sex

February 4, 2024

When Boys Discover Girls

Life is full of the before and after of things: before and after you begin to walk, start school, and mingle with the opposite sex.

It’s hard to remember what life was like before. How was it before you had children, for example? Most parents can describe it, but kiddies make some memories seem like they happened to someone else.

This brings me to those days before I and my friends made actual, palpable physical contact with young women, other than walking into them by accident.

Life was simpler without thinking about girls.

It didn’t make a difference how you looked or who looked at you. One grudgingly talked to girls but not with the joy you had conversing about baseball with Ron, Steve, or Uncle Sam.

You didn’t play ball with young ladies and got the creeps when they were fond of you—something in their saucer-eyed, admiring gaze.

Yes, some fellows teased girls to show interest. Perhaps they were testing what they could get away with, trying to see where their boundaries were and what mischief was possible. Hardly a reckoning with romance or a lesson in lust.

Anatomical curiosity was present but didn’t require attention to body parts beneath undergarments. Or maybe it did, as in, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

The kid who got the most playground notice from the Jamieson School first-graders enjoyed flipping back one of his upper eyelids (turning it inside out). At the same time, he crossed his eyes, thus provoking an occasional howl from a squeamish classmate.

He would put on the show for free if you were his friend and flip the second eyelid, too. Others were charged a nickel.

Today, he’d be running for President.

At home, there were only occasional allusions made to throbbing physical attraction. Take the viewing of the Miss America Pagent on TV, an event not to be missed by my father or Uncle Manny.

When a curvy contestant sashayed across the stage in her bathing suit, my dad’s raised voice blurted, “Holy Criminy, hung to the gills!” in a half-humorous hoot never created at any other time.

The otherwise refined man wasn’t talking about fishing. Few use the same reference to a woman’s bosom today.

In fifth grade, my eyes were drawn to a girl’s legs. One girl in particular. What was this about? I asked myself. My little mind found it illogical.

Those female underpinnings no longer appeared as a simple necessity designed to keep the girls moving forward and avoid a significant reduction in height.

My new attention to a distaff body part was involuntary and alarming. It was the first sign my body was taking possession of my brain. Adult women know about this masculine flaw, but as a kid, I had no idea.


At about the same time, some females invited classmates to boy-girl parties. Spin-the-bottle was a highlight, although the darkened room the chosen couple entered — the one who had done the spinning and the opposite-sexed person at whom the bottle pointed — was an innocent place.

The girl with the beautiful legs, who would soon be my girlfriend, asked me a question in the dimly lit cell we inhabited for a few minutes:

“Gerry, did you know the most beautiful girl in the world is deaf?”

Ever the straight man, I could only answer “No.”

“What did you say?”

In other words, attractive legs and clever.

I never heard my folks talk about sex, but on occasion, a question would be answered in an informative way. Watching The Untouchables TV series with my father, I heard the word prostitution about one of the illegal businesses the Capone gangsters operated in Chicago.

When I asked Dad what the word meant, he said, “It’s when a woman sells her body.”

My head buzzed.

For what?

To whom?

At the grocery?

What aisle is that?

I knew he would say no more, so I refrained from asking.

By the end of sixth grade, I was hip-deep in the latency period. Freud labeled this as the time before puberty when your sexual preoccupations go to sleep.

Although Sigmund’s thoughts on the subject are not current gospel, I recall losing interest for a while. I submit as evidence a party to which I was supposed to accompany a charming lass named Heidi, about whom I forgot while riding bikes with my friend Jerry.

An hour after the get-together started, I awakened to my faux pas.

I apologized to the poor girl, realizing it would be best not to tell her what caused me to lose track of time, my desire to be with her, and my obligation.

Whatever earthly urge bubbled down below was sublimated into alternative activities and interests. Perhaps they fueled my school work or athletic endeavors.

One of my friends displayed more interest in lunch than ladies. Neil pasted a magazine picture of a hamburger, fries, and a coke on his bedroom ceiling, so it was the first thing he saw every morning. A few years later, Marilyn Monroe took its place, I imagine.

By age 16, I was slightly jealous of the two friends who had started going out with girls. The guys had no appeal distinguishing them from the rest of us, which puzzled me.

Their relative success, however, did reinforce my esteem for the illustrious Sigmund Freud,  who must have been as stunned as I was when he asked, “What do women want?”

Not these guys, I thought. Yet the facts suggested otherwise.

To their credit, those pioneers on the route to consequential sexual contact introduced me to the fact that success is often a matter of showing up and saying something. They’d asked girls on dates; sometimes, a female said yes.

The lesson was simple. You get to first base occasionally, even if you swing at a baseball with your eyes closed.

Taking the initiative was all you needed if you were male and the other Y-chromosome types were holding back. Much later, I was told most of the girls were waiting by the phone, as desperate for a date as we were terrified of calling.

Of course, the alternatives for the most insecure males were begging and pleading, but one still required enough courage to get within whimpering distance of the selected damsel.

Where could you be with a girl in private? Not at home, where curious parents and evil siblings might spy on you. My friend Alan didn’t want anybody to see the three-ring circus he lived in, at least not someone he hoped to impress.

Even so, he arranged for his date to be dropped off at his house one Saturday. As they prepared to leave for a movie, Alan’s father asked, “Where are you two going?”

“We’re going to a show.”

“Why are you going to a show? You’ve got a show right here!”

One of my regular compatriots at  Mather High School would bring the daily Chicago Sun-Times to the lunch table. Soon enough, we were all drawn to the part of the paper advertising movies, theater, and especially the burlesque shows of South State Street.

The Rialto Theater’s ad acted like a magnet because it reported there would be:

MIDNIGHT SHAMBLES EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT. BRING THE LADIES!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Loie_Fuller_Folies_Bergere_02.jpg

Substituting for the possibility of fondling an agreeable female, we spent many lunches pondering what midnight shambles involved. The group discussed it so often that, for convenience, we made it into the acronym MSBTL.

