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A Foreword, August 27th 2003:
Post 9/11 we are attempting to come to terms with our violence and the terror that lies within each of us. From the dis-enfranchised man who guns down the people he works with, and with whom he may have shared breakfast the day before, to the thirteen year old girl who finds a boyfriend on the Internet – we are all drifting in reaction.
This was an attempt at the end of the 1980’s to examine the phenomenology of the social sexualization of the family. This was still a time of expansion – a time that we thought could not end.
Well, it has! As I write the Green River Killer may be co-operating with the Task Force from his cell to preserve his life – his breathing existence in this world. Another life, was taken in vengeance, as he sat breathing in another prison cell. Both committed acts that were labeled “sex crimes”. So what is this “sex” that caused these men to act in such a base way? How did they get there? How do we get from here? ~ And where do we go?
What is this “life” that these men fight for .........
There will be an “afterword” – later ………………
Finally, I want to thank the people I have talked with over the past thirteen years who have gifted me with their "pictures" and in whom I see infinity and transcendence. Of these I would like to thank Louise Bollman who was the first. Her life here is ended but I still see her pictures as clearly as she intended them.
Thank you!
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Introduction: 1989 The question why?
Contemporary-cultural changes are reflected in the way society socializes its youth and the effects of industrialization and urbanization have impacted both hemispheres. The young African who moves into the town feels an outsider when he visits his parents in the village. Daily in the United States, children face issues at school which are only understood by their parents at second-hand via television, radio, or newspapers.
Post 9/11 we are attempting to come to terms with our violence and the terror that lies within each of us. From the dis-enfranchised man who guns down the people he works with, and with whom he may have shared breakfast the day before, to the thirteen year old girl who finds a boyfriend on the Internet – we are all drifting in reaction.
In this century there has been an attempt to "desexualize" the libido. This may be seen as a desire to create a community of civilized super-humans without the confusing myths of human ego (i.e. religion, magic, sexual desire etc). It may also be a way in which we can understand the ‘sex crime'
Has this resulted in a new notion of the mind-body split? Does society become an uneasy co-operative of individuals rather than a community of integrated and authentically fallible humans? Will domination of Reason and Economy (Mind) over the more unpredictable feeling Flesh (Body) create a world of institutionalized schizophrenia and paranoia?
I feel that this is nowhere more evident than in the family. The increased desire for libertarian individualism, the rugged pioneer spirit, has led Io social isolation, fear, and authoritarian control issues. The sexual revolution with the following swing back into Puritanism, aggravated by the pandemics in sexually transmitted diseases, has created a rigid set of external controls (enforced and framed by the anonymous "they") which ignore the human person's existential experience of sexuality, intimacy, fellowship, and family. Freedom is no longer situated in community but confined in abstract absolutes which have lost sight of real historical context ~ A symbolic posturing without an originating experience.
This means for the person, myself, that the libido is not allowed to be a source of creative energy harnessed by the demands and paradoxes of the community within which I exist. Rather, it is an object of suspicion. The libido becomes the repository of all that is most ugly, dirty and misunderstood. This is the evil place where lurk the demons
of genital desire. The demons are publicized by the media because after all "sex is hot . . . it sizzles". But for many individuals their personal sexual lives are fraught with anxiety and questioning. I begin with Becker (1973) quoting Rank:
In essence sexuality is a collective phenomenon which the individual at all stages of civilization wants to individualize, that is control. This explains all (!) sexual conflicts in the individual from masturbation to the most varied perversions and perversities, above all the keeping secret of everything sexual by individuals as an expression of, a personal tendency to individualize as much as possible the collective element in it ( p.230).
Although Becker used this in connection with perversion as a form of sexual expression, it can be seen as an attempt to prevent individuality being suppressed within the demands of “Species standardization." This has implications for sexuality in general. The expression of an individual's sexuality is a protest against same-ness and an attempt to prevent absorption into a "body", whether that body is family, marriage or parent. The person is driven in existence by the desire to perpetuate himself or herself. One of the fundamental ways is through reproduction or, to put in a more robust way, fecundity with its implication of fruitfulness. However, in the concrete, this can only be a standardized species form limited by the realities of genetics.
The second form of self-perpetuation can be considered as existential because it involves a far more personal aspect; that of the self. Bodily procreation leaves- behind a recreation in flesh but the spiritual succession, the inner self, cannot be guaranteed.
The human need to transcend, to lift oneself from the finite flesh which decays and dies, forces the invention of other ‘immortalizing’.
The parent, in limiting the child, is doing more than exercising the role of guardianship. They are also attempting to impress their intimate inner selves upon their child, the product of love and self-love. The child in their questioning of parental mores, especially surrounding the energetic libido, is straining against this recreation. The young person seeks to establish their own identity and embark upon their own life project of immortality not that of their parent.
Lacan (1977) adds his own interpretation of the way a child may build their individual schema of their origins and direction. Through the fantasy of the primal scene, the parents in sexual encounter, the child grasps the origin of himself or herself. In the seduction and castration fantasies they begin to understand sexual drive and gender difference. The anal fantasy presents the notion of a baby being evacuated from the mother like a stool. Thus the child builds a symbolic world in their reaching for understanding the dynamics of existence.
Again, in the history of the family one understands the experiential education in sexual relations and intimacy which was intrinsic to the family dynamic. Children were not told but experienced the various rites of passage necessary for the individual in community. Sexuality was exercised in a spiritual context not a vacuum of manufactured erotic needs. Sexuality was expressed and situated as part of community, family responsibility and sensibility. It was part of a tradition that formed alliances on which the survival and development of the species depended. Perhaps this is the why, since the Industrial Revolution, families have become frightened of sexuality and have gone to such great lengths in modern times to avoid dealing with the paradox of body and spirit being one. In this context liberalization can only be an imposition upon taboos not a refraining and growth of concrete tradition.
