The Psychic Function of Erotic Arousal

We are aroused by what we have disowned. When we are aroused by a person or a symbol that stirs our erotic response, our excitement is the body's way of recognizing an opportunity to bring buried parts of ourselves "out to play." To heed our arousal and bravely follow where that might lead- is to move towards reclaiming our lost parts, without which we cannot be whole. Sexuality has a pro-creative function that goes well beyond engendering biological life: The psychological play involved in a human being’s fantasy-filled eroticism involves much more than what two animals copulating could ever produce! Yet we are embarrassed by- and often too automatically reject in ourselves- anything sexual that cannot be readily recognized as “pure love.” Unfortunately, we have a sadly limited concept of love. Our concept of love is extremely constraining: it is restricted to purity, sweetness, generosity, supportiveness, self-sacrifice, yet ultimately self-abandonment in order to adhere to someone else's standards or expectations.

There is room, in the range of human behavior, for the opposite traits from this foregoing over-idealized list. So, what on earth could account for our impulses to corruption, sourness, avarice, undermining, selfishness? There are times when these attributes are within us and have need of being lived out or somehow expressed, depending on the situation. We can't say for certain that those things are always wrong, but we certainly act as though they were. Until we learn to acknowledge their usefulness, or at least the usefulness of the emotions stirred up by these traits, we deny access to our deepest truth. It is only though acceptance of our deepest emotional currents that we can ultimately reach self-compassion - which is the only true love.

Perverse sexual eroticism is a natural part of our arousal mechanism. It is inherently designed to bring us face to face with what we fear about ourselves. Whatever we reject about sexual perversion exists primarily in our minds. Our self-rejection is fast and furiously projected onto others… where we find it easier to judge and to condemn, rather than face what’s going on inside of us! When we reject our own or someone else’s sexual perversions, we are merely horrified at what our mind produces, instead of courageously engaging with the mind more fully, in order to gain deeper understanding and self-acceptance. Surrendering to our perverse sexuality can bring us more swiftly than any other method to a fully integrated ability to experience love.

Of course, the difference between surrender and addiction must be clearly understood. Which is what I want to write about next.

Happiness Beyond Suffering

Every human being has a limit to what he can bear before getting triggered. Being triggered is none other than the experience of confusion, ineptitude, and ineffective reaction. This is the only cause of suffering. Our evolutionary process, by design, requires these triggers, in order to show us points of ignorance within us that require greater awareness. To heal, to grow, or to evolve means to become aware enough to expand our perception of what’s really going on, and thus correct our course of action, thereby removing the cause of our suffering.

Instead, many of us react to our limited beliefs, which are distorted by our unawareness of the true, whole situation. When our view is true (or whole enough to see what is relevant) our actions no longer attempt to address the illusory circumstances that come from a partial view of reality. Our ‘true’ actions, unaffected by our former distortions, can’t help but be effective in removing the suffering, while serving the greater good and bringing happiness to all around us.

Some Thoughts on Fifty Shades of Gray

I love some of the questions that are being brought up by the popularity of this book. The many shades of sexual dynamic depicted within it comprise an exploration of one of the most significant archetypes of our times. Riane Eisler addresses this archetype when she speaks of the shift from a dominator model of society to one of equal partnership. An awareness of this shift seems to be what is arising in our consciousness and pressing to be worked through, both individually and collectively.

Sexuality, in my view, is the arena par excellence through which to fully integrate such developmental shifts in consciousness. In order for the old polarity between dominator and submissive to be transcended into a new realm of operation--presumably that of equal partnership and voluntary cooperation--a deeper understanding of the full range of stances within the old dynamic must be thoroughly explored. This is what I believe sexuality affords.

 What we learn in the first years of our life are that we are born "dominated" or completely dependent on our caretakers, to whose demands we must "submit" in order to receive more of their loving support. Through the development of maturity, we must eventually learn to 'take back our power' from the dominators. This, of course, they are often reluctant to surrender whether they are parents or whether they are the corporate giants who dominate the earth's economies.

 Of course we may ourselves, at first, strive to become dominators in the process of wresting back our power but at some point in our evolution, we no longer want to assume that position either. Eventually, we come to long for a healthy partnership of equals, with each contributing whatever pleases one to offer. Controlling or being controlled is not something we consider effective nor desirable. Control is no longer a factor in securing our happiness, nor even our security.