Since none of us were old enough to attend, my buddies had no alternative but to think about it and talk about it.

Suffice it to say, had the Rialto Theater somehow charged our group for the time we spent fantasizing about naked, shambling women, it would have generated more money than it derived from box office receipts.

The premarital sex thing remained mysterious to most of us, impenetrable in every sense, and immoral since it was the early ’60s, a time still in thrall to the culture of the ’50s. The sexual revolution hadn’t quite begun.

At the same time, the topic was mystical and quasi-religious, the kind of subject spoken of by hooded shamans in hushed voices while incense burned. Quite different than today, in other words.

The actual idea of intercourse suggested lots of moving parts you didn’t yet know how to move or where to move them, like the tabs and slots I wasn’t adept at working with when I tried to follow the directions for assembling model airplanes:

Insert tab A into Slot B.

What?

Carnal knowledge also demanded technical skill in dark places without the miner’s helmet I was inclined to wear to improve my chances. Notes and diagrams might have been helpful, but without the light, well…

Why didn’t a girl’s body come with instructions written on the package, like a box of aspirin? Luminous lettering and diagrams would have been a welcome addition.

Many of us were in the dark, literally and figuratively, lacking the required touch — deft and sure — that was far more challenging to acquire than the ability to hit a line drive to right field or throw a curve ball. Nor was sexual mastery a talent you could perfect on a public baseball diamond.

All the while, a ten-foot-tall sasquatch-like entity named INSECURITY, who had a chair at our Mather High School lunch table, instilled whispered self-doubts into whoever sat beside him:

Aw, jeez, why did you say that?

Does your hair look OK?

Are you sure your fly is zipped?

How did we survive all this? The way most other young men do. The procreative urge and a little courage find a way to carry the day.

We are all the descendants of people who had sex.

I have told you, friend, the last bit of information in confidence: the bit about actually “doing it.”

Your forbearance would be most appreciated because I’m sure my adult daughters still don’t want to think about their parents having sex.

==========

The top image is Hawaiian Boy and Girl, a 1928 mural by Arman Manookian. Next comes a photo of Kids by Guilherme Moreira.

The Untouchables Cast, 1960, follows from left: Nicholas Georgiade, Paul Picerni, Robert Stack, and Abel Fernandez.

City Lou, Sonoma, CA: Hamburger, Fries, and a Coke is the following image, photographed by Missvain. Sarah Stierch (CC BY 4.0)

An Indian Air Force Model Airplane, photographed by Nikolaevna Romanov, is the succeeding offering.

Finally, the author of the bottom poster of the Follies Bergere is Pal. All the images come from Wikipedia Commons.

July 16, 2023

The Take and Give and Forth and Back of Love


When we think of love, do we wish to give or receive? The answer is personal and includes both, but not always.

Let’s begin with reception. We wish to be loved, to feel it, and recognize the other’s patience and fixed attention.

Who doesn’t want to be heard, known, and understood? No one.

We dream of three words. Many wish they could speak the exact phrase unafraid: to utter “I love you” while holding the hand of the beloved and viewing eyes full of color, luster, and lust only for you. There is freedom and risk in this; a tightrope walk to a fuller life or a shattered heart.

We hope to be taken seriously, beyond appearance, to the recognition of our wholeness — neither objectified nor commodified. Sex, yes, but more. Tenderness, concern, sacrifice, poetry, and astonishment, too.

Flowers and candy are desirable but don’t necessarily convey much thought.

Which flowers? What kind of candy? Do you know her favorites? 

The best gift tells of a search for what will bring tears to this person and no other because such a present comes from insight, awareness, and comprehension of a non-generic heart.

Love is the unmarked path from complexity to simplicity — intense but easeful in the end, alive with smiles, humor, and touch. 

You extend yourself not to create indebtedness but because you wish your partner joy, and her joyfulness pleases you.

As the French call it, amour exists in the space before and after scent and sensuality. It lives between seeing and hearing, words spoken and those unsaid. There is a back and forth to it, a fullness inside to the point of bursting.

To be in love seeks no replacement part or participant. Someone new is unnecessary. It does not wait for a more fitting other, more dazzling magic, a trade of this for that as if dealing in stocks and bonds.

There are always possible substitutes, but the lover does not seek them like next year’s cellphone, with new features and claims of more than you imagined.

The nature of “the one” creates beauty lasting in the eye even when other heads no longer turn in her direction. You see her image afresh, permanently as she was.

Bonded hearts contain shared challenges and friendship, as well as intellectual admiration. The sensation is like an anesthetic trance you wish to last forever. The appreciation of the other fills your hours and fuels the want to say “yes” and give until the waterfall crests. 

Some important advice: do not take this wondrous state for granted. You must renew its lease. 

A living, loving romance is playfulness and laughter. Youthful when aged, the grateful amazement and contradiction of excitement amidst stillness. Secure because you are not alone and as close to oneness as possible.

How do you know it isn’t an illusion? You don’t, not yet, maybe never, though it helps to share histories and hardships, your separate worlds before you joined them.

Here is an unreal reality worth seeking. That at least once, when together, the world will disappear. Then, no women or men shall exist but the two of you. Call yourselves Adam and Eve, or whatever names and genders apply.

And when you eat from the tree of knowledge, you will know who stands before you as if for the first time.

==========

The photo is the 1898 work of Frank Eugene, initially published in Camera Work. It is called Adam and Eve, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

February 5, 2023

Who Will You be in Twenty Years?

Once we reach adulthood, most of us believe we possess a permanent essence. We are not identical to others but unique and different, expecting to remain much as we are. 

Holding this belief, we plan for the future, assuming our happiness will depend on whether we achieve our twenty-something goals.