How, and Why have we done this to ourselves?
The Human Family and Existential Sexuality:
It is necessary to clarify what I mean by sexuality to avoid confusion. In my view the major problem in writing about this subject is that the word has been confined to genital activity rather than the wider concept of relationship, interaction or dialogue that is expressed in the "language" of sexuality. The work of Rollo May (1969) elucidates this:
Sex can be defined fairly adequately in physiological terms as consisting of the building up of bodily tensions and their release. Eros, in contrast, is the experiencing of the personal intentions and meaning of the act. Whereas sex is a rhythm of stimulus and response, Eros is a state of being. (p.71).
Some of the earliest sexual experiences of a child come within the community of the family. Paradoxically this context is also the one in which many of the negative messages surrounding sexuality are experienced. Anthropology tells us that sexuality is an aspect of human existence limited by fear, taboo, awe, ritual and even magic. However few societies are as prohibitive as our own.
A study by Whiting and Child (1954) ranked societies according to their degree of permissiveness. With issues of masturbation, heterosexual play and modesty middle-class America (middle-class activity being the most liberal of the class spectrum in the U.S.) consistently ranked as the least permissive of all contemporary societies surveyed.
In my own personal experience of living in the United Kingdom, Central Africa and the United States, I have found the sexual mores of America the most confusing. In many cases children are taught about guns before relationship. Is this meant to imply that defense and attack is more important than transcendence and love? Is this bourn out by the child who, in “playing with a gun” maims or kills his or her friend – and he or she has used a parent’s sidearm?
The three aspects of sexuality; play, nudity and masturbation, represent the earliest sexual experiences that a child may have within family. The attitudes learned by the child have an important influence on the adult and on the adult's relationship within his or her own created family. Within the concept of created family, I include not only marriage and children, but also the family at work, the family of friends and the community family.
Family, in all its manifestations, is the fundamental from which society builds and develops.
In the past, family learning has often become societal norm. Commentators from the media and from academia have speculated upon the cause of the high degree of violence, mental illness and sexual dysfunction in society (Ollendo,rf, 1966: Prescott, 1975). It is generally accepted that it is the learned Prohibitions of childhood, and the subsequent repressions, that encourage this kind of "acting out".
In April 1988 a group of New York teenagers went out for a night of "wilding" in Central Park. After several small incidents the pack found a twenty eight year old female investment banker jogging alone. The police record states that they chased her down beat her for a half hour with a rock and a metal pipe before raping her. They left her bleeding and in a coma, to be found three hours later. The term "wilding" fills us with fear. It defines and obscures the transformation of normal everyday teenagers into a bloodthirsty pack of wolves seeking and hunting their prey for sport. This is our nightmare of the werewolf come into reality. The six youths indicted for rape, and later convicted by two juries, were from stable, working families. Their crimes were not motivated by the comprehensible needs of drugs racial conflict, or economics. One boy helped the elderly in his neighborhood and another was a born again Christian who encouraged his mother into joining his church. Yet these normal young men were said to have became animals of slaughter.
According to the police detective's conversation with a suspect they also seem to suffer from no remorse: "It was something to do" (Time Magazine, May 8 1988).
May be society is experiencing an existential vacuum which is being filled by anarchistic messages from the drug and heavy metal music culture. Old style family values are not sturdy enough for children to experience compassion and morality as viable behaviors. Adults, in search of identity, become orientated towards possession as a tangible expression of who they are. Stable working parents are forced to protect their identity by protecting the material "things" that surround them. Individual meaning 'comes not from who we are but from what we own. The need to learn about weapons before relationship could be to protect or win what we own, especially if that possession includes another person. Within the context of possession the concept of compassion is not cost-effective, there is no tangible reward. Even spirituality may be devalued into a religiosity - a search for "belonging", ownership by a project bigger than ourselves and which offers immortality through salvation not transcendent authentic individuality.
Popular culture brings into this vacuum the image of brutality without consequences. Even the video games enjoyed by children pay points for killing the most people. The male child is encouraged to see sexuality and violence as inextricably mixed. In a society where violence, power and possession are evident in every advertisement and with every purchase, personal histories become suffused with the same values and brutality. Given this, a young person's peer group often becomes his or her family. Wilding is an expression of identity. Individually the person is powerless and meaningless. In a group there is safety and 'belonging". Within this "family" there may be a kind of parent, a leader, who can be both-nurturing and masterful. The family has the power to validate and embolden behavior. The identification with the family allows the individual relative freedom from accountability except within the family group. Behaviors are experienced and tested in the group that are unthinkable for the individual alone.
The way in which the three prohibitions of masturbation, child sex play and nudity, are handled within the family is often used as a barometer of sexual repression. This is because not only do they relate to children but also because there are convincing arguments that the fears and prohibitions about these behaviors have no rational basis. Most commentators agree that in trying to suppress the exploration, the dangers are worse than permitting this activity.-
One can only speculate on the sexual socialization in the families of those boys who went "wilding". Raymond Santana (aged 14yrs) was described by the director of his school as "one of our nicest kids". The father of Steve Lopez (aged 15yrs) enforced curfews on him and his younger brothers. According to fellow co-defendants it was Lopez who said, "Let's rape her" and silenced her screams with blows with a brick. Antron McCray's parents cannot believe what their child has done. All of the boys come from decent, stable families and it seems incomprehensible that they might have committed such a violent and sexual crime.
There has been no shortage of advice to parents urging the tolerance of masturbation, play and nudity, as well as the acting out behaviors of youth reaching for individual autonomy. However negative attitudes have been tenacious. In one study (Finkelhor, 1980) for example, 57% of college students said that their mothers disapproved of masturbation and nearly three quarters thought that their parents disapproved of sex-play. When it is appreciated that the parents were raising their children in the supposedly liberalizing sixties then one has a sense of how tenacious these negative attitudes are.