I believe that this whole sexual exploration of Dominant/Submissive is precisely what's being worked out in our evolutionary (instinctual) impulse. It aims to transcend this old duality that has become one of of not only waning relevance, but of damaging impact on our ability to survive, let alone thrive.

 Some of the stages of development associated with this type of emancipation are well described in the Eric Erickson's model. Aspects of Ericksonian stages are recapitulated in human sexual development over and over again. When they are not sufficiently explored sexually, they appear as repetitive blocks in the drama of human lives, and in the unfolding tragedies of human civilization.

 'Trust versus Mistrust' comprises stage one, at the onset of human development. Here, infants before birth and in the first six months of life characteristically grapple with the issue of whether they can trust their caretakers to effectively care for them and to love them truly. If, at this stage of psychic growth, an infant decides that trust is not warranted, she will have lifelong struggles with trust not only in personal relationships but also with the whole idea of a loving God or a Benevolent Universe predisposed to supporting her.

Trust is one of the first and most crucial elements of a successful sexual relationship. Trust allows for complete sexual freedom at one end of the polarity, or rape at the other. (I speak here of unwilling rape in contra-distinction to consentual play-acting of rape that requires full trust, and which is aimed at the working out of trust issues, perhaps among other things…)

Stage Two is about 'Autonomy versus Doubt and Shame.' Here, between the ages of 6 and 18 months or so, a toddler is preoccupied with experimenting with his first steps toward autonomy. If the caretaking figure overpowers a child’s bid for autonomy with a ‘dominating style’ that does not allow for the child to test his skills, the child will forever be doubtful about his capacities and ashamed of his dependency feelings. Alternately, if a child undergoes a traumatic consequence to his bid for autonomy, perhaps because a caretaker has insufficiently protected the child from a genuine danger, then he may forever be plagued with lifelong anxieties related to self-doubt and of course shame about his inabilities and/or lack of courage.

This outcome can be avoided if someone helps him process the trauma and offers a supportive base from which to try to re-learn and practice the management of pleasures and risks that entail the exercise of autonomy. The sexual arena is a perfect platform from which to learn to take such risks (whether real or fantasized) when supported by a trusted sexual partner. According to the model, Trust is here a prerequisite for Autonomy and these both will be necessary for the following stages to be navigated successfully.

Here follows the complete set of Erickson’s Developmental Stages, which lists the titles (Hope, Will, Purpose, Competence, etc,) that indicate which human capacity is being developed through the exploration of each polarity.

1 Hope: Trust vs. Mistrust (Oral-sensory, Birth-2 years)
2 Will: Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt (Muscular-Anal, 2-4 years)
3 Purpose: Initiative vs. Guilt (Locomotor-Genital, Preschool, 4-5 years)
4 Competence: Industry vs. Inferiority (Latency, 5-12 years)
5 Fidelity: Identity vs. Role Confusion (Adolescence, 13-19 years)
6 Love: Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young adulthood, 20-24, or 20-40 years)
7 Care: Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle adulthood, 25-64, or 40-64 years)
8 Wisdom: Ego Integrity vs. Despair (Late adulthood, 65-death)

It is interesting to note how only in the sixth developmental stage does the capacity to love (to give love, to create love, as opposed to ‘sharing’ whatever love one has learned automatically from their upbrining) become ripe for activating its full potential. If Erickson’s stages accurately describe the normal sequence for the emergence of a healthy maturity, then sexuality may not primarily be designed to support the development of love in its fullest aspects, until the other capacities have become substantially consolidated in the individual.

If this thesis is correct, the beginning stages of sex may well have much less to do with love than we heretofore assumed. For this reason, the book Fifty Shades of Gray is neither good nor bad, in my view, but rather very useful for raising consciousness. It allows individuals who are aroused by it to form their own judgments, through visceral experiencing and somatic integration, about the varying aspects of a dominating/subservient relationship. The true costs and benefits of such polarized relationships, by the way, undoubtedly emerge through thousands and perhaps millions shades of grey, and not just the “fifty” depicted within this particular narrative.