Ah, but goals change, at least for many. Moreover, the exact form of our transformations can’t be predicted. Here is a simple example:

As a boy, I loved vanilla ice cream, chocolate less, strawberry never.

Surprise!

In middle age, I discovered I fancied the strawberry flavor, like my father, and now, as my oldest grandson does.

My first awareness of such possible alterations began in 1971 when I listened to a radio broadcast of the Mahler Symphony #2 given the year before at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. Leonard Bernstein (LB) conducted.

The 80-minute Resurrection Symphony (as it is called) moved me to make myself a promise. If I ever had enough money to take a trip to wherever LB performed it again, I’d do so.

Time passed. I completed school, and my professional life began. Bernstein continued his own.

After more than 15 years, I read the announcement I’d been waiting for. The New York Philharmonic would offer the music under Lenny’s baton in April 1987. I made the trip.

You could say I expected too much. Perhaps. But veteran music lovers recognize no two performances are identical, even within the same few days. The rendition was fine, but the rocket to the celestial realm failed to arrive.

Why?

The simple answer was this: Lenny and I were more than a decade older. Before the downbeat, I’d attended a few live presentations of the same work, caught many recordings of the composition, and lived a fistful of years.

That slice of my existence contained numerous shake-ups, shake-offs, amendments, revisions, complications, joys of the heart, and tweaks of all kinds. Tempests arrived and departed, fears were faced and faded, and triumphs and defeats lived in and through.

I imagine the conductor would have said something similar, though he came in an older body, one he was wearing out.

In its entire nature, the aging process can’t be anticipated. We cannot predict who we will become, no matter what we believe.

We understand mortality not at all unless a near-death experience has convincingly threatened us. Our knowledge of personal death is otherwise abstract, neither gripping nor complete.

Just so, imagining the fullness of the career I enjoyed was unknown, nor how my children and patients would transform me.

Does your crystal ball foresee what doors will open to you, what people you will encounter, the accidents ahead, or the betrayals of your body by your body? 

Who can predict the lucky breaks, world events to be written in history books, the kind and unkind people around the corner, or the impact of a thousand other things?

Neither your brain nor your physical makeup is a stationary entity. 

According to the April 1, 2021 issue of Scientific American*, “In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion (cells) will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.” The automated process will reinvent you to some degree regardless of your best efforts in exercise and diet.

Trust me, you will not be the same and shouldn’t be the same, given the tuition-free experience of a lifetime.

Were you to meet your older self on the street, you might perceive the resemblance but not the full character of the fellow.

I’d venture that most of us believe the wisdom of the old is the gift of self-awareness and experience rather than changes to the operation of our brain and body. If the common man is correct, how do we account for the extraordinary intensity of emotion we observe in an active child?

He did not learn this.

In our teens, we continue to possess a similar intensity, perhaps more on occasion. Still, it begins to decline so that many unwise, unthinking, non-self-reflective souls often appear sedate and thoughtful before their end.

Rather than supposing such a one grew from increasing mastery and reconsideration of his mistakes, I’d venture his body often took the lead in the mellowness and acceptance the years delivered.

In Plato’s Republic, the author recalls a conversation between Socrates and an aged friend:

Socrates: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.

And this is a question I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the ‘threshold of old age’: Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?

Cephalus: I will tell you, Socrates, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says, and at our meetings the complaint of my acquaintances commonly is, ‘I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away; there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life.’

Some complain of the slights put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly how many evils their old age is the cause.

But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really at fault. For if old age were the cause, I too, being old, and every other old man would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known.

How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles. He was asked, ‘How does love suit with age, Sophocles? Are you still the man you were?’ He replied, ‘Peace! Most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master.

Four points should be emphasized:

  1. Socrates was about 71 at the time of his death.
  2. Years before, he could not have forecast that he would be sentenced to death for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens by encouraging in them the thoughtful questioning he practiced.
  3. A reduction in sex drive is standard in aged men, many of whom are at relative peace with it. No man in his prime would find the decline or the acceptance imaginable. Of those who maintain an active sex life in old age, few say the experience is as mindblowing as during their sexual heyday.
  4. There is much to enjoy for curious seniors who maintain adequate but imperfect health, good luck, and enough money to meet their needs without significant concern. Other advantages include a sense of calm, freedom from many worries and responsibilities, self-acceptance, and gratitude for what remains. Of course, the present is not identical to their past life. Much of their joy comes from friendship, children, and grandchildren, not heroic achievements.

Shakespeare, among others, noted we are “time’s fool,” meaning that time plays with us as ancient kings did with their court jesters (also called fools), kept nearby to entertain the monarch.

We do not know how much time we have and who we will be as we progress through whatever allotment comes our way. Nor is the breathtaking acceleration of the day’s pace conceivable until we find each 24 hours speeding ahead.

Best to fulfill your hopes early, especially if their fulfillment requires the energy, enthusiasm, and intensity a young body was made for.

Bucket lists come without guarantees. If it is unlikely that you can grasp the experience of mid-life and old age ahead of time, the list may need unexpected revision.

Those much older folks look strange, don’t they?

You see, I am time’s fool, as well.

I laugh more than ever in playing my part.

If “all the world’s a stage,” as Shakespeare said, I have been well cast.

===============

*The authors of the Scientific American article are Mark Fischetti and Jen Christiansen. 

All of the images above are sourced from Wikiart.org/ In order from the top, they are Futuristic Woman, 1911, by David Burliuk, Flight to the Future by Wojciech Siudmak, Teiresias Foretells the Future of Odysseus by Henry Fuseli, ca. 1800, and Future, 1943, by Agnes Lawrence Pelton.

August 7, 2022

Men Who May Be Trouble for You: Five Signs of How to Spot Them

How do we know when an attractive person might not be right for us?

Here are some suggestions with visual aids for identifying men to avoid.

1.

The fellow above is up in the air, feet not close to the ground. He believes he possesses many ideas and schemes to make him rich, but few, if any, are realistic.

