Word: sexuality
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Stoller is the author of four other scholarly books on sex, including the highly praised study Perversion (1975). He has become convinced by his researches -including a detailed case history of a woman drawn from his analytic practice -that conventional sexual behavior is based on the same drives found in extreme form in sexual perverts. In fact, Stoller says, "we try to make the outlandish folk function as scapegoats for the rest of us, but anyone-not just analysts-who collects erotic thoughts knows that many citizens, avowedly heterosexual, conspicuously normal... are also rilled with hatred and wishes...
...sure, says Stoller, but it is dominated by painful undercurrents from the past. Sex fantasies are not idle daydreams but carefully coded scripts by which the inner mind seeks to work out lingering problems from childhood. These scripts help determine whom the adult will be attracted to, how the sexual partner will be dealt with, and even what sexual positions are likely to be preferred. "Sexual excitement depends on a scenario," says Stoller. "The person to be aroused is the 'writer,' who has been at work on the story line since childhood." The writer then turns director, choosing...
...role, says Stoller, requires a victim. In real life the partner is supposed to play the part so that the hurt child can become a victorious adult in his sexual fantasies. It is a kind of theater in which the adult again and again conquers childhood fears. Says Stoller: "Triumph, rage, revenge, fear, anxiety, risk are all condensed into one complex buzz called 'sexual excitement.' " In Stoller's view, that buzz has an even harsher component: sadomasochism, the deriving of pleasure from inflicting or experiencing pain. As he puts it, "My hunch is that the desire...
King Priam (1961) borrowed from the Iliad to examine moral choices in a time of war. The Knot Garden (1970) sorted out a maze of sexual and psychological bonds against a backdrop of freedom fighting, racism and analysis...
...lays out a rigid regimen to revive the patient's libido. At night, Jake must plug himself into something called a nocturnal mensurator, a machine that registers and records signs of arousal during his sleep. He must buy and study "pictorial pornographic material" and also write out a sexual fantasy of his own imagining in not less than 600 words. Try as he might, Jake conies up 73 words short, despite much padding: "With lazy languorous movements she peels off the dress and reveals herself as completely stark naked and utterly nude." He and his wife doggedly engage...