The fact that this book captured the sexual imagination of thousands of women (and certainly many men who also enjoy it, if secretly) indicates that this topic is ripe and perhaps sorely overdue for deeper integration. It is for this reason I believe that whatever arouses is always very healthy to contemplate, albeit not always in a literal way! The same is true for art, whereby creative development is also is its function.

Guggenbuhl-Craig observed that, “in psychoanalytic practice it happens again and again that the more differentiated, and not the weaker a person is, the more we find the so-called sexual aberrations” (2001, p. 90).

Also, Thomas Moore (Author of Care of the Soul) in his book Dark Eros, writes: “We usually try very hard to suppress and forget [our] demonic side, but we are usually not successful. Even more perplexing, if somebody is successful in completely splitting off or apparently eliminating his or her dark side, he or she becomes empty, bloodless, and—in the end—not connected to any kind of eros.” (2001, p. viii)

Furthermore (from my thesis): “Individual and collective sexual fantasies depict in a symbolic way, the human psyche… And in sexual fantasies […] the mythology of the human soul is very much alive and touches us with soul and body” (Guggenbuhl-Craig, 1990, p. ix). The overarching aim of eroticism is to foster a physiological embodiment and material manifestation of the psychic fruit born of symbolic, archetypal investigation. Adolph Guggenbuhl-Craig noted that “ if somebody is successful in completely splitting off or apparently eliminating his or her dark side, he or she becomes empty or bloodless, and—in the end—not connected to any kind of eros” (quoted in Moore, 1990, p. viii).

Those who sanitize their eroticism through self-restraint ultimately lose all sense of erotic vitality, and end up struggling with boredom in bed. Many would rather not revisit old fears or probe into buried wounds. Yet the body “remembers” and instinctually urges us to review, revise, and rework the unresolved. Are we not relentlessly compelled by the same sexual scenarios, reenacting them as in Freud’s “repetition compulsion,” until we finally process the material sufficiently for it to bear fruit in our lives, and ultimately allow us to move beyond our old limitations?

Nancy Friday described the process of developing, and fleshing out of our unconscious fantasies: "You already know, or can easily imagine, many of the most popular themes or devices of sexual fantasy…. and although a woman will cast and style her sexual imagery as individually as she would a dinner party, she will probably—as I have found after collecting more than four hundred fantasies—select as her own one of the archetypal dozen or so constantly recurring “stock” situations to build upon; she then embellishes her chosen situation with the objective detail which makes it most alive to her, just as a woman will use accessories to dress a basic dress up, or down, to suit her desires of the moment." (1974, p. 93)

This imaginal play, depicted by Friday, may be an apt portrayal of the mechanism that fosters the transcending of our old limitations, in the same manner found in dream mentation. Dream mentation, James Fosshage wrote, processes information and contributes to the "development of psychological organization through the representational consolidation of newly emergent psychic configurations" (1983, p. 658).

In contributing to development, new perceptual angles are achieved and new ways of behaving are imagistically portrayed within and through dreams and in sexual fantasies [because that is their psychic function.] New self and object representations (or schemas) and new relational scenarios emerge. Dream mentation [and sexual fantasy] in addition, can continue the unconscious and conscious waking efforts at conflict resolution, through restoring a previous state, utilizing defensive processes, or creating a new organization (Lichtenberg, Lachmann & Fosshage, 1992).

Similarly as in dream mentation, in erotic play new perceptual angles are achieved through visceral experimentation with new ways of behaving. New self and object representations not only emerge but can be experienced and evaluated through the conscious sexual trialing that erotic fantasy affords. Undoubtedly, erotic fantasy can play a great role in our unconscious and conscious waking efforts at conflict resolution. Erotic play can foster restoring a previous state, revisiting defensive processes, testing alternate strategies, and firmly ensconcing new psychic organization through the surrender of the old to the new.

Anat Baniel writes of how our brains are organized through movement. This includes movements we already know and do and movements we have yet to learn. The more habitual our everyday movements, Baniel states, the less we are able to satisfy the brain’s need for growth. As we introduce new patterns of movement, combined with attention—which may include different thoughts, perceptual cognitions, or new narratives such as those we develop through sexual appetite and imagination—our brains begin making thousands, millions, and even billions of new connections. These changes quickly translate into thinking that is clearer, movement that is easier, pain that is reduced or eliminated, and action that is more effective. As a result, new stances, new postures, new activities and new outcomes that we may not have even dreamed were possible become possible...