Such people tend not to take responsibility, instead blaming others for the endless failures of plans whose time never comes. Take special care not to lend these fellows money. The promise of sure-fire success is usually too good to be true.

2.

We live in a world where drugs and alcohol are everywhere. Numerous websites list the signs of alcoholism.

Some alcoholic men are charming, hold down decent jobs, and tell you they can quit at any time. Denial is a hallmark of the condition. Unfortunately, as the old play on words tells us, “Denial is not a river in Egypt.”

The addiction can creep up and overtake life’s every aspect but is challenging to reverse. The ancient Chinese proverb states, “First the man takes the drink, then the drink takes the man.” Women, too.

3.

The sculpture depicts a man who cannot keep his pants on. While a healthy sex life is an evolutionary necessity, I have met ladies who knew the totality of their worth beyond appearance and allure. They also desired respect for their intellect, artistic giftedness, career, sensibility, and kindness.
 
Once past the honeymoon stage, a relationship must include more than the flesh. You might want to find out early whether the gent considers you more than a plaything unless you conceive of that as an acceptable long-term role.

4.

If you wish your male partner to leave you alone and focus on his career, the chap above is the man for you.

Whether he is interested or capable of offering more than a paycheck remains an open question. Nor will the preoccupied gentleman share in the responsibility and joy of parenting his children.

The sculpture is intended to represent any man standing near and viewing it. The nameplate behind the bronze figure in the right corner of the photo features the following poem by Philip Levine:

They said I had a head for business
They said to get ahead
I had to lose my head.
They said be concrete
& I became
concrete.
They said,
go, my son,
multiply,
divide, conquer.
I did my best.

Reading it on site requires a position similar to the one displayed by the incomplete metal man in front of you. The viewer bends over just behind the thing he imitates.

5.

In a well-functioning twosome, we must listen to our lover.

Many people attempt to impress by speaking. More than a few seek to influence another.

Of special value is a rarer person who listens with quiet intensity. Such a one evaluates the moment and what the other needs rather than jumping forward for the next thing he wishes to utter. Slowing the conversation and thinking through what has been said allows him to learn more.

Beware of anyone who talks over (or interrupts you) with regularity. It is a matter of incivility and disrespect in failing to allow you to finish your thought.

Words needn’t collide. In some moments, silence draws us closer. Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher, understood there were limits to what speech could communicate by itself. His most famous quote was this:

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

=======

The top sculpture photo is called Slight Uncertainty by Michael Trpak. It is located in Prague. The picture below it shows Two Friends Enjoying Their Belgian Beer in 1971, sourced from History Daily. The next figure of the Man Who Can’t Keep His Pants On is by Jean-Louis Corby. It is followed by Corporate Head by Terry Allen, at the Ernst and Young Plaza in Los Angeles. Finally, Le Silence (An Homage to Salvidor Dali). 

June 5, 2022

Erotic Transference in a World of Online Therapy

 
What happened when therapy became virtual at the pandemic’s beginning? Did erotic transference die quietly because of the physical separation of counselor and client? Did the small screen reduce the scope of sexual feelings?
 
Perhaps not, since I read no obituary in the news. Still, it is worth thinking about what has become of the inevitability of desire in the human interaction of some who seek treatment.
 
Erotic transference refers to the patient’s growing sexualized affections for the clinician in talking about her feelings and the significant players in the drama of her life. Parents, caretakers, past lovers, abusers, or others might metaphorically slip into these one-to-one settings unseen, producing an outsized and complicated response to the therapist.
 
The analyst begins to evoke dormant emotions he didn’t create.
 
In the pre-pandemic period, all sorts of detailed cues existed within the office, qualities that might have contributed to the sexualization of the other. The consulting room made these accessible to the client in a way they are not on a computer screen.

A shortlist included the following:

  • A view of the entire face and clothed body, front and back, bottom to top.
  • More noticeable eye contact.
  • Grooming characteristics and their impact on the sensory organs of the observer. Subtle skin tones, makeup, natural bodily scents or odors, perfumes, shampoo emanations, cologne, and pheromone production could encourage sexual arousal.
  • The way the person walked, moved, sat, reached, and shook hands.
  • His attire.
  • An intimate and unvarying background domain, quiet and the same each week.
  • The healthcare professional’s voice was unaffected by the distortion of a computer speaker or headphones.
  • Small facial expressions.
  • An absence of distractions as opposed to a less controlled setting.

Put simply, the office was an environment decorated and modified by the healer, made consistent and safe by him. It included objects little changed in successive sessions. Physical nearness to him was one of those stabled features.

Unintended changes from the old way of doing things should have worked against the emergence of passion in post-COVID treatment relationships. But perhaps there are other considerations:

  • The current unavailability of nearness to a doctor or psychiatric social worker might make them more attractive to some people. Imagine a client whose past experience with parents or lovers included their tendency to push her away or display inconsistency in expressing affection.
  • A new analyst, “out of reach” due to a change in the provision of psychotherapeutic services, could serve unconsciously as another chance to achieve the kind of love she’s searched for, the person “difficult to get.”
  • Unlike the doctor’s office, online contact gives the patient possible control of 50% of the framework for the meeting. Clients set up computers in bedrooms, bathrooms, automobiles, nearby pools, and other locations.
  • Although not all possess the ease of finding privacy, some capacity to arrange the decoration, lighting, and background is more available than prevails in another person’s building.
  • Since travel to and from the psychologist’s location is unnecessary, attire can also be controlled and sexualized.
  • Without the need to leave home, it becomes easier to drink alcohol or use other substances to disinhibit one’s emotions and become more provocative.
  • Many people watch TV and movies on their computers, iPads, and phones. The device thus transforms into a place of “performances.” The sexualization of the session exists in a world of potential unreality, encouraging a client’s inclination to take a performative risk.
  • The power of words, an analyst’s kindness, and a level of attention the patient might never have experienced can still serve as potent aphrodisiacs. Remember, love relationships began and survived in the pre-computer age of letter writing.
  • In 2020 pet ownership rose to 70% of American households. Pandemic-driven starvation for physical contact and touch (skin hunger) may explain a part of this phenomenon. It might motivate an increased want for the caress (and more) from someone who appears devoted to your wellbeing.

