09 Apr 09 JUNK SEX VS LOVING SEX – SEXUAL FRUSTRATION

Each act of sex brings us closer to that other person. The more mature the sex, the more authentically intimate and tender that sex will be. In that sense, each act of sex is a triumph of love and life (Eros) over hate and death (Thanatos). Freud, who saw life as a struggle between these two forces, believed that the main cause of human misery was the sexual repression necessitated by modern civilization. The antidote to civilization and its discontents is not more sex but better sex. The more genuinely we engage in sex, the more our bodies and minds will come alive and be freed from the chains of negative thinking. The more we live and love, the longer we will refuse to die.

Every form of human pathology, whether psychological, organic, or social, is in some way associated with sexual frustration. Thus, neurotic defenses, narcissistic grandiosity, borderline rage, addictions, and psychosis—to name but a few—are all products, in part, of the frustration of Eros and the stirring up of Thanatos. The neurotic distorts the sexual experience with guilt, as when an obsessive demands neat and orderly sex and thus makes the experience ritualistic; the grandiose narcissist needs to be superior and cannot allow for the authentic vacillations of human sexuality; the addict is wedded to an addiction and can have only impulsive and shallow sexual experiences; and the psychotic withdraws completely from sex and people alike. In each instance, sexuality becomes blocked, and the other becomes an object to be distanced, exploited, distrusted, or hated.

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