It is through movement that we integrate perceptual experience and lodge the information into cellular memory. Movement is how we foster human creativity through surrender to the arousing imperatives that spur personal development. It is no surprise that sexuality is the most potent vehicle for binding new cognition with expanding sensation. For new cognition to occur, movement must occur, or old neuronal pathways reduce us to automatic response.

The sexual arena is not where moral dictates should repressively block creativity, on the contrary. The sexual arena is where everything should be explored in order to better develop our skills for differentiation, whether morally, ethically, and even more pertinently, psychologically and spiritually.

Fogland

What repeatedly stands in the way of our ability to succeed?

For the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to call it "the fog." The fog represents a trance state, a state of unconsciousness that feels like the mentality of a toddler or young child. It might be a feeling of fear, but more often, it's a primitive defense mechanism that has been adopted for coping with fear.

We may notice that we're in the fog when our hot buttons have been pushed and we've reacted immaturely, all the while knowing better. It might be when we don't believe a problem can be solved no matter how we slice it: the feeling of "this will never work out, never has-never will." Something along the lines of "I can't do it, I've tried everything" may come up in certain situations, repeatedly. Or, perhaps we keep pushing hard for the desired result, even though we see great damage being senselessly inflicted. Whatever it is, we can't help ourselves and something deep inside "knows better," yet we can't seem to access it when we most need it: "Oh, if I'd had my full wits about me, I'd have said..."
Somehow, we become totally frozen and can't think straight.

That's what I'm calling the fog. I invite you into a conversation I recently had with someone over their "fog" issue. I hope you can take something away from it.

"You were saying that you experienced the fog not so much in high school, as much as later in college. The fog is merely the defense tactic minus the awareness of what it's defending against, right? Of course we get better at using our fog defense over time, you probably only mastered it in college!

"It behooves you to look beyond the fog directly at the fear that underlies it. To face and survive the fear at least ONCE in your life is to be able to see it properly. After you've seen it once, you must practice surviving the fear that drove you to numbness repeatedly and with greater consciousness, if you want to master it in order to get on with what's important in your life.

"When I say at least once, I mean not just intellectually, but as a visceral experience; and not just emotionally, but cognitively too! With eyes wide open, can you experience all three at the same time, body sensation, emotional feeling, and cognitive awareness? Can you move through your fear without "fainting" i.e., without losing consciousness and later waking up, recovered from some exhaustion that tries to pass for catharsis? Can you visit your fear without falling into the fog and later thinking, "Oh I should never have reacted that way, that was NOT what I wanted to do."

"Be prepared to survive the experience of the fear that underlies the fog several times in order for it to resolve, dissipate, melt away, lose its potency. You're still running into that same fear and not experiencing it every single time you go into fogland! It's a compulsive way of running from unpleasantness.

"You can't "fix" the fear, or address it, or even feel it properly while in it, while you're in the distorted perspective of fogland. The task is to wake up to the familiarity of fogland and be willing to step out of the insanity. To do that effectively and consistently, you must listen for and truly hear the voice that put you there, the voice that drives the fear, the one that says "You're not good enough," "you're alone in this," "who do you think you are?" "this will never work..."

"You never really hear that voice when you're defending, arguing with it while still in the fog! You can only notice the voice if, for a moment, you listen to it as though it might be true. That may seem too painful, but the wonderful gift is that it genuinely CAN'T be true. So ultimately, by listening carefully and really hearing it, you win: you debunk the lie that has been running you ragged!

"When you recognize those disempowering sensations in your body, your feelings and your thoughts as being driven by the voice of superego, untruth, lie, etc., when you are properly convinced they're a lie, then you you can learn to "survive," "bear," or consciously breathe through the barricade of "false sensations" (emotions, thoughts, patterns.) These strong sensations are after all "true memories" as far as your body is concerned! These true memories were indeed experienced time and time again in your history... That's what you have to face squarely and shake out: real memories embedded in your cellular, material being: your body!"