To sum up, we don’t know the extent to which virtual (online) therapy increases or diminishes erotic transference. Many of the various effects of the pandemic are little studied, leaving anecdotal evidence at best.

We all recognize that humanity would not exist but for sexual appetite. Sex and love endure through wartime, plagues, environmental destruction, and more.

Think of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, in Homer’s Odyssey. She waited 20 years for her husband’s return when he left to fight in the Trojan War.

The power of another’s gaze, warmth, careful listening, and voice remain available to us, no matter the change in therapeutic format. The enlarged distance from the therapist might even enhance his sense of mystery.

The hope for intimacy and the heartbeat of desire have survived with less assistance.

=================

The first image is called Sculpture in Paradise by Philip Jackson, located at the center of the cloisters of Chichester Cathedral. The photo is by surreyblonde from Pinterest. Next comes Khao Luang Cave Temple, Phetchaburi, Thailand, sourced from Cheezburger.com/ Finally, Factory Butte, Utah, a 2019 work by Laura Hedien with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

November 21, 2021

A Checklist For Change

Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens)

If you meet someone not seen in 20 years, only to discover he is unchanged, you might ask

Why not? Shouldn’t he have been altered by time and experience?

Unless your old friend has been “on ice” — freeze-dried, flash-frozen, cryogenically preserved — isn’t change a reasonable expectation?

The writer Mark Twain thought so. He saw the long-gone youthful version of himself in need of lots of revision:

Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckleheadedness — and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at 19 and 20.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as self-observing and motivated to reshape himself as was Twain. According to Edward Young in Love of Fame:

At 30 man suspects himself a fool;
knows it at 40, and reforms his plan;
At 50 chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all his magnanimity of thought
Resolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same.

The 19th-century writer Robert Louis Stevenson was less amusing and more scornful on the same subject:

To hold the same views at 40 as we held at 20 is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched (spanked) but none the wiser.

It is as if a ship’s captain should sail to India from the Port of London; and having brought a chart (map) of the Thames (River) on deck at his first setting out, should obstinately use no other for the whole voyage.”

What follows is a short (and incomplete) checklist of areas of personality or behavior that might be expected to alter during adult life.

The Thing You Cannot Do. Let’s start with something different for each person.

Late in her long life, Eleanor Roosevelt was asked what guidance she might give to the people listening to her on the radio. She said,

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Indeed there is no better or more crucial potential area of change than whatever the “thing” is for you. What is it that is too hard, too scary?

Only you know the answer.

Physical Activity. “Use it or lose it.” T.S Elliot put it in a few more words —

The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

Don’t let your bodily capacities go without a fight. Concede only what age requires, not more.

Interests. Do you read only the same types of books, listen only to the same music, engage in the identical hobbies of your youth? Some people keep learning, exploring, and investigating new things. They say that it keeps them young.

Beware of retirement without friendships and other interests to fill your former workday. Those who lack such things are often miserable. One is well advised to diversify one’s investments in activities and people, not just a financial portfolio.

Appearances. Ecclesiastes tells us “all is vanity.” That portion of the Bible reminds us that much of what we value has no real meaning or purpose. Thus, perhaps your attitude toward the “appearance” of things, whether it be a dress or your residence, might be subject to modification as you age.

The wise man or woman recognizes what is worth esteem and dismisses many contrary opinions of others.

Material Things. To continue the point just made, no one gets out alive. In the end, you leave life with as little as you had when you arrived. Nonetheless, some become more covetous, continuing to shop and buy in an apparent effort to outlast their possessions.

In contrast, others care less for “things” and disencumber themselves, including giving their money away.

Self-Assertion/Anger. One might hope to learn diplomacy, be more direct, enlarge the capacity to stand up for oneself, and reduce sarcasm, not to mention outbursts and a desire for vengeance.

KIndness. If you have not realized the importance of kindness, then you may as well live on a desert island by yourself.

Food. Do you eat only what your mother made for you? Other things might be delicious. Do you dine the same way you did growing up or moderate your appetite and control salt intake?

Time. Most people become more mindful of time’s passage as they age, sensing its increased velocity with less of the race track of time ahead. Robert Southey wrote,

Live as long as you may; the first twenty years are the longest half of your life!.

If this notion doesn’t alter how you use the fleeting moment — cause you to employ it wisely — you are not paying attention to a basic fact of human existence. For example, famous musicians (Artur Schnabel, Carlo Maria Giulini, and Bruno Walter) narrowed their repertoire as they aged. They wished to concentrate on the music most meaningful to them, knowing the day was short.

Sex. Biology and age dictate some changes in this department.

Plato applauded the reduction of passion in older men. He believed they were not as much the plaything of the hormonal flood as those in the burst of early manhood. Rationality was thereby increased in his view.

An old joke about intercourse and marriage goes something like this. If you put a penny in a jar every time you have sex in the first year of a permanent relationship and take one out every time after that, you will never empty the container!

Money. If you know someone who lived through the “Great Depression,” you may realize traumatic events can generate long-lasting effects. Many of those who survived a decade of 25% unemployment remained very careful about spending. Remember, too, the photos of children pushing wheelbarrows full of paper currency during the German hyperinflation of the 1920s just to purchase a loaf of bread.

On the other side are those who spend without regard to the possibility they might need it for a rainy day or their child’s education.

Ambition. Most of what is excellent in the world, and too much of what isn’t, is due to ambition. I’m speaking of blind and belligerent ambition in the latter case.

