DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOVE AND SEX

INTRODUCTION


AS STRANGE as it might seem, psychology really cannot say much about human sexuality. It’s true that psychology can be used to treat sexual dysfunction, and psychologists know that coerced sex, such as child abuse or rape, leaves lasting emotional scars on the victims. But psychology really cannot offer much advice to consenting adults as to what sexual activities are appropriate or inappropriate. Not much, that is, except this: You can get into all kinds of trouble if you fail to understand something about the nature of perversion and love.



Perversion





Perversion. This is a word not heard much in today’s world. The verb to pervert literally means “to lead astray” or “to misdirect,” and perversion usually is used in the moral sense to refer to something that leads a person away from what is good or right. But I will be using the word in the psychological sense of something that leads a person away from a psychological goal.

As an example, consider the nature of alcohol abuse. Psychologically speaking, alcoholics drink in order to avoid the pain of facing up to and making amends for all the times they have failed to take responsibility for their lives. Hence the abuse of alcohol can be called a perversion because it leads a person away from the true aim of dealing with the guilt and into a drunken state of illusory well-being.

To be clever, we could say, then, that the point of a perversion

is to always miss the point.

With more direct language, we can say that a perversion leads you away from the true depths of your emotional pain—and from the psychological healing that could happen if you were to work therapeutically with that pain—by distracting you with something apparently pleasurable.

The connection between sex and perversions is found in love. But when talking about love we need to be clear what we are really talking about.



________________________________________



Courtly



Love

If you study the history of human sexuality and marriage through ancient and primitive cultures, you will find that communal sex and polygamy predominate. Communal sex tends to predominate in matriarchal societies—that is, societies in which power tends to pass through women, and property is more or less communal—where women mate with whomever they want, without any particular, or lasting, emotional attachment.

In patriarchal societies, where property passes through the male lineage, knowing a child’s father is of greatest importance; hence men tend to be promiscuous, while women are carefully guarded sexually.

And then there are those curious mixtures of elements, such as in cultures where a man would offer his wife for the night to a guest, as a token of hospitality.

Yes, there are occasional stories, some very poetic—and tragic—about a man and a woman, each promised in an arranged marriage to someone else, who became passionately attracted to each other. But, as with most things in life, these exceptions only prove the rule: through most of human history, about the only thing that hardly ever seemed to influence mating was romantic love.

Yet, when individuals in Western cultures think about “finding a mate” they tend to think of romantic love. And one of the most enduring images of romantic love is the medieval knight in shining armor, the strong but pure man who rescued the lady in distress . . . and they lived happily ever after.

In reality, most medieval knights were anything but pure, and “marriages,” as in pagan cultures, lasted only as long as convenient. If you read medieval history carefully, you will find that European feudal society, especially under the influence of the Albigensians in the 11th to 13th centuries, was barbarian and chaotic, rife with murder, massacre, and cruelty. Knights, if they were anything, were nothing more than thugs and rapists who preyed upon any defenseless persons they came across. The knightly sexual ideal was to seduce a married woman, and, if she refused, to rape her. The literature of this “age of chivalry” essentially idealized adultery.

“Wait a minute,” you say. “That’s not what I learned about courtly love. Courtly love was pure and ideal. So what happened?”

Well, the troubadours and their Provençal poetry “happened.”

In the later middle ages, the troubadours, under the influence of Christianity, transformed the earlier romantic literature based on hedonism into a new European literature based on the idealization of love.[1] Thus the knights went from lusting after their friends’ wives to swooning in love over a woman’s glove. The literature idealized “love” to such an extent, and set so many obstacles in front of it, that this love became almost impossible to attain. And so romance became a poetic quest for an unattainable ideal of wholeness.

The aristocracy upheld this ideal of courtly love on the surface—while doing what it wanted behind the scenes, of course—and it provided the underlying European moral influence for the masses, for the last several centuries. Consequently, bolstered by Hollywood cinema in the 20th century, romantic “love” became the obsessive secular quest of life in the Western—and Western influenced—world. And then, with the collapse of sexual morality beginning in the 1960s, the final association was made: the long sought chalice of courtly love was filled with erotic sexuality.

Notice, however, that this courtly “love” is not a pagan concept, and, though it was influenced by Christian morality, it has nothing in common with real Christian love either. Like the famous quest for the Holy Grail, courtly love is a medieval literary creation.