Though the figures indicate that there is still conservatism amongst sexual mores there is an indication of a slow liberalization. Only 13% of the same sample population of college students thought masturbation bad as compared t-a 52% of their parents. Attitudes in reference to sex play amongst children were less liberal. About a third of the students participating in the study felt qualms about this activity. (Finkelhor, 1980)
Because sexual socialization and mores are not often subject to discussion within the family, liberalization is slow. The attitudes of the parents become the attitudes of the children. It seems likely that the families involved in the Central Park incident follow the same pattern as all families. The mores and values of the parents are taken for granted and never examined for relevance or validation in today's cultural context. More importantly, contemporary values of the world outside the home are superimposed on traditions that have been stripped of meaning by economic and social history.
Research into the sexual socialization in families has confined itself largely to matters of sex information and repression. These are the two most obvious areas of communication but they cannot be considered the only ones. In recent years there has been much more interest in the language of physical affection as being more influential. Inattention to an area of interest can be as important as attention. Avoiding discussion on certain subjects that may be uncomfortable sends clear messages to a child that some things are shameful about his or her body and sexual expression. We are only just allowing for the importance of non-verbal communication between child and parent. The touch, a shrug, or even a smile, become more important when they are the only cues in a vacuum left by an avoidance of discussion.
An important non-verbal message is physical affection between parents and children. Some theorists argue that this is the-cornerstone of later sexuality. It is reasonable to agree with those that describe these "interpersonal situations" as the beginnings of the self-system, and the child's relationship with the world. (Sullivan 1963, Pp. 110 -134) Children who have been held, cuddled, stroked and physically loved in the safety of the family learn to dialog with their own bodies, and to have positive feelings about-themselves. This trustful exchange will allow a more open approach to intimate physical exchanges with other people.
it is easy for parents to be physically loving with small children. Parents have a harder time as the children grow and acquire more adult physical characteristics. The adult can often be disconcerted by the feelings aroused by these adult evocations seen in the developing child. The physical withdrawal by the parents is often not anticipated by the child and is almost never discussed. They may realize that this is due to their emerging sexuality and thus place a negative evaluation on this sexual potential. The emerging sexual consciousness becomes the thing that alienated the child from the loving safe and trustworthy parent.
Kissing and hugging is the normal behavior in most middle-class American families. With one- exception these activities continue until around the age of twelve years. The exception is the experience of boys who are inhibited by societal norms in their physical relationship with their fathers, The majority of boys hug and kiss their mothers and girls can hug and kiss both parents. But only half the boys can hug and barely a third-kiss their fathers. (Finkelhor, 1980)
It is a commonly held belief that fathers become physically estranged from their daughters during adolescence. In the same survey the statistics do not confirm that fathers become nervous around their daughters emerging sexuality. But it is only the father-son dyad that becomes strained with the age of the boy.
The act of lip kissing has several different meanings within families. It has both an affectional component (a special kind of love and trust) and a sexual component. Often it is a good barometer of the level of sexual anxiety in a family. Families fearful of sexual meanings would be unlikely to allow this type of expression. Lip-kissing has a special ambiguous place in the repertory of culturally permitted forms of affection between relatives.
Physical affection between siblings is much more restrained than that between parents and children. (Finkelhor, -1980-). Only about half of all brothers and sisters hug each other by the age of twelve years. The principles of behavior seen in the parent child relationship are.also operating on a smaller scale between brothers and sisters. Again, the physical affection between brothers is severely curtailed.
It is noteworthy that the American male is denied physical intimacy from the age of twelve and that this may be interpreted as "homosexual anxiety". All physical relationships become value ridden but for the male this may represent an inhibition of the desirable exploration of the sexual self within the safe confines of family.
The male child may be influenced by the surrounding cultural cues. The erosion of taboos beginning in the Sixties has been aided by the availability of a wide range of erotic material. In the business of pornography there is the need for new and exciting frontiers to promote sales, and open up new markets. The medium has not been tardy in exploiting the theme of sex with children. In every magazine there can be found advertisements extolling the saleable qualities of youth alongside the desirability of a virile (and violent), macho image. If the child has not been allowed to explore his or her physicality then natural curiosity will educate via this type of material.
The idea of sexuality is confusing to a child. There is a sense of a secret life that adults participate in, which is not readily accessible. The subject itself is discussed infrequently and when discussion takes place, it is with all the ritual of taboo. Unlike family life in the 1800's there is not now the concrete model of open family life to experience from.
Sexuality is as basic as appetite. Watching someone put something in his or her mouth and then chewing, the child can understand this by relating it to his or her own experience. With sexual behaviors there is not the same facility of identification. Even small incidents can become highly charged with meaning. A small boy is allowed to see his mother in a bikini but not in her lingerie. This may be the first encounter with the paradox of sexuality. The complicated tangle of meanings may prove a challenge to the child's cognitive abilities.
The first admitted exposure to this world of secret meanings is rarely to do with explicit sexual matters such as intercourse. It is more likely that these concerns become important during the dance of adolescence. The younger child learns of sexuality through the management of his or her own body and that of others. The child learns what is appropriate and gratifying often through exploration and experimentation. If this is repressed then the child may perceive that physical intimacy, even with one's own body, is a highly charged and dangerous area of activity.