This quality tends to swallow younger selves, but some of the power-hungry are only chronologically mature, to humanity’s misfortune. Here are thoughts from Colin Davis, a 38-year-old symphony conductor, when he offered them:

I think that to so many, what happens (as we age) is the death of ambition in the conventional sense. The great driving motor that prods you and exasperates you and brings out the worst qualities in you for about 20 years is beginning to be a bit moth-eaten and tired.

I find that I’m altogether much quieter, I think; I don’t love music any less; but there’s not the excess of energy that I used to spend in enthusiasm and in intoxication (with it). I feel much freer than I’ve ever been in my life.

Friendship. Besides freedom from physical pain and financial instability, little produces mature life satisfaction as much as friendship. Many realize this as they age and come to value fraternity and intimacy more.

Appreciation. Some of us see the downside of life, others the upside. The unlucky may have good reason to be unhappy.

Unhappiness can also be found in how an individual perceives the world. His lived reality may not be much worse than the norm. As the losses pile up later in life, we do well to nourish our sense of gratitude.

Being Like Your Parents. Just about everyone tries to make sure they imitate only their parents’ good characteristics, leaving the rest behind. The act of disencumbering ourselves of this unwanted baggage is the job of a lifetime if one is honest.

Robert Lowell described its difficulty in “Middle Age” from For the Union Dead:

At forty-five,
what next, what next?
At every corner,
I meet my Father,
my age, still alive.

A sobering thought. But then, much depends on cherry-picking the best of your parents.

No time to lose. Or, perhaps, you needn’t make haste.

I guess it all hinges on what you think about the need to change.

But trust me, you do need to. Rainer Maria Rilke’s Archiac Torso of Apollo very simply:

You must change your life.

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The top photo is of Mark Twain.

July 12, 2021

Erotic Transference and the Fantasy Lives of Therapists

My father, a man of uncommon decency, kept an issue of Playboy Magazine in the closet he used for his overcoats. I discovered this item while snooping around the house, not expecting that. The featured model was Jayne Mansfield.

This happened in the late 1950s, long before the unending pornographic video flood undercut the thrill of “dirty photos.” US citizens of the time lived in a post-Victorian, white man’s dream world, just prior to birth control pills and the sexual revolution. Then they continued in a non-Victorian, more sexualized version of the same thing.

I was old enough to fathom why a man might be interested in perusing color pictures of the famous blond beauty in all her air-brushed nakedness. I put the magazine back as dad left it, never confessed my discovery, and didn’t try to interrogate.

If my sire had fantasies despite sleeping next to the woman of his dreams every night, I imagined everyone did.

Therapists do, too.

I notice beautiful women still and didn’t close my eyes when they entered the office for psychotherapy. Another psychologist mentioned such beauties energized him, helped him focus his attention on “the person” behind the attractive face and form.

Hmm.

This man maintained an active sex life, by the way. To my knowledge, he didn’t engage in affairs with his patients but acquired a reputation for more than a few of the extramarital variety at one of the hospitals where we both practiced.

Counselors are not eunuchs. Acquiring a license to practice doesn’t require neutering.

We “notice,” and some few do more than take in the visual, feminine glories of the natural world despite ethical codes forbidding the mix of romantic engagement with those who come with personal problems.

Intimacy with a therapist is never the solution to those problems, though some professionals persuade themselves it is a different manner of “helping.” In case you haven’t realized it yet, we homo sapiens can convince ourselves of anything, justifying murder, robbing our kids of their credit cards, and more.

I can’t tell you I never fantasized about the women I treated. I don’t recall doing so, however. But then, we don’t remember every dark night dream of body and soul, do we?

Did I have those fantasies or not? I still can’t be certain. Most of the time, I compartmentalized or separated home from work. What fantasies I do recollect didn’t derive from doctor-patient interaction.

I never overstepped professional limits, despite invitations offered in straightforward confessions of love from female clients. These included one lovely who brought a kit of sex toys and a variety of condoms to a session and proceeded to unload them on my desk.

The topic of sexual transference continues to pull in readers to my blog, as well as the writing of others. The humans alive today, every one of us, are here because the drive to procreate remains in the DNA passed to us and through us.

I heard females, a limited number, mention our sessions stimulated their lubrication.

I recall another dear person I referred to a different psychologist because we couldn’t resolve and move beyond her transference, aka, her obsessive wish to be my lover.

In our final meeting, she asked for a parting hug. Weeks before, she presented a pencil drawing of me holding her. Since I couldn’t predict how far she might take an embrace, I refused. Anger followed.

Another woman, paradoxically, could not have been further from capturing my interest. She did refer to her satisfying sex life with her husband, but this wasn’t what prompted her to consult me. Nor was the brief report remarkable.

I found nothing stimulating in her intellect, personality, appearance, or her way of walking or moving, speaking or smiling. She didn’t flirt and didn’t wear revealing clothing. I guess the lady was in her 40s or early 50s.

And yet, I felt drawn to her. By the process of elimination, I can only conclude she produced an oversupply of pheromones.

My boundaries and respect for those who requested guidance stopped me from considering the pursuit of touch outside those limitations, as did my love for my wife and a set of clear principles. I never needed to think about potential public humiliation, financial ruin, and vocational catastrophe.

None of this makes me a saint, in case you wondered. If you can find one, let me know.

But, I heard a few stories from men who did destroy their lives and those of their victims.

Two of my patients, defrocked former ministers, sought my services because they’d taken advantage of their religious authority and charismatic charm with multiple members of their separate congregations. One still retained an imposing presence and a powerful voice, a capacity he’d used to deliver stirring sermons. His shame was almost palpable.

Another man I’m thinking of, a doctor, employed several ex-patients in his office of female employees. Those with whom I spoke all admired him, but people in authority who provide treatment to a person in distress often receive this kind of attachment and appreciation.

