On the shelves of stores more and more books on how to «become an unforgettable lover.» And we are increasingly tempted to think that sex can be learned. Psychotherapist’s warning.
I was lucky to be a witness and participant in the development of sexology in the country in the 1970s and 1980s after several decades when the ideological belt of innocence was put on sexuality. The word «sex» was not even in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Help with sexual problems was in the hands of psychiatry, gynecology and urology. A prominent psychiatrist wrote of Alfred Kinzie’s seminal study of human sexuality (which he obviously didn’t read because he called Kinzie «she») that it was the machinations of imperialist science, representing man as a lustful rabbit; it is so with them there, but for a Soviet person it is insulting. Guidelines for doctors stated that «the best way to prevent sexual debauchery in adolescents is physical education.» Sexual education was limited to doorways, and in rare pamphlets on sex education there were 3-4 references per page to Marx, Engels, Lenin.
Today, sexology is a recognized specialty and an open field with many helping professionals and institutions. There is even an Institute of Soitology with a Department of Practical Soitology that studies the influence of sexuality on success in the business sphere and studies the phenomenon of office romances and their positive and negative sides; sexuality as a tool for career growth; sexuality as a means of influencing business negotiations; sexuality as a means of recreation in business; sexuality as charisma. There is also a lot of literature for those who are interested — from countless yellow newspapers and glossy magazines to hundreds of books and Internet sites. Today, perhaps the very lazy does not write about love and sexuality, giving «wise and authoritative» advice. Even Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky and his co-author in their ABC of Sex proposed the Russian concept of sex as opposed to the Western and American one. I would compare it with the breaking of the dam of former prohibitions, when the topic finally became free, but also raised a lot of turbidity from the bottom.
- Porn — what’s the danger?
Good help for orientation in the flow of literature can be the books of I.S. Kona is the only domestic world-class sexologist (some of his books can be read on the Internet — sexology.narod.ru/book.html). They will help to avoid stepping on numerous rakes, the main of which is the expectation that some book or article can reveal the universal secret of sex. Here is an example…
I.S. Cohn says that physiologically the «same» sexual act can be a means:
— discharge of sexual tension, for which the presence and qualities of a partner are of vanishingly small importance;
— childbearing;
— receiving sensual pleasure;
— satisfaction of sexual curiosity (the partner acts primarily as an object of knowledge);
— communication (exit from loneliness to psychological intimacy);
— self-affirmation, a way to check whether I can and what I can (behind this is often a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty);
— achieving non-sexual goals, benefits, promotions, etc. (sexual barter, corruption, manipulation);
— maintaining a ritual or habit;
— Compensation for shortfalls in meeting other needs.
Each of the options has its own architecture of sexual reactions (for example, childbearing does not require erotic imagination, sports sex does not involve psychological intimacy, etc.). Options are not always clearly understood, they can intertwine or form complex mosaics. For a person with an attitude towards sexuality as the language of the soul, the partner’s statement, revealing the “Kama Sutra” with the words: “So, today we have exercise number …”, means that the person lying next to him treats him like an athlete with a projectile. But in sexual barter, these same words can come in handy.
No one will reveal to me the main secret of sexuality. No amount of krex-fex-sex will open the way to heaven. But, if I imagine my own and my partner’s features and preferences, correlate them with the situation and superimpose it on the map of what I read, I have a chance not to make irreparable tricks out of the books of the charter of the sexual service and out of sex.