Which is why the brilliant French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, declared that courtly love “is an altogether refined way of making up for the absence of sexual relation by pretending that it is we who put up an obstacle to it.” [2]

In other words, the chalice of courtly love—and all the romantic sentiments and eroticism that fill it—is an illusion.[3] It’s impossible to find love through sexuality. It’s impossible to use your body to hide your emotional pain. It’s impossible to heal your own emotional brokenness through the body of another person as mortal and broken as you are. [4]

This absence of a sexual relation, as taught by Lacan in his psychoanalytic concept of the impossible, can be approximated by the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”



For example, I have seen both men and women who have tried to seduce a woman to get from her the nurturing and attention they never received from their mothers. And I have seen both women and men who have tried to seduce a man to get from him the protection and attention they never received from their fathers. And in the end it’s all an impossibility. The moral is simple, and cuts across the board, male and female, heterosexual and homosexual: You can never seduce your despair, and you can never find real love through any form of sexual activity.



Thus, one does not need a “sex life” to be a good person. Notice, though, that a good person is not the same as a good citizen. A good citizen is an empty-headed, insatiable consumer, and, because of the efforts of Madison Avenue and Hollywood, eroticism has become a prime consumer activity. So let’s give a round of applause to Madison Avenue and Hollywood. Ah, can you hear it—the pathetic sound of one hand clapping?





________________________________________



True



Love

Most persons don’t realize this, but the common, or popular, view of “love” involves an element of receiving something. “I love chocolate” really means that “I enjoy getting the experience of the taste of chocolate.” Similarly, “I love you” commonly implies “I enjoy playing with your body,” or “I enjoy believing that you will give me security or protection,” or “I enjoy feeling sexual pleasure with your body” (or “I want to have sexual pleasure with your body.” As a result, Lacan, in his teachings about love, described the typical act of love as “polymorphous perversion.” [5]

Don’t be put off by the big words. You already know what perversion means. Polymorphous simply means “having many forms.” So this amounts to saying, like the popular song from the 1980s, that we’re looking for love in all the wrong places. That is, we look for satisfaction in all the various titillating parts of the body but never find what is truly sought.

What is “truly sought” is something we all experience as painfully missing from life: some comforting sense of absolute belonging and acceptance. Those who are fortunate get a sense of this feeling as babies, under a parent’s protection. But the feeling is fractured more often than not by parental empathic failures, and it is lost entirely from ordinary sensory experience as children become older and independent and the awareness of our essential human isolation and mortality sets in.

Some people skip from one “partner” to another over the surface of existential pain, like a stone skipping over water. As long as they stay above the surface they’re perfectly happy; but when an affair ends, and they come crashing down, they’re desperate for the next leap, sometimes searching for a new partner even at the funeral for the old one. Yet sooner or later the stone loses vitality, and with a final splunk falls into the depths of tribulation.

Lacan points out that although “love”—that is, in its common, popular sense—is, in essence, a futile chasing after something that doesn’t exist, there is nevertheless a love beyond this “making love,” a love that exists beyond lack and limitation and that involves a sort of ecstasy of being,[6] as a matter of soul,[7] not of the body. The irony is that in the common act of “making love” we think we know what we want, but it turns out to be an illusion, while this other love touches on a real experience of which we know nothing. It’s a mystical sort of thing, as Lacan acknowledges.[8]

Now, although Lacan doesn’t say it this way, the difference between these two kinds of love—common “love” and true love (or real love)—can be conceived of as the difference between receiving and giving.

Note carefully, though, that giving does not refer to the mere sharing of material objects or wealth; it refers to the expression of profound emotional qualities such as patience, forbearance, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness.



This all goes to show that it’s easy enough to “love” those who “love” us: parents who protect us, “partners” who make us feel received, animals who never threaten us. But can we love those who annoy us . . . irritate us . . . obstruct us . . . scorn us . . . hate us? Can we love our enemies? That’s the real test of real love.

And it was out of a true understanding of the difference between common “love” and true love that a man such as St. Francis of Assisi was led—led right to the point, actually—to pray that he might seek “not so much to be loved as to love.”



________________________________________



Imitations



of



True



Love

As shocking as it might sound, most of us who claim to be loving are not giving selflessly. Instead, we are addressing a covert psychological desire either to avoid being abandoned or to feel powerful.