This is what erotic transference tends to involve. The transferential object needn’t be Brad Pitt or whoever is the latest heartthrob.

Well, the odd man I’m describing owned lots of “presence,” an indefinable quality of strength or self-assertion, self-confidence, or magnetism setting an individual apart from others. One might describe it as an aura of sorts.

Most of humanity becomes invisible in a crowd, while those with “presence” stand out no matter their size.

Thus, perhaps it should be without surprise to discover the physician I’m describing took one of his employees, a former patient of course, into his office about once a week.

The couch doubled as a foldout bed. If you entered his “castle” after she exited, the scent of sex remained.

Back to me. I confess I sometimes could be a bit too attentive to the faces and bodies seeking psychological assistance. At least my eyes were. As a psychologist, you need to remind yourself of what you are doing, what your duty is and return your attention to the patient’s needs.

This isn’t difficult if your role remains well-defined internally. Most get this right, I suspect. Otherwise, malpractice insurance costs would be closer to those of medical specialists.

Patients test therapists. Not all, but some of those whose life histories included soul-breaking physical and emotional violations.

A few push their new doctor with displays of anger or intimate provocation. They come to the consulting room with memories of people who appeared kind and turned cruel, the ones who offered comfort as an avenue to their own carnal and controlling advantage.

These injured folks don’t want to be hurt again. They plan attire and enticement to assure themselves the kindly and wise Dr. Jekyll won’t become Mr. Hyde. I also encountered a couple of traumatized women who brought small knives into the office in an attempt to menace me.

Safety and testing take many shapes. It can also serve to control the practitioner, rather than submitting to control by him.

I’ve read nothing about erotic transference and countertransference (when the counselor experiences a desire to pursue a client) specific to the new virtual, computer-mediated age of treatment.

It will be interesting if research informs us whether the power of transference can jump over and through the Zoom screen. I imagine it sometimes can.

From a distance of 10 years since retirement, my take on all this is that we psychologists and other helping professionals cannot but bring the whole of our humanity and personality into our vocation. Knowing yourself well as a healer means you should keep your focus and actions in check.

Of course, we are human, and humans do many things they shouldn’t. Be grateful, then, to find those talented professional souls who don’t, no matter their line of work.

======================

The first photo is of Ingrid Bergman and Mathias Wieman in a promotional shot from the 1954 movie Fear. The following image is a screenshot of Eva Marie Saint from On the Waterfront, also of the same year. Finally, a screenshot of Audrey Hepburn in War and Peace, a 1956 movie. All are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

July 12, 2020

If You Could Have Dinner with Anyone, Anywhere, Who …

Have you changed your mind in, say, the last nine years? How about the most recent six-months?

I hope so.

In 2011 I wrote a post about an invitation to a feast. Any reader might choose anybody to be his companion in my hypothetical scenario.

The possibilities were unrestricted. Any person alive or dead would qualify: If You Could Have Dinner with Anyone in the World …

What I didn’t consider in offering the challenge and posting responses was a thing called time. Time appeared a near-infinite concept. No one who responded to my query lived in the presence of Azreal, the Grim Reaper, so far as they or I knew. Infection did not stalk the earth.

People made bucket lists assuming the planet would be as open to them in, say, nine years, as it stood on the day my essay popped up on WordPress. The normal human concerns about money, romance, and work remained ... normal. My respondents weren’t locked down, mask-wearing, social distancing creatures.

If you wanted to hug someone you’d hugged 100 times before, you might reach for embrace #101 without a thought. No dread needed to fill your head.

The value of skin against skin hadn’t skyrocketed. Closeness wasn’t an existential issue. Your loved one didn’t carry Death’s scythe with which to harvest you.

Now we esteem lives in a different way. Some of us do, at least. Indeed, there is a partisan difference even in Americans’ sex lives: Sex in the Era of Coronavirus.

But overall, perhaps we understand, in a less abstract way than we did in the pre-pandemic era, nothing is guaranteed. OK, taxes and death, the old standbys. Nothing else. The topic today is the same one in the earlier article, but with a guarantee of safety unneeded then.

If you could have a meal with anyone in the world, living or dead, who would it be? In this imaginary opportunity, the food will be safe; the virus will be vanquished, no caution to keep six feet apart, or wash hands again and again.

Is the question too easy? Are the answers predictable? I’m guessing the list of people is more limited. Perhaps I’m wrong.

Surprise me. Or not.

—–

The first image above is Death and Life by Gustav Klimt, sourced from Wikiart.org/ The one below it is Grim Reaper obtained from FreeSvg.

June 14, 2020

Thinking About the Erotic Leap in a World Without Touch

The human world is aching. Hands and shoulders and skin are beyond reach. We have awakened to a sensual world in flight, moving at least six feet away.

What would you give for a handshake or a hug, a kiss independent of memory, arousal satisfied by a hand not yours. Perhaps you recall your head resting over another’s heart, hearing the life pulse, moved by the rise and fall of breath.

There are fleshly palms I’d like to surround, soft cheeks to brush past, downcast heads to lift in my hands. I’d spread high-fives all around, eyes close up, too.

Our on-guard stance against illness doesn’t permit either the comfort or intensity we seek in embracing. Our passions are chilled, bottled-up, beaten down. The perspiration of the skin almost asks permission to release itself.

We are amid a famine, even we lucky ones who remain nourished by food and don’t live alone. We want the bodies, the faces, the nearby smiles we lack. Artificial substitutes are earth-bound and distant, no matter that man was not meant to be alone.

We make do. The voices speak on phones across the world. Masks hide faces speeding through stores. Proximity is shunned. The Zoom-altered space-time continuum offers lips that move … followed by broken, inhuman sounds. If space aliens appeared, immune from our looming affliction, we would surrender and rush into their strange arms … all five of them.

I once treated a woman so starved for affection, she coupled with a canine. I believed her at the time but now understand her more.

