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GAMES FOR HYSTERICAL COUPLES – GAME 2: NUDE INDOOR VOLLEYBALL (PART 1)

Posted: under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.

Players: Husband and wife. Activists: Both.

Setting: Large room, such as living room, den, basement, or garage.

Aim: Rekindle a playful attitude toward sex.

Game Plan: All of us, as children, once had a playful attitude toward sex. Indeed, in psychoanalysis we say that sex is regression in the service of the ego. When sex is going well, we become not only childlike but even infantile, expressing all the pent-up needs from the earliest past to the present. This game serves to directly facilitate this playful attitude toward sex and foster a regression in the service of the ego.

Tie a volleyball net, rope, or string across the middle of a large room. (Whatever it is, call it the net.) Mark boundaries of the minicourt with a tape on the floor, or use a 9′ x 12′ rug as the court surface. Blow up a balloon to the size of a volleyball; the balloon is the volleyball.

As in regular volleyball, the server stands behind the line to serve, and scores points only on his or her serve. After the serve, each player has three hits to get the ball over the net. (One hit can be used to block the ball, one to set it up, one to spike it, etc.) Play stops when a player either fails to get the ball back over the net or knocks it out of bounds. The first player to reach 15 points (one point per serve) wins.

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GAMES FOR DEPRESSED COUPLES – GAME 1: THE FAIRY GODMOTHER

Aim: Draw depressed spouse out of his depression by appealing to a rescue fantasy.

Posted: under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.

Players: Depressed husband and fairy godmother (non-depressed wife).

Activist: Nondepressed wife. Setting: Home.

Game Plan: This game may be played with or without the depressed husband’s knowledge, according to the nondepressed wife’s discretion.

One evening, while the depressed husband is moping around the house, the wife rings the doorbell. She is wearing a revealing fairy godmother costume of silk or lace, in a color that will appeal to the husband, with a crown of some sort and a flowing cape. She holds a golden wand in her hand. If she has small breasts, she may enhance her costume with falsies. The object is to be slightly outrageous, but in a charming way. When the husband opens the door, she says, blinking her eyes theatrically, “Hi, I’m your fairy godmother!” She prances into the room, whirls around, and glides toward him. “Yes, yes— I’m here, I’m here!” she breathes in a soft, sexy voice. “You called, and I’m here!”

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GAMES FOR BORED COUPLES – GAME 4: DESERTED ISLAND (PART 3)

Posted: under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.

Having them say “We’re all alone here” before they have sex, and then say the next thought, helps them get in touch with what they’re feeling, and is likely to bring up stuff they have been suppressing. The wife may say, “We’re all alone here,” and then, “Oh, God—now I have to depend on you\” The husband may say, “We’re all alone here,” and then, “Oh, God—now I’ll have to put up with your nagging!”

During the course of the weekend they will be forced in this way to confront many issues that have lain dormant. In addition, by having sex in new ways, they will be forced to work through sexual phobias that have served as defenses against intimacy, and this will in turn force them to confront even more issues. Hence the channels of intimacy, passion, and communication will be opened.

If they cannot “succeed” with the game the first time, and call the agent to pick them up, they can try the routine again until they get it. Such weekends may be repeated as needed, and may be combined with other games in this book.

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JUNK SEX VS LOVING SEX – LOVERS GAMES

Posted: under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.

These games differ from the usual games that lovers play in that they are designed to be therapeutic. The usual games that lovers play are compulsive. They are enactments of rituals that bring about a temporary gratification, but not the deeper joy of mature, tender merger with another being. Promiscuous individuals will have multiple lovers and sometimes daily sexual experiences—but their sexuality will have a numb, addictive quality to it, with weak or nonexistent orgasms, and it will never quite satisfy. Sadomasochistic people will repeat the same perverse rituals of domination and degradation again and again, deriving “highs” from it but never really achieving the liberation they seek. Narcissistic people will not be able to come out of themselves enough to really be with another person, so their sexuality will be a repeating pattern of sexual exploitation. Fetishists will act out rituals in which sexual energy is displaced onto an object (such as a shoe or a glove) or a part of a woman’s anatomy (the forearms or breasts or feet), and the act will become alienated and devoid of its primary meaning.