“Love” as Bribery

Most men who give flowers to women, for example, are either saying, “I desire to use your body for my erotic pleasure,” or they are trying to satisfy the woman’s demand for recognition—and to avoid her anger and rejection if the recognition is forgotten—on a birthday or anniversary.

Similarly, many parents who give excessive money or presents to children or grandchildren are unconsciously trying to buy allegiance and favor. Unable to accept and understand the child’s deepest emotional experiences, the parent will offer an easily procurable object to make the child feel happy. And the child, unable consciously to express the covert cover-up occurring under his or her very nose, will accept the present under the assumption that “this must be love.”

Sad to say, therefore, the apparent generosity of common “love” is really an act of bribery.



“Love” as Power

We commonly believe that the desire to erotically arouse another person is a sign of love. The deep psychological truth, however, is that such a desire masks a more hidden desire: to gain some control over our own helplessness. That is, because we as children felt the helplessness and resentment of having our bodies controlled by our parents, as adults we unconsciously compensate for this helplessness by seeking out ways to control others. We can do this with wealth, we can do this with education, we can do this with social status, we can do this with physical strength, and we can do this with eroticism.

Sad to say, therefore, the thrill of arousing lust in another person is really an act of self-serving power over that person.

Child abuse, too, is a form of power over another gained through common “love.” But whereas most common “love” takes the form of willing manipulation, child abuse is coercive: the abuser preys upon a child’s moral and intellectual helplessness. The abuser gets all the self-satisfaction he or she wants and in the process leaves the child with a life-long emotional scar of having been exposed to the manipulative aspects of eroticism well before having developed healthy defense mechanisms to cope with such psychological assaults. The abuser walks away smacking his lips, and the child is left as bones for the garbage.



Summary

Therefore, those who have the most to gain have the greatest desire to deceive. Those who have the least to gain—and who want nothing, and who give everything, like the saints—can love perfectly. And this perfect, true love is no imitation.

Most persons today will say, “Oh, come on. As long as I love my partner, it’s OK.” Yet consider all the orphaned children around the world whose parents—now dead—became infected with AIDS while saying “I love you.” So does saying I love you make it OK?





________________________________________



Fear



of



Love

Believe it or not, most of us are brought up in modern culture to fear love. This is a radical statement, so pause a bit and consider it.

How often were your deepest human needs for comfort, protection, and guidance as a child ignored or stifled by your parents? How often were you, as a child, criticized and laughed at for expressing your honest feelings? How often are you now used, in our culture of merchandising, as an object to be manipulated in order to satisfy some other person’s desire for profit and power? How often do you shape yourself—with fad diets, implants, cosmetic surgery, workouts, jewelry, tattoos, makeup, hair dye, and clothing—to meet the expectations of someone’s desire?

And how often, in the midst of all this exploitation, has anyone ever done anything for your own growth and welfare, without thought of what could be had in return?

So what does a person learn from such experiences other than that this is a world of competition, strife, and conflict, geared toward the survival of the “fittest”—or in today’s world, the meanest—in which honesty and compassion are foolish weakness?

Is it any wonder, then, that when denied the comfort and respect of true love, the fear and panic can be so blinding that children will blame themselves, believing that they don’t deserve love, and will fall headlong into self-loathing and masochism?

In contrast, true love is an act of will, not something that you “fall” into. You can fall into desperate desire, and you can fall into fatal attraction, but you can’t fall into love. Love is not a feeling. Love is a sacrifice of sorts, and it’s a sacrifice of all the illusions that our culture expects from us. To offer true love—to will the good of another [9]—is to stand against the culture—not as a revolutionary or terrorist, but with a humble offering of understanding and compassion, something better than what others “see” in their blindness.

True love, therefore, forsakes the prestige offered by the culture in its illusions. Yet, when we have been taught from childhood to covet this prestige as our very identity, is it any wonder that we fear love?

Far easier—and safer—isn’t it, to hide behind illusions and games of wealth, power, violence, intrigue, and seduction?



________________________________________



The



Love-Hate



Flip-flop

One of Freud’s early disciples, Melanie Klein, took up the task of applying the techniques of psychoanalysis to children. She considered her work a natural extension of Freud’s theories, rather than any sort of innovation in psychoanalysis; still, she met considerable criticism from her psychoanalytic colleagues. And rightly so, for her work is characterized by speculative and fantastic explanations of, well, infant fantasy.

