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Sexual imprinting — instant recording in the memory of the image of the sexual partner.
If sexual imprinting occurs due to congenital readiness for a fixed imprinting of the sexual partner, one speaks not simply of imprinting, but of the imprinting of the sexual partner, or sexual imprinting.
Sexual imprinting in animals
Sexual imprinting is a process in which a young animal during a critical period imprints the characteristics of a suitable sexual partner. As a result (for example), the male Zebra Finch Taeniopygia guttata The zebra finch chooses the appearance of the female as a mate rather than a sexual partner similar to itself.
Imprinting and human sexual behavior
Imprinting, unlike a conditioned reflex, is responsible for the rapid formation of extremely stable traces in the psyche, sometimes even after a single experience.
If a certain stimulus acts at critical moments in the formation of personality, it is easily imprinted in the psyche, acquiring extraordinary brightness and durability in comparison with other stimuli. This impression further strongly determines the behavior of a person in certain situations.
“There is a well-known example when a 14-year-old teenager during masturbation in the evening in the park was caught by a young woman. Strong fear and shame on the background of sexual arousal, combined with a sharply negative emotional reaction of the woman, caused a sharp increase in arousal in a teenager, which led to an ejaculation with an unusually bright orgasm. As a result, this situation became so firmly entrenched in his psyche that it subsequently led to exhibitionism. It also suggested that imprinting plays an important role in the occurrence of various sexual deviations. Some experts explain the origin of fetishism by creating associations of sexual arousal with certain objects.
Desensitization effect according to Westermarck
The downside of sexual imprinting is the desensitization effect discovered by anthropologist Edward Westermarck: people of different sexes brought up together in the first years of life (normally) most often do not experience sexual attraction to each other in the future. See Westermarck’s desensitization effect.
Westermark vs. Freud
This discovery is a serious argument against Freud’s concept. Z. Freud believed that members of the same family have a natural sexual attraction to each other, which causes society to impose a taboo (non-negotiable ban) on incest, and Westermark proceeds from the opposite point of view, that the taboo has no natural basis and is an arbitrary public or personal decision . Independent research confirms Westermarck’s observations and interpretation, but many psychoanalysts continue to support Freud’s concept, arguing that taboo would be meaningless if family members did not have such an attraction.
Sexual imprinting on inanimate objects is one popular explanation for fetishism.