual fantasies and experiences. Moreover, spectators also experience sexual arousal due to the presence of mirror neurons and the principle of intrusive memories. John Bancroft writes (1989) that sexual arousal in humans is a comprehensive response, consisting of such elements as sexual fantasies, memories and desires, as well as a growing conscious search for external stimuli, specific for the individual’s sexual orientation and sexual object. Bancroft believes that sexual arousal includes activation of the limbic system, which is the nerve substrate of sexual behavior from the point of view of physiology (MacLean, 1976).

In the culture of the 20th century “the principle of Ego” in relation to the social functioning of the human-male and human-female has gained strength and root; it is still in progress in the form of three global revolutions – sexual, gender and family (I. Kon, 2004, 2009, 2010; N. Amosov, 1978). The peak of the first of these revolutions – sexual, in the developed Western countries fell on 1960–1970-ies. Sexuality in the modern world has undergone significant changes due to the growing role of psychological and socio-cultural factors. Such a motif of sexual activity, as reproduction, receded into the background giving way to the need for sexual satisfaction, relaxation and communication. The reason is considered to be women’s emancipation.

However the behavioral shifts are associated with a deep process of separating sexuality from reproduction, which began long ago and gradually. Only recently the public consciousness of the West has recognized that sexuality itself is not aimed at procreation, needs no justification, it is valuable in itself. The sexual revolution of the 20^th century in addition to the liberalization of mores and change in the forms of social control over sexuality involves the gradual assertion of the principle of gender equality. “Friends with benefits”, the film of the American cinematography of 2011, gave the researchers of sexuality a remarkable term of sexuality in the modern western world. Although the film is not about this, it is a comedy; but “sex with friends”, not committing to anything, not a result of the game of passions and love is more and more frequently used in the modern western world – had fun, discharged and ran away.