Nevertheless, Klein did bring to light the “ugly” side of infant development, for she saw in infants a mass of angry and hostile impulses toward the mother when the infant did not get its needs met. In essence, the infant constantly flip-flops between love and hate: love when its needs are met, and hate when its needs are ignored or frustrated. In her work, Klein tried to explain the process by which the infant seeks to repair the damage of its hostility to its mother. In fact, the titles of two of her most significant collections of works, Envy and Gratitude and Love, Guilt, and Reparation, tell the story almost as well as the writings themselves.

Ultimately, though, Klein’s theories—through their influence on the subsequent psychoanalytic theory called object relations—can lead to a grave error in psychological treatment, for they tend to make the psychotherapeutic process a dyadic process between the psychotherapist and client. At its worst, this makes psychotherapy into a mothering process of caring for the needs of the client, and it reduces the “therapist” to a paid friend—or nanny.

Lacan saw through these errors and taught that psychoanalysis must involve three persons: the client, the analyst, and the unconscious. Just as healthy emotional development depends on a father coming between the mother and child, to sever the child’s emotional enmeshment with the mother, good psychotherapeutic work must let the unconscious come between the client and psychotherapist. This means that the psychotherapeutic process must always involve a symbolic fathering [10] by which clients are led to recognize and overcome the illusions of their unconscious identifications with others and, in the process, to heal the aggression and hostility that underlie those identifications.

This explains why “lovers,” friends, and blog readers, with all their personal needs and desires, cannot function psychotherapeutically. And it explains philosophically—above and beyond any laws or professional ethics—why psychotherapists cannot be friends or “lovers” to their clients. If they try, it will lead to psychological disaster, for without the third person of the unconscious in the consulting room the psychotherapy can degenerate into all sorts of perversions.

And, of course, this all explains the ultimate “kink” in human sexuality: the love-hate flip-flop.

As unpleasant as it may be to admit it, eroticism is based on infantile needs to be received, accepted, and satisfied. When a person feels intensely received, accepted, and satisfied, then he or she is “in love.” But sooner or later that intensity will be broken. The break doesn’t even have to be the result of malicious neglect; it can simply be the result of a need to attend to other obligations in the world, and, in the person feeling neglected, intense jealousy can flare up.

Often people fear that someone or something they love will be stolen from them by someone else. But in true love there is no jealousy. When you have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain, how can you fear a “rival”?



But, because romance is not based in true love, romance is, in technical psychological terms, a game—and in playing this game, you put yourself in competition with everyone else playing the same game. This explains the essence of jealousy: in your fear of losing what you desperately want, you hate any person who might come between you and what you want.

So, regardless of how it happens, as those primitive needs are not met, then the “love” flip-flops into hatred and aggression. If you don’t believe it, take a look at the ugly process of our divorce courts for a perfect example. The world is cluttered with broken relationships that began in sweet love and ended in bitter anger and hate.

And all of this proves that true love, which is based in giving, not receiving, is pure and eternal, is never fleeting, and can never flip-flop into hate.

It’s just a shame that true love—the only true reparation—is feared by most families and is hardly ever taught to anyone, children or adults.



________________________________________



Abusive



“Lovers”

A client suffering in an abusive relationship will often look up through streaming tears after describing the abuser’s behavior and say to the psychologist, “But I love him.”

Fair enough, you might think. Offer love in spite of the abuse. After all, aren’t we told since childhood to “Do to others as you would have them do to you”? Isn’t that what love is?

Well, it is true that many saintly individuals have patiently suffered through difficult marriages. But saintly individuals do not need psychologists. If the abuse gets violent, police protection may be needed, but no one who understands true love will ever have to sit in front of a psychologist offering excuses.

Excuses serve to justify repeated behavior. And, as Freud discovered, repetition is the return of the repressed. What, then, is this repressed which keeps getting repeated? It can’t be love because true love can never be repressed.

The repressed is desire, and in abusive relationships it is a desire often hidden in plain sight. It’s the desire to receive what you are futilely trying to give away. It’s the desire to be wanted. And it’s such a desperate desire that you will suffer almost anything—from one failed “lover” to another—to maintain the illusion that someone wants you.

To bring this illusion to light, just consider the case of a person “involved” with (that is, not married to) an abusive alcoholic “lover.” Then ask this question: If you weren’t having sex with him or receiving monetary support from him, would you still stick around? If the answer is “No,” then you have the lie in plain sight. And if the answer is “Yes,” then why not take in every bum in the neighborhood and be a real saint?