IBP techniques can show you the true nature of your fog and the lie that repeatedly drives you into it. IBP can show you how to step out of the fog directly, effectively and consistently. It takes courage to want to experience your fog in order to learn what fears lurk beneath. It's something few are willing to try until the pain of failure has become more frightening than the prospect of exploring the nature of our illusory fears.

THE CALL OF THE FOREST

The following passage is from a book called Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body, by Reginald A. Ray. (Chapter 3, in its entirety)

"In the Buddhist past, when questions have arisen about the authenticity of institutionalized, conventionalized Buddhist organizations, politics, beliefs, and practices, practitioners have retired into the "forest" (skt, vana, aranya), the classical terms for the uninhabited jungles of India. The "forest" was regarded as a place beyond the reach of conventional culture and institutionalized Buddhism, a place where the atmosphere was open and unobstructed. The forest was understood as a tractless waste, a place for all those "others" standing outside of conventional culture, such as wild animals, gods and demons, and people beyond the pale. The latter included lunatics, criminals, the terminally ill, the most extreme outcasts, and, most important, those spiritual practitioners who literally walked away from the conventionalized religious systems of India seeking "the origin of all things."

"Within Indian culture, the forest was considered the ideal place for spiritual practice because, in the forest, there are no rules and there are no presiding authorities. The only authority is the chaos of the forest itself. the only rule is what awaits there for each practitioner, uniquely, to discover. Memories of the past and plans for the future, the psychic infrastructure of civilization, do not apply: they have no bearing and they have no footing. The forest is about something else. In the forest, there is only the ever-present possibility of events, encounters, and insights that emerge directly from reality itself, pure and unpolluted by human wants, expectations and attitudes. Uniquely in the forest, the most radical of all human journeys can take place, one which brings us into direct contact with primordial being. Generally, the greatest saints of Buddhist tradition both in India an din larger Asia were products, so to speak, of the forest; fed up with the limitations of the town-and-village culture of institutionalized Buddhism, inspired by those who had gone before, they disappeared into the forest for years, decades, or even for life."


Ray goes on to say how there is no longer any geographical, literal forest for the modern-day practitioners to retire to, and I would add that there is really no easy access to the inner, metaphorical forest either.

"Even the idea of the "forest" has become largely marginalized in modern Buddhism. Every manifestation of Buddhism, it now seems, must immediately demonstrate "social engagement" and "ethical impact. It is not [...] that these are unimportant values. But now, more and more, they have become a litmus test to determine which forms of Buddhism are acceptable and which are not. Thus, the true forest is quickly disappearing, perhaps forever, from our world.

"But there is a new wilderness, a new trackless waste, a new unknown and limitless territory, a new terrain of chaos, that calls us. It is a territory [...] that has not been, and cannot be, colonized and domesticated by human ambition and greed, that in its true extent cannot be mapped by human logic at all. This is the "forest" of the human body. The body is now, I believe, our forest, our jungle, the "outlandish" expanse in which we are invited to let go of everything we think, allow ourselves to be striped down to our most irreducible person, to die in every experiential sense possible and see what, if anything, remains.

"In this, I am speaking not of the body we think we have, the body we conceptualize as part of our "me" or my self-image. Rather, I am talking about the body that we meet when we are willing to descend into it, to surrender into its darkness and its mysteries, and to explore it with our awareness. As we shall see, this true, limitless body cannot even be entered until we are willing to leave our own thinking process behind--on the surface, so to speak. It is similar to the deep-sea diver" while floating on the surface of the sea, he knows little of what lies below, but when he descends into its depths, the limitless worlds of the ocean open to him. It was of this ever unbounded and unknown body that the great siddha Saraha spoke when he said, "There is no pace of pilgrimage as fabulous an open as this body of mine, no place more worth exploring."

Somatic psychotherapy leads you to the daunting forest, all the while remembering to help you place crumbs along the path (plenty of helpful markers) so you might find your way back, should you ever panic and feel lost.

The limits of Computational Theory of the Mind (CTM)

Moment by moment, night flickers in the imagination, in eroticism, subverting our strivings for virtue and order, giving an uncanny aura to objects and persons, revealed to us through the eyes of an artist…. Every attraction, every pattern of touch, every orgasm is shaped by psychic shadows.