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HOMOSEXUALITY: IDENTIFICATION WITH MOTHER

Posted: under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.

The child’s dependency on the mother, which is reinforced by the mother’s excessive intimacy and overpowering intrusiveness and seductiveness, sets the stage for a primitive fear of engulfment and annihilation stimulated by the child’s naturally emerging erotic interest in her during the oedipal phase of development. The anxiety in relationship to the female genital may be of at least two kinds: (1) the anxiety may arise from the awareness that there are “penisless” beings, and this recognition in the child’s experience encourages castration fears; or (2) because of a more primitive connection of castration anxiety with previous oral aggressive impulses, the female genitals may be seen as the castrating instrument capable of biting or tearing off the penis—the vagina dentata fantasy.

Central to the development of male homosexuality is the identification with the mother. The general unavailability of, distance from, or rejection by the father in such cases makes his availability as a model for developing masculinity somewhat limited. Consequently, the basic identification with the father, which would shape the young male child’s emerging sense of himself as a man, is undercut, and the child is drawn with powerful emotional ties to his mother. The tendency of such mothers to be oversolicitous, overprotective and overinvolved -frequently in seductive ways-with these male children contributes to the intense affective coloring of this maternal identification.

It should be noted that such identification generally is not without considerable conflict, and that the degree of anxiety related to it depends largely on the extent to which the child has remained pathologically dependent on the mother and the degree to which he has been unable to establish some degree of separation from her without the threat of loss or abandonment. The basic identification with the mother underlies the homosexual impulse to take a man as a sexual object, since in this way one lives out the maternal identification. One often sees in such cases a combination of impulses which brings the male homosexual to want to be in the position of nurturing, caring, and mothering, usually for a younger male. In this way he can imitate the mother who exercised these functions toward him. It also contributes much conflict about the exercise of more active, assertive, and aggressive masculine propensities.

The penis comes to be seen as a powerful, destructive, and harmful organ, a fantasy adding to the difficulty in relating to the opposite sex and in achieving genital satisfaction. Clinically a frequent component of this complex is an abiding, unsatisfied, continually frustrated yearning and longing for closeness, acceptance, and loving communication with the father. Often in the course of clinical work with such homosexuals, these wishes can be more or less consciously expressed directly in relation to the father, but more frequently they remain relatively unconscious and tend to be acted-out and expressed as wishes for approval, closeness, and acceptance from other significant male figures in the patient’s life. Frequently this dynamic expresses itself in the homosexual inclinations.

It is worth noting that this dynamic also may be part of a religious context. The religious is exhorted to submit himself to the superior in loving obedience. The religious practices which reinforce this submissive and obediential demeanor may serve as a vehicle for essentially homosexual impulses, representing a homosexual submission to a substitute father. Optimally such impulses need not be disruptive and can be effectively sublimated, given adequate strengths of character and the capacity to control and master them. We should not overlook the potentiality for such obedient submission to force a given individual into an equivalent homosexual position either increasing homosexual anxieties (if the wish to submit is ego-alien) or reinforcing such tendencies (if it is not).

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SEX DIFFERENCES

Posted: under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.

Sexual differences in response to erotica might better be labeled sexual similarities. Until fairly recently it was assumed on the basis of self-report, that women were less responsive to various forms of erotica imagery. All current laboratory data, including many of the studies cited above, indicate that women respond with arousal to many or most of the stimuli which arouse men. In fact, Byrne and others found that “husbands and wives exhibit greater than chance similarity in responding to erotica . . . spouses were found to be similar in their reported sexual arousal, in their judgments of pornography and in their attitudes about censorship following exposure to erotic stimuli”. They also found that authoritarianism was an important mediator of these responses. Englar and Walker reviewed the literature on sex differences and reported in their study that men and women responded equally to erotica. Izard and Caplan found small differences in male and female response to a passage from a book dealing with exploitative sex in which a virgin was seduced by a sexually experienced man. Men reported more sexual arousal than women did.

