Contents
For some, it is a natural part of life, for others it seems to be dormant … Sensuality eludes our understanding. Psychoanalysis explains: its features arise from the personal history of each person – childhood, relationships with parents, first experience … A brief psychoanalytic examination of sexual pleasure.
Shock, ecstasy, which is not given to everyone to experience … It is very difficult to formulate what constitutes sensual pleasure. But, perhaps, everyone will agree that in this state we can no longer operate with any concepts: everything that we know about sexuality disappears and dissolves in sensations and feelings that cannot be compared with anything. And at the same time, in order to surrender to your natural impulses, you must be able to trust your own body, not be afraid of your erotic desires and fantasies, be ready to trust yourself to a partner and at the same time constantly feel his condition.
Where does our ability to experience pleasure come from? Psychoanalysts argue that openness to sensory experience begins in early childhood.
Load of first impressions
The behavior of parents, the way they are used to showing their emotions, their attitude towards each other and the style of communication with the child leave in his unconscious images and fantasies, from which sensuality and sexuality are born. For example, a girl whose mother is convinced that she is sacrificing herself to her husband and children will automatically absorb the same attitude. In adulthood, she can expect difficulty in accepting her own femininity, which will be associated with suffering. As a result, it will be difficult for her to establish close relationships with men, and she will perceive sexuality as submission to a partner. And it will be difficult for her to completely surrender to her sensuality, to experience pleasure.
Get rid of your parents
At the age of three to five, each of us experienced the oedipal phase of psychosexual development. “At this time, for the first time, we experienced strong and conflicting feelings for our parents,” explains psychoanalyst Andrei Rossokhin. “We wanted to have a parent of the opposite sex and at the same time we were jealous of a parent of the same sex. But at the same time, the strength and inconsistency of these feelings made us look for a way out of this conflict situation – we learned to restrain our impulses and give up forbidden (incestuous) desires. It is easier for a child to cope with this, who sees that adults have their own relationships and their own separate pleasures, from which he is excluded.
Experiencing sexual pleasure and allowing yourself to realize your erotic desires and fantasies is especially difficult for someone who could not give up his very first love for his mother or father, who, even becoming an adult, retains a painful attachment to one of the parents. Thus, if a mother does not allow her son to show love to his father, it will be difficult for the boy to get rid of his forbidden fantasies of merging with her. Having matured, he will not be able to experience sexual pleasure – it will cause him a strong sense of guilt, since he will unconsciously be perceived as incest, as something unlawful.
Recognize your body
Transitional age is another important period of psychosexual development. It is at this time that our adult sexuality begins to emerge.
“In adolescence, the body begins to change, new sensations appear in it, excitement, which is both frightening and intriguing,” says Andrey Rossokhin. – Relationships with peers are now more permeated with sexuality. However, a teenager, unlike a small child, may be more meaningful about his physical changes and erotic urges. He learns to analyze his feelings and deal with them on his own. But the support and understanding of parents needs as urgently as a small child.
It is easier for a teenager to get along with a new image of his body, to accept his own sexuality, if his parents allow him to freely discuss with them what worries him, and he is not afraid to be ridiculed, feel condemned. He knows that his parents respect his privacy and do not force him to share the most intimate. And vice versa, if the emerging sexuality of a teenager frightens parents or is the subject of their jokes, if masturbation seems to them something unlawful, he, feeling their attitude towards him, listening to their suggestions, perceives only one thing: “You cannot feel desire, you do not have the right to enjoy.” Such an experience prevents him from further freely expressing his sensuality.
Injuries that need to be healed
It’s time for the first time. This is an unforgettable experience, however, according to sexologists, it does not predetermine our future sex life and almost never equals the first orgasm. Many of us have good memories of this event. However, the first experience can also be unsuccessful – in the event that it “awakened” unconscious childhood experiences, conflicts and traumas associated with sexuality.
As time goes by, we learn to deal with these conflicts, to choose a partner with whom we can surrender to our sensuality. After all, the other person, his positive attitude towards us, his willingness to give, understand help us change the usual style of relationships: listen to ourselves and learn to trust our feelings and desires.
“The first experience should follow a well-defined scenario”
Didier le Gall (Didier Le Gall) – sociologist, researcher of adolescent sexuality, co-author of the book “The First Time” (“La Premiere Fois”, Payot, 2007).
Psychologies: Is the first experience a decisive stage in sexual life?
Didier le Gall: Yes. It can be assumed that in our time, when teenagers get an idea of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbsex very early, this step becomes something banal, but this is not so. It still remains a significant event in the life of any person, and it is very important that he become successful.
Does this success depend on the pleasure received?
No, our surveys show that first experiences are rarely physically enjoyable. It can be considered successful if the partners follow a certain scenario: sympathy and affection must first arise, then time must pass (usually up to a year) for young people to be able to build relationships, and only then can a decision on intimacy come. In addition, it is very important that the couple does not break up immediately after the first time – subsequent sexual relations help to deepen the first experience, during which partners rarely experience orgasm.
Why do memories of the first experience remain positive in the absence of an orgasm?
Young people, as a rule, tend to follow the described scenario, intuitively feeling that this will allow them to avoid problems in partnerships in the future. However, if the script is not followed, we tend to have good memories of it, because what matters is that we finally managed to do it.
ABOUT IT
- Sigmund Freud “Essays on the Psychology of Sexuality” ABC Classics, 2007.
- Otto Kernberg love relationship. Norm and pathology “Klass, 2004.