Camille Paglia (1991, p. 4)

I am a somatic psychotherapist currently investigating a meta-model of human sexuality that can explain many components of irrational erotic arousal in terms of evolutionary psychology not yet fully accounted for by the computational theory of the mind (CTM). The proposed sexual model goes beyond the collective instinctual drive for the propagation of the species. It is a model where the development of consciousness is more consistently selected over human survival or personal advantage (see illustration below, regarding the stereotypical sexual coupling between the proverbial Catholic girl and the bad boy.) This hard-wired priority of consciousness development accounts for all manner of sexual attraction and perversion.

My understanding of computational theory of the mind (CTM) is of an organic feedback mechanism that acts to organize perception. My notion is that this mechanism is mediated not only by the mind but by the entire body as a computational vehicle of self-correcting apperception (not to mention a vehicle of self-healing molecular biology) and driven by chemical reinforcers such a dopamine, oxytocin, etc. to recognize and therefore respond (reorganize) to higher-level (transcendent) patterns of organization.

The new contribution of this erotic model of psychic and somatic organization is that it proposes a consciousness theory of arousal that drives evolution through a slightly modified version of the above mechanistic model (CTM). The new factor is akin to a yearning principle, that is, it's the instinctually-driven urge for humans to deeply know and manipulate physiological (somatic), material (environmental), and relational (interpersonal) as well as spiritual (transpersonal) dynamics.

The model posits the development of psychic organization primarily through a somatic gnosis of symbolic representations (chemical/emotional/relational pattern recognition on a visceral-body level) and secondarily through dream mentation (Fosshage), conceptual cognition, and eventually, through the manipulation of limiting linguistic symbols for articulating and propagating knowledge.

The model assumes a dynamic relationship between an individual’s personal reaction to symbols (that is, pre-extant organization matrices to which the individual is predisposed--environmentally, genetically, and personally--to recognize; also called archetypal patterns) and a somatic reaction that can be termed incentive salience (that which lights up reward centers in the brain) but is also recognized as instinct or desire. Ultimately, the model proposes that we are hard-wired for the development of consciousness primarily through the somatic exploration of symbols of transcendence (archetypal patterns), an optimal method for achieving developmental quantum leaps--something that the CTM model, as it now stands, cannot account for.

Steve Pinker writes (So How Does The Mind Work, 2005):

"Evolutionary psychology also helps to explain many instances of error, irrationality, and illusion—why we gamble, eat junk food, fall for visual illusions, obsess over celebrities, and fear snakes and heights more than hair dryers near bathtubs or driving without a seatbelt. The nature of the explanation is that there can be a mismatch between the ancestral environment to which our minds are evolutionarily adapted and the current environment in which we find ourselves."

The meta-theory of sexuality and arousal posits that such irrational desires (and addictions) symbolically point to unmet developmental needs. The resulting yearning, when suppressed, becomes more and more pathological. The underlying need is sought on a literal basis rather than on a higher-level analogical basis. (eg. Grasping for a breast rather than becoming conscious of insufficient nurturing in childhood or infancy –something the body well remembers and still irrationally clamors for, despite slaps in the face—rather than to seek appropriate and effective ways of bridging the as-of-yet-unconscious lacuna.)

A more elaborate illustration of this dynamic is seen in the underlying set of developmental needs expressed through the stereotypical sexual attraction between the proverbial Catholic Girl and Bad Boy. The Girl’s upbringing requires her to repress all tendencies to selfishness, self-interest, aggression, hostility, dishonesty, swearing, lying, cheating, etc… much of which the Bad Boy flaunts with impunity. This Boy, in turn, raised in a rough, gang-infested neighborhood might be risking his life if he dares exhibit tenderness, compassion, generosity, empathy, tearfulness, or any “softness” of emotion, which the good girl nonetheless proudly flaunts with the enviable result that everyone, including this Bad Boy, clamors to protect (or, perversely, attempts to squash in the hope that she can demonstrate how to survive despite her vulnerable attributes!)

Certainly when he rapes her or, optimally, only expresses carefully contrived (i.e., symbolic) roughness through his erotic aggression, he wants to pierce through her innocence to drink in her purity while infusing her with the Bad Boy qualities she lacks. Ideally he holds back sufficiently to not damage or traumatize her. Optimally, he is compelled to push their mutual limits whilst taking care to monitor her responses (to remain relational) in view of affording her a deep visceral pleasure that might embolden her to eventually try out (and validate for herself) her own latent bad-boy capacities -heretofore repressed.

