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The common sense of sex

Chapter 11: NOTE
By James Oppenheim
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Gender & Sexuality StudiesPsychiatry/PsychologySexuality & Erotica

About This Book

The author argues that sexuality is a natural human phenomenon long clouded by religious puritanism and social taboos, and surveys contemporary thought, drawing on Freud's account of childhood erotic development, fixation and the Oedipus complex, Jung's criticisms, and Edward Carpenter's notion of a third sex to explain varieties of sexual expression and perversion. He outlines mechanisms like sublimation as ways abnormal impulses can be redirected into socially useful activities, describes manifestations such as auto-erotism, exhibitionism, sadism, and homosexuality as often rooted in early development, and calls for a clearer, commonsense understanding of sexual life free from shame.

LOVE

The love of man for woman and woman for man,
It is not often love....
When the married couple kiss do they drink the music of each other’s souls,
Are they moved to unspeakable reverence and adoration,
Would they renounce the world for the good of the beloved?
No, kisses are become to them a routine and a duty:
They find each other’s bodies at midnight as they find breakfast in the morning:
And they fill the idle hours with games, shows, rides and liquor,
All to escape from one another....
I have thoughts of a love that might be:
Of a love that is the tender caress of forehead and cheeks with barely lingering hands:
Of a love that opens the skies at midnight for silent flight,
Flight far, with wings, in one another’s arms....
These lovers shall mean as much to each other as they mean to themselves:
Their tenderness shall melt down irritations:
Their passion shall surcharge tasks with meaning....
Not alone shall the man find God in himself,
But in the beloved shall he find him, and in the sight of the beloved shall he adore him....

—Songs for the New Age.

That still remains the ideal. To the couple who have found such meaning in each other, sexuality, as Havelock Ellis shows, becomes the art of love, and the union is one of joy and mystery, revealing the greatness of life.

The ideal of that sexuality remains also as Havelock Ellis states it. As I have said several times, he divides the sexual act into the forepleasure and the act itself. The forepleasure is a summarizing of many of those things looked upon as infantile and perverse, but which, as part of the art of love, become means of endearment and arousal, and lead finally to the complete consummation.

It is well, even for those who have difficulty in the matter, to keep this ideal before them as something finally capable of attainment. For, while the various items of the forepleasure may become ends in themselves, and this unavoidably because of the lack of development or the person’s type, it should not be forgotten that things undeveloped should finally be developed, so that marriage may become more complete and love deeper.

NOTE

The reader who wants to pursue the matter further, would do well to read Havelock Ellis’s Psychology of Sex, particularly volume six, which contains the famous chapter on The Art of Love.

He may also gain much by reading Freud’s General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis.

Finally, if he is interested in going more deeply into the psychology of Jung, the problems of introvert vs. extravert, and the types, he is referred to Little Blue Book No. 978 (The Psychology of Jung), Little Blue Book No. 980 (How I Psycho-Analyzed Myself) and Little Blue Book No. 985 (A Psycho-Analysis of America).

Transcriber’s Note

Some inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been retained.

  • p. 53: changed “genuie” to “genuine” (a genuine readjustment)