Within the family rules governing sexual expression and physicality can often adversely influence the adult the child will become. For example, children and parents can see each other naked until around the age of five years, after this time the doors remain closed. Even when situations arise which disrupt the rules most families uphold the complex choreography of appropriate behavior even in times of great stress. Jules Henry (1965) in his descriptions of family interactions regularly observes that family habits and communications remain fixed even in situations of extreme change. The same choreography may be passed down from generation to generation with little adaptation if there is not an interruption in the pattern. In the Rosenberg family (Henry 1965, pp 121-187) the mother continues to live in the tradition of the "Old World schtetl". The woman of the house is the mother of the whole family, including the father. Mrs. Rosenberg, true to her tradition, hides her disappointment in her husband as father to the children, and participates in the sham that he is deserving of respect. In doing so she can never escape the drudgery of her life and can only remain disappointed in her sons' inability to realize her dreams. Adults learn to deny the existence of their flesh and separate body from soul. Mrs. Rosenberg's soul is deep within her children but her body is confined to a daily grind. In relationship with the beloved it may prove difficult to reconcile the two again. She cannot hope to realize herself through her children because it is impossible to exist as them.
Interestingly enough, conversations between parents and children about sexuality is almost as embarrassing as nudity. Discussion of sexual experiences raise possibility of sexual imagery and the other's interpretation of how it is expressed. The telling of a dirty joke is an unambiguous expression of the child's interest in sexuality. Nudity is less threatening in that the sexual meaning is ambiguous. Presently, families seem more organized to avoid the explicit recognition of the sexual aspects of its members. Although there is sex education in many of our schools and much "open" (if abstract) discussion in the media, parents still refuse to recognize their children as persons with a sexuality. Boys are punished for masturbating rather than encouraged to understand the private nature of the act. The message is a resounding "No!" when it should be "Perhaps, where or when appropriate".
I should- mention at this point of the special role of mothers. Amongst siblings opposite sex interactions is more embarrassing than between members of the same sex. This trend is also evident in the father's discomfort with his daughter. This generalized opposite sex prohibition indicates a probable barrier between mothers and sons. But mothers appear to hold a special place in the family interaction. In her work on mothers and daughters, Friday (1977) attributes this to the asexual or antisexual role adopted by mothers. In this culture sexuality and motherhood have contradictory prescriptions. Before motherhood women delight in being physically, even sexually attractive, after the birth of children women become less concerned with this and de-emphasize sexual imagery. The question might be whether this mothering role can be seen as the fulfillment of womanhood with sexual imagery as merely a ritualistic preamble.
For whatever reasons, the result is an exemption -.from some of the sexual prohibitions which limit other family members. Fathers are not exempted and have to conform to-the same sex-related interactions which exist in the world outside the family. The sexuality of fathers is both a threat and a force for change in the family. The threat to daughters has already been described. Nudity of a girl in front of her father is the most embarrassing sexual interaction in the family. The threat to boys is within the context of the "homosexual anxiety" articulated earlier. Sons are not allowed physical affection with their fathers because of the sexual connotations. Sexual taboos are generally more obvious in the relationship a child has with the father than with the mother.
The privileged position that a mother has in the family can be a source of profound confusion to the child. Jacques Lacan(1977) tells us that the child begins by accepting the self given from the other, or mother. Harry Stack Sullivan (1953) also illustrates this by observation of the development of an awareness of self in children. It is the mother's role in this symbiotic relationship to separate the child from his or her excreta and this forms a substantial part of the experience of tenderness which contributes to the baby's personification of the good mother who is able to relate and give identity to the child.
The father must break this symbiosis and rescue the child from the imaginary world where there is danger in re-absorption by the mother. Father is the bearer of Death, rupturing the coziness of the “womb" and shattering the mirror that the mother holds up to the child. As Lacan indicates that for the person true subjectivity arises in the sexual field then, I am led in the direction of regarding this tension in the family to be a sexual one.
The role of mother is exempt from some of the prohibitions surrounding the interaction in other family relationships. She provides a unique "mirroring" role in the development of the child. The relationship between the parents, as well as the appropriate way in which the symbiosis between child and mother is broken and the "world" drawn into the child's experience is crucial. The danger lies not only in distortion of this process but in ignorance and avoidance of it.
What the history of the family shows is that in the past parents appreciated this role and were intimately involved in the development of the child through young adulthood, with an awareness of the intrinsic nature of sexuality.
A History: “If I was trying to get there, I wouldn't start from here!”
In writing this section I am greatly indebted to J. D'Emilio and E. B. Freedman 's fascinating study Intimate Matters: A history of Sexuality in America. My intention is to show how Americans arrived at their understanding and definition of sexual norms. In doing so I will also show how contemporary society, released from the exigencies of economics, has avoided dealing with the- new contextual circumstances. The economic pressures that determined behavior prior to the Industrial Revolution have largely disappeared to be replaced by the imperatives of power. Interactions that developed from sexuality in community are now manipulated by institutions or organizational bodies which are co-operative in nature and commercial in purpose.
In 1650 a young man of Springfield distressed his community by "chafing his yard to provoke lust" outside the church meetinghouse during the Sabbath sermon. In 1661 the same Samuel Terry was fined when his young wife of five months was delivered of her baby. In 1673 Terry and eight other men were fined for indulging in "immodest and beastly" play. Despite his history of sexual offenses Samuel Terry went on to serve as town constable. Later still, the court remanded to his care another man's child. Although showing the colonial attitude towards sexuality to be ascetic, prudish and antisexual, this history also speaks to the complexity of the "puritanical" attitude of colonial America.
Early American communities paid close attention to the sexual behaviors of individuals. This was not with intent to -totally repress sexual expression but to channel it into what was its proper setting and purpose, as a duty and joy in marriage and for the procreation of children. Economics and religious beliefs of the time directed that the organizing principle in sexual relations was reproduction. Colonial Law in Now England supported this by forbidding "solitary living” in order to encourage strong family formation and thus the development and colonization of the New World.
American youth at this time learned about sexuality from two primary sources; observation within the family and direct instruction from parents and- church. The limited medical literature available from Europe and reprinted in America supported the expectation that sexuality within marriage, and aimed at reproduction, would be part of an adult's life. Even so, the laws against bestiality and the recorded prosecutions indicate that-sexual observation and experimentation with animals was widespread in colonial America, as in other agricultural societies.