So there you have it. “But I love him” really means you don’t understand love at all.



________________________________________



Sexual



Addiction

If you look in the DSM-IV,[11] you can find a Sexual Desire Disorder called Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder which refers to “deficient (or absent) sexual fantasies or desire for sexual activity.” The fact that the DSM-IV does not have a Hyperactive Sexual Desire Disorder says quite a lot about our culture. Apparently, we seem to believe that “not enough” is a bad thing, but “too much”—at least, in regard to sex—is never too much, even if it provides much of the grease (or perhaps in this context I should say lubrication) on that proverbial slippery slope to hell.

Psychologically, all the addictions have roots in some pain or ugliness that a person wants to push out of awareness with the illusory thrill of intoxication. This intoxication doesn’t have to be chemical—even gambling can provide quite a “high.” Why else would we talk about any kind of arousal as getting “turned on” by something?

In the 1950s, psychological researchers began to experiment with the intensely pleasurable effects of electrical stimulation of the brain on animal behavior.[12] One study [13] allowed rats to press a lever that stimulated the pleasure area of the hypothalamus; the rats pressed the lever continuously, several thousand times per hour, even to the point of collapsing from fatigue. Another study [14] found that female rats would even abandon their own newly born pups for the sake of the brain stimulation.

And so it is with erotic pleasure. The psychological problem with the intoxication by real or imagined sexual stimulation, therefore, is that the pleasure becomes an end in itself.

In the clinical setting, many persons addicted to erotic pleasure will confess that, in their childhood and adolescence, they lacked a clear sense of what they wanted to do with their lives. As a way to cope with the frustration of being overwhelmed by the obligations of a life to which they don’t feel any commitment in the first place, they turn to a preoccupation with sexual stimulation divested of any reproductive responsibility or commitment. Thus they get caught up in the meaningless euphoria of an impossible quest for a lost meaning.

Thus pornography takes on the excitement of the search for a stimulating image. Dating takes on the excitement of the search for a stimulating body. Masturbation takes on the excitement of the search for stimulation itself.

Now, some persons might try to justify their unconscious quest by saying that erotic pleasure is “natural.” That’s the real underlying philosophy to the Marquis de Sade’s writings, for example. And his name—de Sade— provides the underlying origin of our word sadism. It all comes down to saying, “Any body—man, woman, child, or animal—is as good as any other body. And anything goes—even someone’s pain—if it serves your pleasure.”



So there’s the “natural” for you.



And so, like all natural disasters, a sexual addiction leaves nothing in its path but a barren swath of sadistic or masochistic emotional destruction.

Which is why, for the sake of human dignity, sexual activity cannot become a recreational sport but must be contained with strict limits. If you don’t believe my words, maybe you will believe AIDS.

Then again, maybe you won’t.

So it is that in the obsession with erotic pleasure, as in all the other addictions, you don’t want to see the human destruction it causes. And, as long as you’re intoxicated, you can’t see it.

Speaking of intoxication, some persons wonder what effect alcohol has on sexual desire. Well, actually, it has no effect. Alcohol simply deadens the inhibitory function of the frontal lobe of the brain. So while the frontal lobe is trying to tell you, “Stop! This isn’t right!” the intoxicating effect of alcohol intercepts that message and substitutes its own subversive message: “Hey, if it feels good, do it.”





________________________________________



“Victimless”



Sex

I have seen parents who say to their children, “If you are going to smoke, I don’t want you smoking in the house. If you are going to drink alcohol, I don’t want you to bring alcohol into the house. If you are going to have sex, I want you to use protection. If you are going to have your boyfriend stay overnight, I want to see him sleeping on the couch in the living room when I get up in the morning. If you have a car accident, I want you to get it fixed yourself.” And then they turn to me and say, “See? We’re teaching our children responsibility.”

The parents glow with an air of self-satisfied serenity.

In reality, they’re like the eye of a hurricane, calm and peaceful, blind to the storm spreading moral chaos all around them.

And this “serenity” is the attitude behind a tolerance for “victimless” sex.

“What’s wrong with pornography or prostitution? As long as no one gets hurt, no harm is done,” we say.

But is it true that no harm is done? Maybe, like the parents in the example above, we just don’t want to see it. Maybe we don’t want to see the corruption, the fraud, the theft, the abuse, the murders even, that support our habits. Conveniently out of our sight, “no harm” is done.