Herrell attempted to replicate their study and included a passage from (a book known to be not obscene) Lady Chatterly’s Lover. He found that the type of literature made a significant difference in reported levels of arousal. He concluded, in essence, that men may become aroused independently of the interpersonal content of erotica, but women may become aroused and angry after reading passages in which women are sexually exploited. He states, “Sex differences in response to erotic literature are complex and depend on the interpersonal as well as the erotic content of the passages”.

In summary, we find that the dominating evidence suggests that when normal adults view depictions of “ultimate sex acts,” their response, which is usually a quite normal degree of sexual arousal, is modulated by personality and social variables. Their reaction to their response is similarly related to experiential, personality, and social variables. There are virtually no data in the scientific literature which suggest a causal link between exposure to erotica and antisocial behavior, and there are many data which suggest the opposite. It may even be that a normal reaction of arousal to pornography may be able to separate sexually functional people from those with sexual dysfunctions.

There are no data which even hint that pornography represents a clear and present danger to society in the way that, say, alcohol or tobacco do. The debate over censorship therefore must continue to be based on attitudes, taste, and values. In a pluralistic and open society such as ours attempts to be, it is not likely that this debate will end soon.

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THE MOTHER-WHORE COMPLEX

Posted: under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.

One can easily understand the socioeconomic reasons for the subjugation of women in the past and explain their current rebellion in terms of technological development. There is, however, an important aspect of the male-female relationship which defies such an interpretation, namely, the mother-whore complex, that is, the idealization and debasement of women by men.

The reasons for this ambivalent attitude go beyond the economic exigency.

All men, whether they like it or not, were carried and fed by women through the periods of conception, pregnancy, birth, infancy, and many years thereafter. Not all men resent this fact, and what will be said below concerning the mother-whore complex is not a generalization.

To every human being, male and female alike, the mother is the prototype of a friendly power. The mother is the main if not the only source of life and bulwark of survival. The adoration of the mother is ontogenetically typical in all infants and phylogenetically typical in periods of oppression and despair. The adoration of the Holy Mother is a case in point.

One seeks support of a friendly power as long as one feels weak and expects to receive unconditional support, but such an ideal relationship may not last long. Infants “love” the “good” mother who unconditionally satisfies their wishes, but they hate the same mother when she refuses to meet their demands. Ambivalent feelings toward powerful protectors are an inevitable product of dependence, and they often carry the seeds of a rebellion against weakness and dependency. Welfare recipients do not waste love on their benefactors, and poor relatives often resent their wealthy supporters.

The ambivalent feeling toward the mother is shared by little boys and little girls, and this attitude has been perpetuated throughout generations taking on various forms and shapes. Rarely if ever can a woman resolve completely her antimother feelings. In Freud’s times, it was acceptable for young women to direct hatred toward their mothers-in-law. Freud interpreted this phenomenon as a residue of the castration complex; be it, as he wrote, the symbolic loss of a penis representing a loss of power and of the privileged male status.

Boys’ ambivalent feelings toward their mother often have been channeled into the “mother-whore” complex. Even most cowardly and ineffectual men can play the role of a strong man and discharge brute force toward someone weaker than themselves. Women were the choice target, and male-controlled public opinion has been and perhaps still is in favor of “masculine assertion” towards women and children (Wolman).

The possession of a penis has given the men an additional tool for the humiliation of women and for self-aggrandizement. The sexual act as such is neither beautiful nor ugly and, like almost everything else in human life, it can be performed in either lofty or base manner. However, the allegedly aggressive and domineering sexual insertion was often represented as a way of debasing women.

Discrimination against women follows the same rationale as any other discriminatory behavior. All those who discriminate, abuse their power against some people, and they usually choose their targets carefully. The history of humanity, with its conflicts, clashes, international wars, and fratricidal murders, shows that people discriminate against and persecute only those who cannot defend themselves. In the time of the Crusades, Christian nations fought Moslem nations, and the Crusaders, on their way to the Holy Land, persecuted the Jews. The Turks had a great many wars with other nations, but they discriminated against the Greeks and Armenians. Persecution is a particular type of hostility related not to competition and fighting among equals, but related to the desire to destroy those who can be destroyed easily. There was never persecution of majority groups, of powerful individuals, or of strong political organizations. The persecution was always directed against those who could be easily and safely persecuted. In the United States not the WASPS but the Blacks were persecuted. In Europe not the Protestants but the Jews were persecuted.