The small size of colonial homes allowed children to observe sexual activity from a very early age. Most families, especially during the cold winter months, shared the same room for sleeping. The common practice of sharing beds exposed young people to the activity of adult sexuality. In my own recollection from the United Kingdom of the 1960's it was still not unusual for siblings to share the same bed in working class families and for that to encourage sex play between children.
Early American children learned that sexual behavior should be limited to marriage. Social censure was imposed on women who had sexual relations illicitly, and upon men who were ignorant or tolerant of their wives' infidelity. Churchmen invoked the Bible as authority against extramarital and non-procreative acts. Puritan clergy clearly felt that sexuality was unclean but necessary and warned against unhealthy premarital sex or masturbation.
These ideas reflected traditional gender distinctions about proper sexual behavior. Young women were warned against exhibiting "sensual lusts, wantonness and Rudeness in Look, Word or Gesture". New England ministers even warned against the influence of womanly vanity in case men should be enticed to sin. Men, as rational beings, were exhorted to resist temptation last their carnal desires should lead them from God's sight and love.
There were many other influences including the Quakers, Anglicans and Roman Catholics, who with the secular advice and the model of adults, also influenced the young. While most adults agreed on the ideals of marital, reproductive sex, the more moderate authorities placed less emphasis on sexual control. John Adams, an Anglican, acknowledged to his children that he was "of an amorous disposition" and many other adults were responsive to the more liberal sexual climate of their European cousins.
The contemporary manual for reproductive lore was Aristotle's Masterpiece (first published in London in 1684). This work repeated the early modern English beliefs that sexual pleasure for both males and females was desirable and necessary for conception. The work offered no advice on contraception, rather the emphasis was on the successful production of children. Couples were reminded that successful sexual intercourse depended on feelings of fondness during the act not sadness and thus underscored the association of pleasure and procreation.
Young people who accepted the primacy of marital sexuality could begin to express their sexual desires in the transitional ritual of courtship. Parents, while not arranging marriages in Colonial America, exerted a large influence on the choice of partner. A young man might actively court his bride to be, but he proposed marriage to her parents. Within the confines of parental approval, the formal courtship took place without chaperon though often in public view. In New England young people courted at community events or at the young woman's home. Family interactions played a large part in the introduction and process of courtship. Emphasis was placed on the compatibility of the two people not on notions of romantic love.
Even with the restrictions placed on courtship, couples still tried to explore their sexual desires by circumventing community surveillance. Summer brought abundant opportunities for a couple to slip away to be on their own, but Winter called for greater ingenuity. Some communities with a Dutch, or Welsh heritage had greater opportunity for intimacy through the tradition of “bundling".
Couples were allowed to spend the night together so long as they remained fully clothed, or (in some cases) kept a "bundling board" between them. Often a betrothal promise and subsequent penance excused the exuberance of youth. As long as sexual energies were directed towards procreation and marriage the authorities might be forgiving. Married couples were encouraged to engage in intercourse as a conjugal duty. So important was marital sex that in some States a bride might be able to leave her marriage if she could prove her husband impotent. Sexual complaints from husband's and wives appear in divorce cases in eighteenth century New England. Dissatisfaction was expressed not about physical disappointment but from a belief that the other had stepped outside the bounds of the respectable, marital reproductive sexual system. The importance of maintaining marriage despite conflicts is illustrated by the case of Stephen Temple's wife who went to court to force her husband to stop exploiting their fourteen year old child. Once he had promised to reform a reconciliation was effected .
At this time each member of the community had responsibility for upholding the morality of the whole. Thus the attitude towards sexuality was intrusive. It was then the responsibility of family and neighbors to regulate life in this area as in others. A New England father who allowed his son to live with an unmarried woman was charged as an “accessory to fornication".
Acts that defied the norm of reproductive sexuality carried the death penalty in many states. Sodomy, in its narrowest definition, required legal proof of penetration including two witnesses. It referred to "unnatural" or non-procreative acts between two men, a man and an animal, or between a man and a woman. Sexual relations between women, although not within this legal definition of sodomy, were also considered "against nature".
It is from within this confining view of sexuality and family that the modern day taboos and rituals are developed. The necessity to colonize North America in such a way as to ensure economic stability for the children, encouraged a focus on proper family life where sexual expression had a dramatic social and economic role. Natural increase, rather than immigration, accounted for the remarkable growth rate of the population doubling itself every generation.
This value system continued until the 1920's. Males and females moved in separate spheres, daughters remaining at home with their mothers and adolescent boys moving into the public world of work which their fathers inhabited. But young people associated with each other in public settings which brought families together in community. Couples could court each other but always within reach of parental supervision. Sex was still intensely private and meant to be within the context of marriage.
The liberalizing influence of the First World War encouraged (even forced) women to enter the world of work and men. Women filled the economic vacuum of a labor force depleted of men who had gone to Europe to fight. Increasing economic independence led to less parental supervision over pre-marital behavior at the same time that work and increased leisure time allowed the unmarried person to meet other young people away from home.
The Industrial Revolution of the 1800's had automated many functions previously executed by men. There was no longer the economic necessity for rapid population growth. Thus the emphasis on sexuality being exclusively part of the reproductive process declined. Erotic images beckoned enticingly from billboards, newspaper advertisements and through the moving pictures. A popular film of the decade called Flaming Youth attracted audiences with the following description of what might be experienced by the audience: "neckers, petters, white kisses, red kisses, pleasure mad daughters, sensation-craving mothers."
The issues of the 1920's; freedom of middle-class youth, agitation over birth control, the commercial manipulation of the erotic, suggest the direction of American values. Sexual expression was moving beyond the confines of marriage although parents still lived within the ethos of the world of their Founding Fathers, even though there was a greater degree of leisure and a larger disposable income, Americans still had to be sold the ethos of consumption. It was perhaps this more than anything else that changed the way people see their world, and caused the confusion that exists to this day.