And maybe you don’t want to see the children who have to suffer the agony of their parents’ adultery and divorce. Maybe you don’t want to see the children who have to see their parents’ alcoholism and drug abuse. Maybe you don’t want to see the children who have to see their parents prostitute themselves for affection, money, or drugs. Maybe you don’t want to see the children who are physically, sexually, and emotionally abused by their parents’ “lovers.”

“I just want to have fun. I don’t see any harm in that,” you say.



________________________________________



Sexual



Fantasies

Just about everyone has had some sort of sexual fantasy. Some persons find their fantasies—spontaneous mental images that evoke certain emotional reactions or thought processes, often called daydreams—to be quite enjoyable. Many persons, however, find their fantasies to be quite troubling; fantasies can lead to repetitive acts of masturbation (genital self-excitation) that ultimately become more frustrating than satisfying, and, if the fantasies have a criminal or anti-social trend, they can trap a person in feelings of shame, guilt, and fear of discovery.

So why should a person be troubled with a desire for something he or she really doesn’t want? Well, the answer begins with the fact that fantasies are intellectual products, not acts of will.

OK. Maybe that statement needs some explanation. Consider for a moment that criminologists, for example, often speak about a hypothetically “elegant” crime. By this they mean that the crime is so brilliantly designed (as in a detective story) that one can actually admire it intellectually. But still it’s a crime, and no one in his or her right mind would actually want to carry it out. Or so we would hope.

Fantasies occur simply because it is intellectually possible to conceive of them. If you walk past a bank and think of how it could be robbed, you are thinking only of a possibility. The fact that a fantasy occurs does not necessarily say anything about who or what you are as a person.

Now, at the stage of hypothetical contemplation, the crime is nothing but an intellectual product. But to carry it out a person would have to will its execution, and even deliberately overcome any moral qualms about doing so. So you can see that there is a big difference between the intellectual product and the willful act itself.

And this difference between the intellect and the will leads us to another radical concept: sexual fantasies usually have an unconscious intent that isn’t even sexual.

We can understand this fact through reference to Freud’s concept of infantile sexuality. Actually, Freud missed the point by claiming that all adult unconscious conflicts derive from repressed infantile sexual impulses, because they don’t. But still, in missing the point, Freud points to the right thing: infantile experience.

Think about this for a moment. What experience must every infant encounter? Well, it’s the experience of lying naked and helpless during dressing, feeding, bathing, etc. And in this experience are complex emotions of both pleasure and violation. Part of the infant enjoys the attention and stimulation resulting from its helplessness, while part of the infant wants nothing but the ability to put an end to its helplessness and start taking command of its own life. In fact, making the transition from total helplessness as a mere object to total responsibility in subjective being defines the psychological task of child development.

This “total responsibility” is also a profound spiritual task that few of us actually negotiate fully. Yes, we stumble through the psychological transition from infancy to adulthood, but still some part of us balks at the idea of taking full adult responsibility to understand and commit ourselves to meaningful life. And so we have fantasies that keep trying to pull us back into that infantile helplessness. The crucial point to grasp here is that as adults we experience these infantile emotional yearnings as adult sexual scenes. It’s as if a profound unconscious “short-circuit” connects our reproductive biology with our infantile need to be seen and accepted.

Many of our adult sexual fantasies depict an experience of being totally and unconditionally accepted, as when we were helpless infants. These sorts of fantasies reveal a deep yearning to gain access to the unknown and to transcend a profound existential lack, a hunger for the ecstasy of a closeness to others and to the divine that is sadly missing in our limited, bodily reality. Thus the fantasies intoxicate us with a euphoric and expansive imaginary fulfillment of the physical senses—as with the “hunger of the eyes” in lust. Sometimes the fantasies become so euphoric that they can even seem to be “spiritual.” Nevertheless, by distracting us from our true limitations, the fantasies really cause us to miss the whole point about spiritual responsibility. The governing drive of all these fantasies can be represented as an arrow that, in its deepest unconscious sense, does not seek out another but returns narcissistically to itself, in a desire to make itself seen in the presence of another, and thereby to make itself into an object for its own satisfaction.[15a]

The allure of erotic pleasure therefore resides in immediate, tangible gratification. For a man, it can be the thrill of just reaching out and taking what you want, whether it be the body of another person or your own body. For a woman, it can be physical pleasure, or it can be the satisfaction of feeling wanted and protected, or it can be the satisfaction of defying the father who abused her. But, however it’s experienced, male or female, this “common love” is just an immediate way of getting something that you want.