The fact that somebody is powerful does not protect him or her against hostility. People can love and hate each other; nationalities and organizations can fight one another. But persecution always has been directed toward those who cannot fight back. Defenseless victims, scapegoats, and innocent bystanders are easy targets for discrimination and persecution.

Whoever intends to deal realistically with discrimination against women must be aware that in most instances those who discriminate try to overcome their inferiority feelings not by fighting their equals but by an unfair use of power against those who cannot defend themselves. There is another issue which is no less important and certainly more realistic: defenseless people invite persecution. Weakness invites discrimination, and those who cannot defend themselves are easy targets for prejudiced people and oppressors. The increasing rate of crime against children in our times is perhaps one of the signs of our Zeitgeist, when so many people suffer from feelings of inadequacy and lack of purpose; they act out their phony superiority feelings against innocent children. A great many children have been beaten and tortured by irresponsible, drunken, and drug-addicted individuals, many of them parents of the victims. The abuse of children is largely determined by the fact that they cannot defend themselves.

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SEXUALITY AND AGING: DIFFERENCIES IN ACTIVITY BETWEEN MALES AND FEMALES

Posted: under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.

Declining activity in older females appears to be related only secondarily to the change of life. Physical symptoms of menopause, many of which are tied directly to steroid deprivation, may interfere with sexual activity. Adverse feelings about self caused by the symbolic meaning of menopause also may depress sexual inclination and activity. An unflattering self-image may produce frustration and anger which then may lead to avoidance of sexual relations or to behaviors perceived negatively by sexual partners which also may depress activity levels. Women, who probably depend more heavily than men on external reinforcement, would be unlikely at such a time to experiment sexually by seeking out a new partner. If the husband or partner shows a lack of interest, it is likely to be internalized by the woman, with behavioral effects. There is no evidence to presume that males, because of their histories of sexual experimentation, are more likely than females to seek new partners in middle-life but from observation this hypothesis seems reasonable.

Because women often outlive men, they often do not have a suitable sexual partner. The double standard enforced since early adulthood suggests that it is inappropriate for females actively to seek out sexual partners. The cultural stereotype of appropriate partners (men with younger women) compounds this problem. There are social pressures against selecting a younger male, and the pool of peers or older men is limited.

Needless to say, there are always individual differences. Many of the stereotyped generalities may be changing as a result of women’s new self-concepts. Traditional roles of behavior seem to be changing. If the cultural stereotypes do influence behavior, the degree to which these stereotypes change will be accompanied by behavioral change.

It is interesting to speculate on the evolutionary significance, if any, of male/female differences in sexual activity as a function of aging. The human female, although losing her ability to reproduce in mid-life, has full sexual capability into old age. Activity levels, however, are low. In the human male, reproductive ability declines only very gradually and for most of the aging population, is never lost completely. The capacity for sexual functioning changes much more with age and activity and although it slows with age, is still present in very old men.

The differences in activity levels between males and females can be attributed on the average to different primary variables. For females, external support is probably most important and is absent for a large percentage of older women. For males, declines are due primarily to changes in capacity inasmuch as environmental support is available throughout life.

If one accepts the premise that the raison d’etre of a species and every individual in that species is reproduction and therefore survival, male/female differences in sexual activity and interest at every age can be tied to differences in strategies of reproduction. High levels of interest and activity among males increase their chances of contributing to the gene pool. Females, on the other hand, should be more selective and discriminating because of their great biological investment in procreation.

In strictly evolutionary terms, it is clearly more adaptive for males (who have reproductive ability) than for females to maintain interest and activity in old age. Females who are no longer reproductively capable have no real need for continued interest and activity.

For many nonhuman mammalian species, death marks the end of reproduction/reproductive ability. In the human, technology has altered the course of selection. Great control of the environment has probably increased the life span; this artificial longevity may have occurred in the absence of selective pressures. If this is so, behavioral differences between aged males and females may represent artifacts which have no evolutionary significance whatsoever!

