Sexual Desire and the Phenomenology of Attraction (original) (raw)

Sexual arousal and desire: Interrelations and responses to three modalities of sexual stimuli.

"Introduction. Traditionally, sexual desire is understood to occur spontaneously, but more recent models propose that desire responds to sexual stimuli. Aims. To experimentally assess whether sexual stimuli increased sexual desire; to compare how sexual arousal and desire responded to three modalities of sexual stimuli: erotic story, unstructured fantasy, and the Imagined Social Situation Exercise (ISSE). Methods. In an online study, participants (128 women, 98 men) were randomly assigned to one of four arousal conditions (ISSE, story, fantasy, or neutral), and then completed desire measures. In the ISSE, participants imagined and wrote about a positive sexual encounter with a self-defined attractive person. Main Outcome Measures. Sexual arousal (perceived genital, psychological, and perceived autonomic), anxiety, positive and negative affect, and state sexual desire via self-report measures pre- and post-condition; “trait” desire via the Sexual Desire Inventory post-condition. Results. All three sexual conditions significantly increased sexual arousal and positive affect compared with the neutral condition, with trends for higher arousal to unstructured fantasy than the ISSE or story conditions. Sexual conditions significantly increased scores on state measures of sexual desire. In addition, sexual context influenced measurement of “trait” solitary sexual desire in women, such that women reported significantly higher trait desire after the neutral and ISSE conditions vs. fantasy. Conclusion. Results highlight the responsiveness of sexual desire, problems with measurement of desire as a long-term trait, trade-offs of using the ISSE and other stimuli in sexuality research, and the need to address context in discussions of women’s and men’s desire."

An Interpretation of Desire: Essays in the Study of Sexuality

Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2005

The label 'new social physics' has been coined to denote a growth of interest in sociological questions within certain quarters of the physical and mathematical sciences (Scott, 2004; Urry, 2004). The four books reviewed here constitute an important strand in this development. Albert-Lásló Barabási is a distinguished professor of physics who has turned his hand to questions of social order and dynamics, amongst other things. Mark Buchanan has a PhD in theoretical physics, has worked on the editorial team of Nature and, like Barabási, is now showing an interest in sociological matters. Duncan Watts has gone all the way. Having obtained a PhD in theoretical and applied mechanics, and published in such journals as Nature, he is now a professor of sociology at Columbia University. All three have written popular science accounts of this social physics and it is these accounts that I am reviewing here (in addition to Watts' (1999) more advanced text). Barabási and Watts are also practitioners of this new science, however, and are major protagonists in the popular accounts which both they and Buchanan give.

The Psychic Function of Erotic Arousal.pdf

This thesis is to propose a meta-theory of human sexuality that postulates a psychic procreative function for erotic behavior. Erotic behavior is seen as aimed at the visceral integration of opposite attitudes, or opposing stances, to yield insight and a transcendent perspectives, at a deep, somatic nervous system level. This view is distinct from--but not contradictory to--a strict biologically procreative function of sexuality. The framework on which this theory hangs is that symbolic re-enactments of Eriksonian Developmental stages (as a central thesis but not an exhaustive explanation) help the nervous system release, through the convulsions of coitus, repressed awareness and the release of limiting beliefs that block Hope, Will, Purpose, Competence, Fidelity, Intimacy, Love, Empathy, and Wisdom. The developmental 'bids' for--Trust, Autonomy, Initiative, Industry, Fidelity, Intimacy, Empathy, and wisdom which enter into erotic struggles against Collapse, Shame, Guilt, (the sense of) Inferiority, Identity confusion, Isolation, Stagnation, and Despair, respectively-- are the main drive and aims of human erotic behaviors, fantasies, perversions, and account for the main causes of repression, both emotional and sexual. Keywords: somatic psychology, psychic organization, erotic arousal, self-transformation,

Review of 'The Nature of Sexual Desire' by James Giles

Culture, Health and Sexuality, 2007

In The Nature of Sexual Desire, James Giles draws together work from psychology, philosophy, anthropology and psychotherapy, but mainly uses this to support his own thesis based on ‘phenomenological inquiry’ (7). Giles’ overall thesis is that sexual desire is ‘the desire for bodily vulnerability and care with someone of the desired gender, expressed through the desire for mutual baring and caressing with that person’ (182). He unpacks this thesis throughout the book. In exploring the object of sexual desire he rejects notions that this could be reproduction, the achievement of orgasm, or engagement in a specific kind of sexual act. Rather he concludes that the object is to be physically vulnerable and naked in front of another and have them similarly vulnerable in front of you, and, within this vulnerability, to caress the other and to be caressed by them. Giles further argues that this desire is present even in practices which do not seem to be about such mutual vulnerability and caressing (such as voyeurism and fetishism).

Sexual desire as an experience of alterity

This paper analyzes the field of sexual desire within the frame of phenomenological philosophy. That approach enables an understanding of sexuality as a peculiar modality of relation with alterity. This is due to the fact that, in sexual desire, there are three dimensions of otherness: first, the other’s body/corporeality that provokes desire; second, the imaginative level that constitutes a space for transcendence with/towards/by means of the other; and last, the sociocultural level, where the rules are established for controlling sexual desire and fixing its admitted and forbidden versions.

Desire emerges from excitement: A psychophysiological perspective on sexual motivation

The psychophysiology of sex, 2007

2 In the dominant model of human sexual response sexual desire, excitement, and orgasm are distinguished as consecutive phases (DSM-IV, 1994). The model is based on the psychophysiological research of , and on the ideas of the psychiatrist and sex therapist Helen who introduced the desire phase as the phase preceding sexual excitement. Kaplan was seeing in her clinic many female patients complaining about a lack of desire for sex. Absence of sexual desire, she reasoned, points to a phase in the normal sexual response cycle that activates the wanting to experience sexual excitement. "By thus examining the current sexual experiences of 2,109 patients and couples with chief complaints of deficient sexual desire I came to the conclusion that the pathological decrease of these patients' libido is essentially an expression of the normal regulation of sexual motivation gone awry. More specifically, sexual motivation or desire, just like other needs or motives, such as hunger and thirst, is regulated by CNS control mechanisms." (Kaplan, 1995, p. 3-4). Kaplan conceptualized sexual desire as an expression of a drive, comparable to hunger and thirst, influenced by sensors that signal changes in the internal environment of the body. In her view on sexual desire, psychoanalytic thinking can be heard; thinking that has long dominated ideas about sexual motivation. Even though there is little evidence for a homeostatic mechanism in human sexual motivation, the essence of the concept of sexual drive remains in the dominant model of sexual response and in the DSM diagnosis of hyposexual desire that is based on that model. In this contribution, first, the concepts libido, lust and drive that were introduced by Freud will be discussed. Then modern motivation theory and the close relationship between emotion and motivation mechanisms will be elaborated upon. This relationship will be illustrated by recent experimental studies that we conducted on motor preparation, sexual arousal and action. Sexual arousal and desire will be considered in the light of current knowledge about neurobiological 3 mechanisms of emotion and motivation. After that we will talk about the interaction of emotion and motivation circuits in the brain, and the role of dopamine in motivation. We will conclude that current knowledge about emotion and motivation mechanisms argues against Helen Kaplan's assumption that desire and excitement are distinctive sexual response phases. Desire results from the conscious awareness of the sexually excited state of the body and the brain. This means that the experience of sexual desire can only come about through sexual excitement.