As an example of these changes, a new conception of womanhood was created by the mighty army of advertising. Femininity came to depend on the capacity to allure, not to conceive. Service to family became redundant as work began to be seen as a means to an end. Premium was placed on enjoyment and happiness, presented by the media as satiation of yet unformed desires. A whole industry developed solely in the pursuit of idealized, abstract beauty. Sales in the cosmetic industry in the United States grew from $17million in 1914 to $141 million in 1925 (D'Emilio and Freedman, 1988). Males were not immune from the advertiser's seductive talents. Veiled nudes and inviting poses spread through the culture images designed to stimulate erotic fantasies; and sell products! Much of commerce seemed to have as its project the constant sexual arousal of the American population.
Changes in literary standards also altered the view of family and sexual relationship. Novels of the period attempted to used street language to describe body parts and sexual acts. Homosexuality became an open issue as did extramarital affaires, premarital sex and the emptiness of modern relationships. Many authors were forced to alter text to satisfy the censors, including the elegant and witty Noel Coward. Cole Porter parodied this in the 1934 song from his hit musical Anything Goes:
"Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four letter words
Writing prose . . . .
Anything goes"
Despite efforts by both courts and executive bodies the demand for and accessibility of erotically explicit material seemed to increase steadily.
The liberalizing influence of the second World War, with the availability of pornography, encouraged the sexual objectification of women's bodies. With this objectification there came a further erosion of traditional standards and desires. The ideal and idolized object of carnal desire did not look like the typical American housewife and mother. Nor did she resemble the tired office or factory worker. This, too, increased sexual tension as both men and women strove for unattainable perfection in bodily form and in their relations with one another.
Sex appeared as a force outside the decent controls of the past. It encouraged social chaos by challenging the integrity of the family. Sexuality became abstracted from the context of relationship and liaison in community. It became a force of "Personal enjoyment, a biological necessity" and Love was presented as a passion "that cannot be restrained only surrendered to" ( D'Emilio and Freedman, P.284). Already there was the sense of belonging to a wind that sweeps away individuality and allows the avoidance of personal responsibility.
The rest is within my personal living history. By 1970 the issue of pornographic material had become prolific and those responsible searched for new regions of the erotic. Within this plethora of carnal stimulation the merely erotic became lost in ever more bizarre and exploitive images. Sexually explicit material involving children is available in every major city of the western world signifying the trend of possession Immortality is seen as an issue of control over the future even if this means the rape and destruction of children who are the future.
In the 18th Century, interactions based on sex resulted in a system of alliance. Family and kinship ties guaranteed the transmission of names and the division of wealth and possessions. From the Industrial Revolution onwards a new system was imposed on the old. The deployment of "alliance" had defined a system of rules concerning the illicit and the permitted. A system bound to "sexuality" depends on the contingents of power. This power concerns itself with the world of sensation, impressions, and pleasures primarily of the flesh. As described above, the economy that is based on a sexual dynamic is concerned with the production or satisfaction of insatiable needs titillated by industrial giants. The body is object, capable of exploitation. It is a thing that can be completely understood using the tools of science and thus a causa sui. The world based on sexuality denied of spirituality is an empty world-of power for its own sake.
Sexuality remains historically rooted in family although the economics of reproduction are now redundant. Family is not now to be understood as an economic, political, or social structure that restrains sexuality. This may be where our present crisis lies. Family should be the anchor of sexuality. It should be the situation in which sexuality is defined -and structured whilst allowing the economics of- pleasure and the world of power to be experimented with in safety. The family is now the most active site of sexuality. In society the various members of the family with any power (parents) have become the agents of a deployment of sexuality, aided and sometimes confused by the advice of experts such as psychiatrists, anthropologists or other social scientists.
The breakdown of the old familial system meant that individuals sought a way out of their confusion by accepting all the influences exerted upon them. The modern preoccupation with the confession of sexual inadequacy and role confusion represents an imposition of value from without not a growth movement from within the family. All sexuality becomes invested with the concept of incest and thus has to be stricken from the family as one of the most ancient taboos.
One has only to look in any newspaper on any day, in any town, to understand that we are in a period of the repression of sex whereas we should be engaged in the “production" of sexuality. “Sex" is the meaningless manipulation of object-persons in the pursuit of insatiable needs. "Sexuality" is desire, not ignorant of the flesh, but reaching out to the beloved other through and beyond it. In sexuality we are prepared to be vulnerable to receive gifts in celebration not as of right. We are humbled by these gifts and seek to give to the other. In doing so we lay aside our fear of the death of our selves in the all-powerful and infinite alterity of the other.
Pictures at an exhibition:
The following three pictures of the lives of people with whom I have worked, illustrate how sexuality, as an expression of a state of being, impacts the way people respond to the world they find themselves in. Only one person, Peter, is specifically concerned with a sexual issue. Yet, the other two have also been affected by their ”sexual" interaction with another family member.
In John's case I perceived that his mother had protected and nurtured him to the point where he is now inhibited in his relationship with his wife. This is a clear example of the symbiotic relationship between mother and child that is described by Lacan (1977). With John there was no interruption by the symbolic Father bringing the world and the real to the son. John grew up both loving and hating his mother to distraction. Because he has not been forced to let her go, he continues to be drawn into her. Like a butterfly on display in a case, John is pinned to the wall of life illuminated by the glare of others, in particular his mother. In his struggle to be free he fights his wife as a metaphor-of his adoring and indulgent mother; indulgent, because she feeds into John's system of avoiding responsibility for himself by dependency on others.