Moreover, fantasies such as bondage, rape, and anal penetration betray the dark side of “getting what you want.” These fantasies pull us away from spiritual responsibility into a realm of anger and self-loathing, reflecting—or even compulsively re-enacting—those times when we weren’t unconditionally accepted as infants or children. The erotic element of such fantasies is directed to “getting” the feeling of defiling the other, or being defiled yourself, and it derives from the anger of having been made into an object—indeed, a piece of garbage—as a child, in which all human dignity was surrendered and defiled. Which is why these fantasies, in their trend toward the anti-spiritual, lead you right into the psychological dead-end of sado-masochism.[16]

Pornography, in its own way, derives from the urge to defile an other. On the surface, it may seem that pornography is simply about erotic pleasure. But when the human body is made into a biological toy, it is stripped of all human dignity, and this defilement is an act of aggression. The hostility may be unconscious or it may be openly violent, but, either way, it has its basis in resentment. And to whom is the resentment directed? Well, as in all things psychological, the resentment goes back to the parents. Deep down, under all the apparent excitement, and despite the attraction to what is seen, lurks the dark urge to hurt and insult—to “get back at”—what is behind the scenes: a mother who devoured, rejected, or abandoned, rather than nurtured, or a father who failed to teach, guide, and protect. Thus, when you feel resentment for feeling deprived—deprived of recognition, guidance, acceptance, resources, or time—you are drawn to pornography, and even though it may feel that you are getting something, you are really defiling someone.

Thus, in all erotic fantasies you take from the “other” some sort of satisfaction that unconsciously compensates for the love you did not receive from your parents. That missing love—that lack—is a wound that drives you to fill its emptiness. None of this drive has anything to do with true love, except for the fact that, in all the arousal, true love is missing.

And with this, then, we return to the opening question. If you willfully act out the fantasy with masturbation or in reality, rather than explore it psychotherapeutically, all healing capacity is lost, and you are left with nothing but a perversion that endlessly misses the point.



________________________________________



About



Sexual



Orientation

Even as a psychologist working in San Francisco, I take the position that existential human issues, not one’s erotic desires per se, should govern the course of psychotherapy. Let’s be honest here and admit that the unconscious is far from being “politically correct,” and so from my own clinical practice I have learned that many aspects of life commonly seen in the homosexual community—unconscious hostility and anger; fear of conflict; life dissatisfaction and depression; fear of love; risky self-destructive behavior; promiscuity; the “buying” of friendship with sexual services; problems with gender identity; even discomfort with non-sexual same-sex emotional closeness (often called homophobia)—are residual effects of childhood emotional wounds and can be better healed in psychotherapy than normalized in a radical political arena.

For all its research and theoretical speculation, psychology finds itself in the place of having to admit that the origin of homosexuality in any person is a complex issue; that is, there are so many factors (genetics, family dynamics, and social conditioning) so intertwined that no single explanation can fit all cases. For the most part, homosexual feelings, like all feelings, are not something an individual necessarily chooses consciously, because they derive from subtle conflicts in childhood resulting from parental empathic failures. Moreover, especially in the modern world, homosexual desires can be a product of the prevailing culture through the influence of entertainment, advertising, and political advocacy in education. And homosexual feelings are frequently planted directly in a person through an experience of childhood abuse or seduction as an adult.

Nevertheless, one’s sexual lifestyle—that is, the sexual activity one pursues, regardless of sexual preferences—is fully a matter of personal choice and personal responsibility. And, like any other form of identity, such a lifestyle—and the unconscious psychological defenses that lie behind it—must be open to psychological examination. For, as I said above, it’s impossible to heal your own emotional brokenness through the body of another person as mortal and broken as you are.



________________________________________



An



Example



from



Aviation

Here is a fictitious story, derived from aviation, that illustrates a real-life difference between common love and true love. It shows how peer pressure cannot dissuade true love from its concern for the good, and how true love persists even in the face of hatred. And how sad that so many lives are stained with tragedy because common love is so often our only reason for living—and dying.