He might be investigating the question of, “How might she respond when I do to her what was done to me, when I was too young/undeveloped to contain such pressure? Can I learn to be like her, or would it still be too dangerous to me?” If she feels safe in fully surrendering to what this exchange offers she might, through practice, learn to internalize his bad-boy behaviors, which have been so direly lacking within her range of responses. She can get unstuck from the good-pole of the good-bad dichotomy, which blocks her from the resolution of her developmental arrest. When the boy sheds a tear or becomes sweetly overwhelmed or deeply ashamed by his feelings, the girl might jump to cheer him and love him all the more. His wound begins to heal when he dares behave vulnerably with her, if she has modeled it for him under his "attacks" that is, if she does not take advantage or use his vulnerability against him.

These visceral lessons assist this dyad in transcending deeply buried psychologically and physically hard-wired traits. The orgasmic surrender allows the physical holding patterns that belie the embodied psychological attitudes to finally become loosed, at least for the post-coitus relaxation. If, however, such lessons are sufficiently repeated as to promote homeostatic shifts in the psychological and physical posturings of these lovers, then eventually much development and consciousness can be permanently gained. If the physical relaxation of old, chronic muscular holding patterns becomes the new norm through their "loosened" stances, then even organic illness (which could have resulted from the reduced flow of oxygen in those chronically tensed parts of the body) might be allayed in the long-term.

The girl’s and boy’s respective physiologies become excited with what their whole bearing recognizes as a potential sexual interaction that offers transcendent possibilities for resolving each of their psychological blocks. This is an archetypal pattern, not one cognitively recognized by the participants nor understood by the social environments that originally caused the psychological and behavioral suppression. Once recognized and exhaustively explored through a multitude of erotic variations, the sexual charge associated with this "Bad-Boy/Good-Girl" theme eventually dissipates. Consciousness can then be further explored within some different archetypal erotic landscape. New erotic fantasies herald the next onion layer of psychic healing/growth. An appetite to pornography is healthy if not abused addictively so as to obstruct the acquisition of consciousness.

Pinker wrote:

“Deriving new accurate beliefs from old ones in pursuit of a goal is not a bad definition of ‘intelligence’, so a principal advantage of the computational theory of mind (CTM) is that it explains how a hunk of matter (a brain or a computer can be intelligent.”

Nowhere in any logical construct, built on limited assumptions, can anyone compute a rational argument from the lover’s vantage of how and why these and more salacious erotic couplings can be psychologically healthy. On the contrary, we are aroused by whatever actually seems most unhealthy, at least from our perspective, because it brings to consciousness what was shameful and buried early in each of us. It arouses, through pattern recognition (archetypal symbols) whatever has held us back from becoming whole. Arousal always raises into consciousness that which was repressed in us during our childhood through shaming or fear. However, everything gleaned through arousal and sexual satisfaction attests to the desirability and wholesomeness of sexually perverse relationships. Admittedly, this holds true only if certain relational conditions are met and maintained: honoring the sexual partner's free will and even helping safeguard it when it is insufficiently upheld, which takes a tremendous amount of presence, insight, and respect.

The capacity for derivative thinking is perhaps not a bad definition of a certain type of intelligence, but the CTM model is as yet inadequate for describing the type of intelligence characterized by creativity. The contention of the proposed new thesis (The Psychic Function of Erotic Arousal) is that the entire body serves as an integrative mechanism that can perceive and organize new, inchoate information by mapping new perception upon itself using analogical pattern recognition to draw new conclusions about higher levels of organization. We have a whole universe of biological mechanisms within us that represent patterns through which our organism functions brilliantly, and of course unconsciously, on higher levels of organization than we can yet cognitively conceive. We are cognitively unaware of more than a tiny fraction of those patterns, although some aspect of our being certainly masters the knowledge of biological mechanisms far beyond the scope of our conscious minds.