We want sex, no mistake. But I heard many female patients talk about their need to be held – just held, including those with a regular bed partner. It is worth remembering what one hears on the battlefield among the wounded. They call not to lovers but to mothers.

Humans survived because love and care and emotional intimacy signified more than lovemaking. The buttons to such responses overlap the erotic zone, but one can also be mistaken for the other.

The sex of things is not solely dependent upon what catches the eye. It can be kindness or words or a voice or a gentle touch as much as security or a reminder of someone else. No wonder we experience the presence of erotic transference in the therapist’s office.

We are befuddled creatures, we humans: confusing and confused, less rational than we’d like to believe, unable to predict our feelings far ahead of the present. Kirkegaard acknowledged this truth: “Life can only be understood backward, but must be lived forward.” Backward, indeed, but not always grasped even then.

In 1900 the average life expectancy for men in the USA was 46.3 years. People laughed at home and made love at home. They gave birth, got sick, and died at home.

The cycle of life had many witnesses. Death made his place in the next room, overheard in an unfair wrestling match, an unbeatable competitor you recognized. Those people knew what we have been reminded of.

Perhaps hellos and goodbyes meant more in those days. No planes eased the route to reunion. Travel required time and patience. Letters were sent by snail mail while the writer lived, many arriving when he or the reader or both were dead.

Now we recognize (or should admit) “next time” is a wish without guarantee, a blessing when fulfilled. We’ve sobered up from a mass delusion of early death as an oddity, a fantasy never bothering to say goodbye. It left too many the parting gift of the grim reaper’s embrace.

The lessons of our ancestors need relearning. Catastrophe has a way of forcing its muscular arms around us. Remember that when all the unhugged-hugs – the ones pressing out from the prison of your skin – finally emerge from captivity.

Like Times Square at the end of WWII, when strangers swept each other into their arms, the reborn world will discover our reconstituted virginal state.

Our mundane existence will be reenchanted.

There are simple things worth waiting for.

—–

The three images are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. First comes The Embrace by Auguste Rodin, then William Adolph Bouguereau’s Admiration (Cupid). The final artwork is Mary Cassatt’s Maternal Caress.

May 17, 2020

Sensuality Is More Than Sexuality

James Baldwin, the towering black writer, can widen your comprehension of things you thought you understood. Take the word sensual.

The essayist and activist wrote this in The Fire Next Time:

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.

Baldwin feared for those who are unable to “renew themselves at the fountain of their own lives.”

At times he found such renewal in his black community of the ’50s and ’60s, a quality “of zest and joy and a capacity for facing and surviving disaster. … a freedom that was close to love.”

He observed this characteristic at “church suppers and outings … where rage and sorrow sat in the darkness and did not stir, and we ate and drank and talked and laughed and danced and forgot all about the (white) man. We had the liquor, the chicken, the music, and each other, and had no need to pretend to be what we were not.”

Baldwin is talking about being in touch with all emotions and all five senses. A thing natural and unstudied.

He noticed this in unself-consciousness, in losing oneself to the sound and feel and texture of things. We see it in a gifted athlete’s abandon and grace as he speeds toward a distant, perhaps catchable ball and the same young man’s sense of muscular weariness after expending all his energy at the game’s end.

You needn’t search far for these experiences. One can reach down and claw up a clump of earth on a rainy day. The fragrance is the aroma of life and the potential for regeneration.

The sensual is at hand in rejoicing over birdsong and the concentrated, savoring, unrushed consumption of a tasty meal. It is there without charge in a subtle perfume evoking the skin of someone you love and the heartache when you are distant from her.

The songs that quicken us access the hidden truth we know of ourselves and in ourselves. When we say we are “moved” by an event, we should remember this: movement speaks to the urgency of the body to do what it was made for.

Sensuality inhabits the morning light of the bluest skies and the coyness of a shy smile. You recognize the sensual in the goosebumps of a homecoming where everyone waits for you – when you and they know of their incompleteness without you.

Perhaps you’ve found sensuality in poetry recited in hoped-for words from the right voice or a father’s protective arm around your shoulder. The mutual grip of his handshake would do as well. Your senses are engaged in each of these.

We give away too much of this in a cloud of unawareness. Routine and habit kill our aliveness to the world. Now is a moment to attend to our forgotten contact with nature outside of us and our nature inside of us.

Traps we call custom and convention interfere with showing our emotional response to the sensory corporeal world. We make sure no one sees our openness and sensitivity to the planet’s pulse, lest we become ashamed.

Concern about the opinion of others is necessary for civility, but causes us to hide anything the group might question. Religion’s focus on the sin of the erotic, for all that institution’s civilizing effects, inhibited mankind by comparison with our freer mammalian cousins.

One can find the possibility of the sensual in walking instead of riding in cars, in the buoyant life of the ocean’s salt rather than the antiseptic backyard or public pool. The computer screen offers digits and electric communication, but not the enlivening smell and slipperiness of sweat.

Weather makes no difference to our senses. Each season and atmospheric change presents its own physical gifts. Sensuality is not buttoned up or closed down, but the drumming heart of our essence, no matter the forecast.

Even in a time of limitation and disease, you can discover the reason you want to live in photos, melodies, and trees. No wonder children love fingerpainting. They don’t care how their art turns out so much as how the paint feels in their hands. They remain more at one with their bodies, joys, and sorrows than many of us.

Reawaken yourself.

All you need is in you.

—

All of the photographs are the work of the extraordinary Laura Hedien, reproduced with her generous permission: https://laura-hedien.pixels.com/ The first was taken at Wasatch Mountains, Utah. The second image depicts the Bobby Sock Area of Yellowstone National Park. The final picture shows The Milky Way and a Southwest, USA Arch. The single painting comes from Wikimedia Commons. It is Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Still Life with Ham, Lobster, and Fruit, c. 1653.