Common Love

A woman, preoccupied with plans for her friend’s wedding the next day, arrives at the small airport three hours late; she says to her husband, a new pilot, “What do you mean, ‘We’re already late and it’s getting dark’? We have to get there tonight, honey. If you love me you’ll get this plane in the air right now.”

True Love

Her husband replies, “Look. We’ll be flying over dark water, and there could be clouds. I’m not instrument rated. It’s just not safe. It’s because I love you that I won’t risk our lives over this.”

The Love-hate Flip-flop

“But we have to get there tonight! I have to get my hair done tomorrow morning before the wedding, and there’s the ultimate salon there. If this gets messed up, it will be a disaster. You wimp! And you call yourself a pilot!”

True Love Affirmed

“I understand how important it all seems to you, but it’s foolhardy to risk our lives for something as frivolous as a hair style.”

Hatred as Revenge

“‘It all seems to me?’ ‘Frivolous?’ Listen, if we don’t leave right now, you can sleep on the couch tonight!”

True Love Re-affirmed

“Well, so be it. But I’m not flying tonight. I’m not going to get us killed. That’s final.”



________________________________________



Psychological



and



Spiritual



Conclusions

And so here is the psychological lesson: As long as you pursue sexuality out of a need to be loved—as a form of something you want—you will be led right behind illusions straight into perversion. As long as you try to fill your inner, psychological and spiritual emptiness with another person—that is, through common love—you will remain unconsciously broken and empty. Even marriage, in the true religious sense of Holy Matrimony, does not depend on a romantic attraction to hold it together; instead it derives its meaning as an unbreakable act of family and societal service between a man and a woman to a mutual divine love. Therefore, only a renunciation of what you think you want and a dedication to loving—giving true love rather than desperately searching to be loved—can lead to anything psychologically and spiritually productive, and it’s the only attitude that can begin to carry you through the agony of human limitation and mortality.

I’ll be honest here and say that this view is not at all popular in the U.S., and especially not in San Francisco.

WARNING

Some material on this website may be banned in California schools.

For the approved California version,

click here.








But see for yourself if you don’t find anything, in the end, but the emptiness of lies, betrayal, and death in your desperate seeking to be “loved.”

It is interesting to note that a religious perspective can be even more focused than the psychological perspective. It has long been understood that chastity is a core aspect of religious experience. Sexuality, after all, is not a recreational sport. It is grounded in the concept of a man and a woman joining their lives together in order to conceive and nurture a family. Only heterosexual couples are capable of engaging in the conjugal act which communicates not just conjugal love but also life itself. Severed from responsibility to the family, the erotic desire for “recognition” in another person—supported by the contemporary social pressure for every individual to be in a “relationship”—amounts to nothing but a narcissistic [15b] renunciation of love itself.



Think about that. Are you tired of AIDS, sexual diseases, prostitution, pornography, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, adultery, divorce, and using others and being used? All great religious mystics have discovered for themselves the same secret: until you stop being obsessed with eroticism you will never be able to find true spirituality; until you stop insisting that God accept your sexual perversions before you can accept God, you will never truly know God; until you stop looking for yourself in the desire of others, you will never find God; until you die to yourself—and your selfish desires—you will never have life.

But regardless of whether you approach the matter from moral theology or from the psychology of the unconscious, you will discover that the final choice in regard to sexuality is really between glorifying yourself and glorifying something greater than yourself. So take consolation and remember—if you only partially apply this principle to your life you will still experience great psychological benefits.







Summary

So what does all this discussion of sexuality—and perversion—have to do with psychotherapy in general? Well, there’s an interesting parallel here between how you treat others and how you treat yourself.



True healing involves two things: (a) to see clearly what is wrong and (b) to have the compassion to call it to change. This means, first of all, that unconditional acceptance of anything gets you nowhere. If you take no responsibility for the world around you, and if you’re unwilling to call error for what it is—that is, if you’re always missing the point—then you contribute nothing of any healing value to the world. And that’s not love. On the other hand, if you treat error with hatred, condemning it to hell, the bitter poison in your own heart will end up condemning you to hell. And that’s not love either.

And so it is with your own mental health. First you have to recognize your life for what it is, being honest about your emotional pain and all the mistakes and errors you’ve committed trying to hide from your despair. And then you have to listen to that despair with compassion and let it tell its whole story, so that the very core of your heart will be transformed—rather than push your despair into some dark corner of your unconscious to be seduced with . . . perversion.