Debra also identifies with her mother. She sees her mother as the main source of Debra's inability to connect in an opposite sex relationship. Mother has defined Debra as a "non-sexual" but "sexually dirty" being. This paradox is articulated by Debra herself in the page taken from her diary:
You fucking dyky bitch
You cunt bitch
You fucking cunt
You fucking cunt dyky bitch
Cunt dyke
You worthless
Words associated with sex are used in the manner of violence. The sense is ,one of a distorted view of relationship between Debra and her sexuality. Perhaps there is some significance that, in the recent past at least, masturbation was described in hushed tones as "self-abuse."
I am also aware that she could as well have directed this at her mother as at herself.
Finally there is the more overtly sexual experience of Peter and his step-father. Again, I see the confusion between sex, sexuality, power and control. Sex, genital organization, is used to control and exploit Peter. He is also told that he communicated a responsiveness to his stepfather which absolved the latter (in his own mind) of any responsibility. A more existential understanding of sexuality might have allowed Peter to work through his abuse at an earlier age, thus allowing him access to mature-caring relationships that were not sexually exploitive.
John: A Question of Identity
John is a twenty five year old married man who works for a large industrial corporation as a bench machinist. His wife is a legal secretary and the couple have no children. They have been married for three years. John and his wife are buying their own house and own two cars and a boat. John's hobby is to race model cars and about $100 of his income goes on this every ten days. His desire is to build the fastest and most rugged model in the North West.
John described his problem as "depression." On his first visit he talked of standing in the shower thinking until the water ran cold. His attendance record at work was poor and he had already received two reprimands. John's marriage was suffering in- that he felt himself to be unconnected to his wife. She, in turn, complained of the money he spent and her fear of his losing his job.
Their arguments ranged from the nagging, sniping, to the violently vitriolic. On one occasion John rushed from the house and attempted to-drive away in his "muscle car" (a custom-engined Thunderbird). She stopped him by stealing the car keys from the ignition. His exasperated response was to smash the windshield with his fist and storm off into the night.
John described his father as a mild-mannered laborer. Mother is a housewife and mother of three boys. Since her husband's death she has been occupied with various “volunteer" positions where she is known as an organizer. Mother still exercises a great deal of what she calls "care" on her sons. I had personal experience of this when she telephoned to try to arrange an appointment for herself so that she might discuss John's "laziness." According to John's description, she would also call him each morning to see if he was up and ready for work. When I met her as part of family therapy, she described how she had performed a similar function for her husband everyday of their marriage.
During the couple's sessions, it emerged that mother and daughter-in-law were in alliance. John had dated his wife when they were in High School. Upon his graduation, he joined the Army and for two years they, did not see one another. On his return to Seattle, mother arranged for the girl to be available socially for John and the couple drifted into marriage when he was twenty-two years old.
Rather than analyze John's issues any more it is better to let his words and pictures speak for themselves. It should be clear that for John his identity was bound up with that of his mother and his wife. As he reflected on the dynamic he experienced, John became more adept at choosing for himself, and his impotent rages subsided.
Debra: In search of uniqueness. Debra is a twenty three year old unmarried woman who acts and feels herself to be sixteen. The youngest of four children, she has lived with her- alcoholic mother all he life. Debra is the only child of her mother's last marriage and there is a space of eighteen years between her and the next youngest daughter.
Debra's father lives out of state and she has not seen him in a year. Mother and father divorced when Debra was tan years old. As Debra grew up she was told that "You're just like your father" by both mother and older siblings. Because her memories of him were hazy she made efforts during adolescence to acquire all that she could of the pictures, letters and anecdotes which referred to him
Debra's main issue was that of feeling "not really here". She expressed that felt "discounted" by her mother and ignored by the rest of her family. Debra described how, on seeing the film Amityville Horror, she felt herself possessed of a dark and evil force that, like her mother, “squeezes me into smaller and smaller spaces". She related how her mother took over closet space in Debra's room, then stored boxes there and finally cleared Debra's workspace to set up her own sewing machine.
Debra's own words illustrate her feelings. My sense is of a person who feels herself being squeezed, absorbed and possessed by something or someone stronger than herself without the benefit of an authentic autonomous self to fight back.
Peter: A Betrayal. These are Peter's own words.
On his stepfather:
“ . . . . . for months I thought about it and thought about it and talked to a couple of friends, and, you know, then I finally decided well they weren't really memories — it never happened. You know, it was just my imagination. And then I didn't think about it for a bout a year until my step-father, you know, confessed to me that he had done that."
. . . . . .because . . . I mean, because I really loved him and I really wanted him to love me. And he did . . . . And he did for a while, and then he started having this sexual relationship with me, you know, and I, you know, I think, I mean, I think at the time it didn't seem , I mean it didn't seem unnatural to me at all. I mean he told me and I don't know how I mean, I don't remember it clearly, he told me I responded, I was very responsive to him physically and sexually. And, ummm, that after it happened the first time I would almost initiate it again, you know, but I mean I was doing that because that was the only way he had probably ever expressed his affection towards me and I felt so lucky to get just that . . . . .
On Peter's mother:
(Interviewer asks Peter "But when you were ten, who did you think was wrong?")
" Me,because my mother always used to tell me, I mean it was always this big issue that our relationship was awful. And she would always tell me, you know, well you have to understand he had a rough childhood, he's a recovered alcoholic, and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, and you're very intelligent and sensitive, and you know you have as much responsibility in this relationship as he does, and you have to make an effort - all this crap - and I got into that for years. You know, and I was feeling like somehow it was my fault. And now I know that it isn't. I mean . I was a helpless child ... and had I been able I would have left the situation. And I did - I used to sleepwalk, and I would walk right out of the front door. They finally had to put a look on my door ...........”