The point is that new information rarely computes correctly within a set field of knowledge. The entire human body is part of a higher order processing mechanism than the computational model gives it (the body) credit for managing. The body's apperceptive faculties are not limited to the mind in the way the CTM understands it. The body utilizes an analogical model of pattern recognition (arousal) for gleaning a higher organizational structure about the irrational, that is, about "what the mind doesn't know we don't know," but about what the body has a veritable clue through the "universe within itself."

Pinker:

“Finally, mental life—internal representations and processes—appears to be more lawful and universal than overt behavior, which can vary with circumstances.”

In healthy sexuality the opposite is true, as illustrated in the above example. Furthermore, overt behavior in sex is usually a more muted version of an individual’s erotic fantasy, and for good reason.

Guggenbuhl-Craig observed that, “in psychoanalytic practice it happens again and again that the more differentiated, and not the weaker a person is, the more we find the so-called sexual aberrations” (2001, p. 90).

Jung’s notion of the transcendent function was to psychology the equivalent of what the quantum leap was to physics. No cognitive construct will uncover the way to new consciousness, although once a new awareness is gleaned, CTM might map an effective model that explains it. Creative intelligence is a visceral drive that expresses itself through arousal (libido, life energy, enthusiasm, joy, pleasure) that is best explored through sex, art, and only then consolidated through cognitive awareness. Let science not imagine it can forge the way to new knowledge when it so emphatically and persistently dismisses the value of the irrational and incoherent! Until this stance is changed to integrate "intuition" and "gut response," science can only confirm and articulate new ideas through hindsight postulation of imagined--not derived--models. Science can never dictate the limits of art or judge the veracity of creative expression without hindering the expansion of consciousness.

Presence, through Somatic Psychotherapy


“Healing requires a unity of mind and heart, and generally it is the mind that needs to be adjusted to our feelings, which too often we have not honored in the daily choices we have made.”

Carolyn Myss, in Anatomy of the Spirit

Integrative Body Psychotherapy (IBP) aims at reconciling the discrepancies between what we feel and what we think. We often think we should follow a certain course, yet really feel like doing altogether something else. This creates a huge gap between who we are and what we do! How can we bring these two parts of ourselves into alignment, and peacefully find the natural path, the one right for us?

One of the most effective ways is through increasing consciousness and presence, specifically through body-centered awareness practices. Allowing yourself to become aware of your every body-perception provides access to a deep inner knowing, which the fearful mind (ego) often tries to overrule.

First, it is useful to get acquainted with your fears (including anxiety, anger, sadness…) and their origins. A certain defensive reactivity to your fears is programmed right into your body, into your very cellular memory. Any difficult childhood experiences you have not properly processed remain unconscious within you, repressed not only psychologically but actually physically, in your very flesh.

Somatic psychotherapy helps you locate the physiological mechanisms that hold the awareness of these wounds tightly bound within your musculature. Why do massages feel so good? It’s because you temporarily allow yourself to release this holding and enjoy they pleasurable sensations! Sometimes the physical release from a massage brings up a lot of emotion and even the urge to talk about your problems. But with time, you inevitably stiffen back up again, unless you learn how to work with what has arisen for you.

What arises when you experience fear is a physical stiffening of certain areas of your body. This occurs as a defensive reaction to restrict the flow of oxygen—and feeling!—to those parts of your body that sense the discomfort. Certain chakra areas will respond to different emotional issues, so the area of your body that stiffens is always related to the nature your issue!

During IBP therapy, the therapist helps you discover which areas repeatedly block for you, and teaches you how to self-release. Through projective exercises, you will also discover the precise emotional content and the mental thoughts that keep your habitual blocks in place. You will discover how and when they came to lodge there.

The last step then, is to become sufficiently familiar with those set of circumstances that throw you into reactivity so that when anxiety grips you physically, you can consciously bear the sensation, having learned that it’s more a past memory than a current reality. And even if it happens to be a current reality—which is more rare than you think—you will have trained yourself not to react defensively, like a child. Instead, you will deliberately dismiss/release the sensation, in order to deal with it with greater presence like the adult that you are, with the true and tried capacities that you have acquired throughout your life. In other words, stress will no longer make you lose your wits!

IBP helps you learn how to identify and dismiss the mental experience that grips you when you’re stressed. It trains you to self-release—physically—and regain immediate composure with the effectiveness to respond! That is the recipe for presence.