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SEXUALITY IN MARRIAGE: INTERCOURSE: FOREPLAY, DURATION, AND TECHNIQUES

Posted: under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.

Not only has the frequency of marital intercourse increased in this generation, but its other parameters also appear to have been affected by attitudinal and behavioral changes in the direction of greater freedom and permissiveness. Both foreplay and coitus are reported to last longer and to include acceptance and use of a greater variety of techniques by more people. These increases have occurred in all age groups and across educational levels but are greatest among the young and the non-college population.

Kinsey found that precoital activities such as mouth-breast contact, manual stimulation of the genitals, and cunnilingus and fellatio were more characteristic of the college-educated persons in his samples, and that at any educational level, they were more often reported by younger individuals. For example, the percentages of males using cunnilingus in marital foreplay were 4%, 15%, and 45% for grade school, high school, and college levels respectively. Manual stimulation of the female genitalia was utilized by 95% of the under-twenty-five age group, compared to 83% of the over-forty-six group.

Hunt found striking increases in the use of certain techniques in marital foreplay. In general, the increases were greatest for those activities which had been most strongly tabooed. The increase in breast play, for example, was small, since this activity was common in Kinsey’s time. The biggest changes were in oral-genital acts, which have long been not only morally tabooed but legally forbidden as well in most states. In contrast to the 15% of high school males whom Kinsey found had used cunnilingus, Hunt’s study revealed that 56% of his sample at that educational level had done so. Corresponding data for college males in the two studies were 45% and 66%. Among the Redbook wives, (Tavris and Sadd) 87% reported experience with cunnilingus. The fact that this group was younger and better educated fits with the observations of both Kinsey and Hunt on the greater incidence of such behavior in these populations.

Duration of foreplay has also increased, especially among the less educated. Kinsey’s histories for his lower-level sample suggested that precoital play in marriage was often quite perfunctory, consisting of a kiss or two, while his college men might extend such play to five minutes or more. Hunt found no difference by educational level. Foreplay averaged about fifteen minutes for both college and non-college married men.

Married people today report using a greater variety of positions in actual intercourse than did their counterparts a generation ago. Kinsey reported that nearly all coitus in our culture occurs with the partners face-to-face and the man on top. As many as 70%, he said, had never used any other position. By contrast, Hunt found that the female-above position is used by three-fourths of all married couples at least some of the time. Likewise, rear-entry vaginal intercourse was used by only a tenth of Kinsey’s sample, compared to four-tenths of Hunt’s (Hunt).

Finally, the duration of coitus has increased dramatically among married people. Kinsey reported that three-fourths of all males probably reached orgasm within two minutes after intromission. In an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of the speedy orgasm for males, Kinsey revealed his belief that the male who responded so quickly, far from being “impotent” as some had labeled him, was in fact normal or even superior, “however inconvenient and unfortunate his qualities may be from the standpoint of the wife”. Today prolongation of the sexual act is the goal for many. Hunt found that the median duration of marital intercourse, as reported by both males and females, was ten minutes—not long, but an improvement (from the female view) over the hasty performance reported by a generation past. Moreover, differences owing to such factors as education, occupation, religious and political attitudes were either nonexistent or quite small. Younger people, however, spend more time on their marital love-making than older ones do. Given the greater urgency associated with youthful libido, this must reflect subjective differences in values as a function of age.

It is not difficult to identify at least some of the factors responsible for these changes: lifting of old sanctions against sex for non-procreative purposes; increase in premarital sex; availability of birth control, with increasing acceptance of sterilization and abortion; disinhibiting effects of media presentations: explicit movies, books, and magazines; greater availability of information about sex, with emphasis on sex as valuable and pleasurable in and of itself; and the contemporary women’s movement, which has informed women and men that the sexual needs of women are just as important as are those of men and has taught women to ask and to expect that their needs will be met in the sexual relationship. In any case, the shifts in marital sexual behavior are remarkable: “We stand convinced that a dramatic and historic change has taken place in the practice of marital coitus in America” (Hunt).

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