“........ for a long time I hated her as a teenager. And then I got over that. And I decided I really did love her. And I always doubted .. I remember when I was a kid I went this stage, almost for about a year, where I was convinced that my mother ... that some awful , wicked woman had come in and like-, killed my mother and taken her place ...... And my mother, I was never sure whether she really loved me. I wasn't sure about that until I got older. You know, and now I know so loves me tremendously and that she, I know she feels awful about what's happened, even though she doesn't know everything , and ... but sometimes I even wonder if she sexually abused me. I mean, I don't think she did , but there is this awful sexual tension between us ... ... and so we talk a lot about sexuality but not so much anymore since I found out about my stepfather, cause I get too uncomfortable. And every time we're watching a movie , together or something, you know, and something about sex comes on, you know, my heart just starts pounding, and I get really nervous and uptight."
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Authentic Existential Existence or mere Survival?
We may speak with loose confidence of our ability to study families because we all assume we know what they are. My first study came as a child when I became painfully aware that when I described my own family it bore no resemblance t-o that of other people's experience. My own journey of survival has led me to perceive that psychopathology is not just in "me" or in "you" but emerges in the space between me and you because of our relationship. So it is with families. The weight of the past is powerful within a family and while we are not totally confined within it, our freedom is contextual. This means that we can choose to merely survive our history in family or to strive to get beyond that experience and become authentic and individual; "undoing the warping of your past" (Sullivan, 1953).
The relationship between the child and the parents can be parasitic or symbiotic. If it is parasitic then the child may become impaired or inhibited. As the experiences of Debra, Peter and John show. the adult is unable to understand or live in intimate relationship with his or her world. If a good symbiosis is formed and worked through then the pathology resolves itself developmentally into a mature relationship where one is, first as a child and then as an adult, able to be separate but related to the subject of one's love.
The family of origin is the rehearsal for the created family. The individual person may actualize to shape his or her own world but this life-project can only be experienced in the context of relationship. The person cannot live authentically in isolation but needs to be in reference to others. The first "being in relationship to others" is the child in relationship with family.
This is not to say that an imperfect family is totally destructive of the emerging self. Destructive caregivers (as articulated in the case studies create defensive victims. However, imperfect caregivers are useful in modeling an imperfect world where difficulties can be worked and overcome.
The new-born child sees the world in terms of partial objects, any notion of object constancy comes at age six to nine months. Thus, during the first six months-of life the baby sees two separate mothers and two separate fathers and they are unable to bring the demonic and the divine together into a whole. Parents are seen as partial objects. The child views himself or herself in the same way . That is, they are split into the good "me" and the bad “me". The child will try to evoke the "good mother" by using whatever behavior is necessary and this is part of the mirroring process that Lacan describes.
The life-project is to accommodate the good and the bad into a general constancy, in our own selves, in others and our relationship to those others. Perhaps the first existential question for the child once a 'whole mother" is experienced , is what to do with that mother who rejects. The mother is idealized as perfect, a demigoddess full of unconditional love and totally trustworthy. The child experiences himself or herself as helpless and dependent. The parent who presents as perfect forces the child to experience his or her own self as imperfect, flawed, and cognitively confused. In this dilemma the emerging person can only survive because they reject himself or herself, and any real sense of self-consciousness. This is Peter's experience-of being responsible for the relationship between himself and his stepfather and mother.
When the child experiences the loss of the "divine mother" they may remain stuck in a pattern of searching for that mythical person. If, however, the relationship is broken up naturally by the interference of the symbolic father, then the child engages in the choreography of the imperfect and the perfect. The interjection of forgiveness is into this polarized dance resolves and unites. The child understands himself or herself, parents, and family as ambiguous. The perfect and imperfect intertwined in a healthy paradox. This relational dialectic will continue throughout, life as the rich pattern of authentic relationship unfolds.
To take an extreme position, if the child does not experience this integration then the cognitive dissonance will always remain unresolved. This integration needs to take place on several levels: the family, the community, and the individual self. Authenticity emerges from this struggle between perfect and imperfect, good and bad, sense and nonsense, Life and Death, and finally the finitude and infinity of one's own existence. Survival is almost always present but authentic existence remains elusive.
My own personal reflection on the family conundrum is that as the traditional alliance system developed incorporating the politics of sexuality, society failed to be cognizant of the change. Thus parents try to revitalize the mores and values handed down through generations in a context that has changed. Children, and parents as past children, do not perceive the world as stable. Yet, parents continue to behave as if it is.
The Central Park crimes mark the collision of two worlds that exist in tense proximity. Of the six boys indicted for the raps, four live in Schomberg Plaza, which provides low-cost housing for 600 families. The family lives of these boys indicate that they should have lived through the ethical inheritance of their parents and resolved the conflicts. Yet this is not the case.
Young men from good family hunted the Park like beasts.
The top rent paid in Schomberg Plaza was around $900 a month in 1989. Its twin thirty-five storey towers stand at the northeast corner of Central Park, in East Harlem. Young professionals a few blocks distant rented small one-bedroom apartments for more than $1,500 a month and condominiums sold for around $1 million each. To these Upper Eastsider’s, Harlem looms as a fearsome and strange land. To the residents of Harlem, the Upper East Side is a forbidden city where they are only welcome as servants.
The internal life world-of the family is in conflict as is the family and the world outside.
"What to do ... What to do,-,.."- (Saturday Night Live) .
One of the things to do is to acknowledge where we are at, understanding the revealed meaning of sexuality and relationship in family rather than clinging to past idealized experience.
Phenomenology teaches us to look for what is, rather than what we hope to find. Our very existence depends on our ability to recognize the real rather than invent empty myths. The project has been a preliminary, and personally reflective, study which mirrors the issues in its imperfections. I have not attempted to provide conclusions because supposed "expert advice" is in plentiful supply elsewhere. I do feel profoundly and passionately that true reconciliation lies in our accommodation of this world of conflict and paradox rather than imposition from myths of the past or created theories from the unknown future.
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Foucault, M. (1980) The History of Sexuality Vol 1.
New York: Vintage Books.
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