Fantasy is the root cause

This article is the sequel of "Erotica is Born of Porn and not of Sex". Esther Perel goes further in his study and brings forward the “dialectic between the emotional and the erotic”.

Dialectic between the emotional and the erotic

• Dynamics that are emotionally challenging can, when eroticized, become highly desirable: power, control, surrender, vulnerability, dependence.

• The reverse is also true: what is emotionally attractive can be sexually undesirable: safety, familiarity, predictability.

• Our erotic impulses have the unique capacity to transform, undo and avenge traumas, hurts and frustrations and challenges we faced growing up into sources of excitation of pleasure.

• Our adult erotic patterns are launched early in our life. The erotic mind is layered with early childhood experiences of touch, play, or trauma, which become “cornerstones” of our erotic life later. (Morin)

Body

“Poetry is the eroticism of language, eroticism is the poetry of the body”

Octavio Paz, The Double Flame

• The body is our original mother tongue and our first home; it is a separate language; we are all bilingual.

• The body is imprinted in the individual’s history and the culture’s admonitions.

• For some the body is the land of freedom, where they feel uninhibited, and where they can transcend conventions, a place for play, creativity and self-soothing. (often the partner with a high sexual desire).

• For others it can represent the gathering place of taboos, inhibitions and abuse; a home they inhabit, but in which they feel restricted.

(often the partner with low or less desire).

• The body should be granted its capacity for soothing and for communicating in its own language.

Cultural tensions

• between the cultural pressures that domesticate marital sex-- rationality, stability, directness and responsibility -- and the indirect, suggestive, playful qualities that underlie erotic excitement.

• between the egalitarian, ideals of fairness, compromise and equality of couples therapy and the undemocratic and rebellious spirit of eroticism.

• between the graphic, explicit exposure of sex and the proliferation of pornography on the one hand and the need for the hidden that is essential to erotic desire

• between recognizing that some women desire erotic submission and the fear that it will sanction male dominance elsewhere

• Power, control and aggression are all part of the erotic enigma; they live in the shadow of desire.

Up to this point it is seen that people are not cognitively aware what they are facing or undergoing. They become the tools in the hands of the destiny, unconsciousness and mass – mentality. In fact these are the same Archetypes which Carl Jung worked in his theories about 60 years back.

Perel also discussed the role of ‘extreme imagination’ or fantasies. He found again some common and some uncommon traits. He also taught the same old psychological lessons about males that they fantasize more. They fantasize more about the perfection of bodies of the partner(s), place and other auxiliary conditions. No matter to say that these fantasies are transgressive in nature. These are transgressive of psychological, social, moral and legal constraints. This fact also explains why the port industry is mainly male oriented. Why the females are the subjects of exposure in that industry. It is not the resources of the males that lead to move this industry rather it is their will to make it move. Porn – industrialists usually study and master these lessons.

Perel found in his study:

Erotic Imagination

• Freedom of our imagination unfolds in the sanctuary of our mind.

• Fantasy is autonomy, separateness in the mind allows for connection in the body. Not all fantasies need to be shared.

• Erotic couples respect each other’s erotic privacy, which is not the same as secrets.

• Fantasies are not experiences we necessarily want, they often stretch much further than we ever would in reality. They free us from moral, social and psychological constraints. We can surprise ourselves in our fantasies, break taboos, thrive on the illicit, lurid; the shadow parts of ourselves can find expression.

• Men fantasize multiple partners’ perfect bodies, women about idyllic situations and environments.

• Too often fantasy seen as a temporary insanity of the beginning, immature pleasures destined to fade under the rigors of the serious, responsible business of marriage or commitment.

• Deprived of freedom on the inside of their relation, people will seek expression on the outside.

• To objectify is a way to emphasize the quality of the otherness and of the person we desire, that he/she is outside ourselves.

One point is very crucial in this study. He finds that this fantasy equates to insanity to some extent. This insanity fades when it is confronted with the realities of the life and relationships. He also finds that deprivation of freedom is more likely to allure someone to find an expression outside. Does he mean to say that he was explaining those old love stories of Laila Majnu, Heer – Ranjha, Juliet – Romeo, Soni – Mahiwal and others? Does he try to explain why those stories are not repeated these days because the expression is easier these days? Does he say these love epics were the byproducts of social temporal fantasies? This author does not want to make any comment on this aspect because it is for the readers to read and conclude. The democracy of views demands this. What we do here is to present the summarized results of Perel ’s sudy:

Summary:

WHAT DIMINISHES DESIRE?

• To much familiarity, comfort

• Boredom and emotional disengagement

• Lack of novelty and variation

• The transition to motherhood

• Busy, stressful lives-

• De-erotization of the partner

• The contrived illusion of safety

WHAT MAINTAINS DESIRE?

• Fluid communication, intimacy, emotional differentiation

• Validation, being seen

• Separateness and space, difference

• Seduction, anticipation, playfulness, novelty, curiosity

• Ability to tolerate our fundamental alones Not fully knowing our partner

• Playfulness, variation, uncertainty, unpredictability, mystery

• Our erotic perception of our partner

• Fantasy and imagination

• The respect for sexual idiosyncrasies; they are key to who we are.

• Stay out of the bed.

• Limited intake of pornography

• Erotic privacy (secrets hurt intimacy, privacy enhances it)

• To know that we do not own our partner

• Permission to reach beyond our limits, to transcend our boundaries

• Permission to experience aggression and power; i.e. power plays, role reversals, unfair advantages, imperious demands, seductive manipulations, subtle cruelties

Here are the grounds not to concur with Perel’s idea where he prescribes a limited intake of porn. In fact this suggestion and its acceptance both are variables depending upon a large variety of inputs. Somehow Perel has lost the idea of what is ‘democratization of thoughts’ when starts prescriptions. A family in Egypt may think in a way not congruent the way a family in Columbia would think being exposed to the same problem of ‘outside expression of excessive fantasizing’. And this in itself shows the weakness of such studies also.

Some societies like Indian, Chinese, Arab or Egyptian are ancient societies. These are a continuum. These cannot be overturned overnight by such studies. Such societies should be given their space to cope up with such problems of psycho – socio – historic origin.