Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy
ISSN: 0092-623X (Print) 1521-0715 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/usmt20
Sex as a reflection of the total relationship To cite this article: (1976) Sex as a reflection of the total relationship, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 2:1, 3-5, DOI: 10.1080/00926237608407067 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00926237608407067
Published online: 14 Jan 2008.
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Citing articles: 4 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=usmt20 Download by: [University of Iowa Libraries]
Date: 05 November 2015, At: 12:58
NOTE: We sincerely regret the delay in publication of the journal due to a variety of scheduling and coordinating problems. The current issue (Vol. 2#1), dated Spring, 1976, follows Vol 1#4, dated Summer 1975. Subscribers should be assured that they will receive all four issues of the volume to which they have subscribed.
Downloaded by [University of Iowa Libraries] at 12:58 05 November 2015
Editorial SEX AS A REFLECTION OF THE TOTAL RELATIONSHIP The implications of the new sex therapy have a growing effect on the theory and practice of psychiatry and the psychotherapies. Sex therapy is prompting a second look at many long-accepted concepts and truisms. Many professionals had accepted as a truism that the sexual relationship of a couple may be regarded as a microcosm of their marital relationship. Those of us who made this assumption did not, at that time, work conjointly with couples. We did not observe the couple’s interaction but dealt only with the individual spouse. Possibly because psychoanalytic writing for so many years had been based on a theory of sexual development and arrest that presumably influenced all behavior, many professionals assumed therefore that how two spouses functioned sexually could be regarded as representative of the developmental level and quality of that pair’s total relationship. Now that we are better attuned to taking a detailed current and past sexual history from a couple we find that sex, love, and commitment may each be qualitatively and quantitatively different within this relationship. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln’s epigram: Some couples who have good sex have a good total relationship all the time; all couples who have good sex have a good total relationship some of the time; but all the couples who have good sex do not have a good relationship all the time. Conversely, there are those who have a poor sexual relationship but who may have a good, loving relationship in other parameters of interaction. Often the nuances of the parasexual and sexual aspects of the relationship of the couple do mirror their total relationship. The same power struggles, similar defense mechanisms, the same ability to be close or distant, the same spoiling of one’s own or partner’s pleasure at the moment of fulfillment, the same demands, the same masochistic or sadistic stance, the same dependent, childlike, or parental attitudes may prevail in sex as may generally prevail for the couple. But for many committed couples sex does not reflect a one-to-one similarity to their total relationship. Sex sometimes appears to be a special 3
Downloaded by [University of Iowa Libraries] at 12:58 05 November 2015
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Editorial
parameter of their interaction in which either or both may act differently than is customary. Sometimes their sexual activity appears to be dissociated from their other joint activities. There are couples who fight, disagree on most values, have constant power struggles but who do continue to have an intense sexual attraction for each other and who are able to enjoy and t o fulfill each other sexually as they are unable to do in other areas. Conversely, there are loving couples whose relationships are excellent, whose ways are congruent, and whose individual propensities and needs either complement each other’s nicely or are at least acceptable and nonabrasive. Yet, sexually, they are not excited by each other. The closeness, openness, and excitement that they can sustain emotionally and verbally just are not there for them sexually. Some of these couples are among those who have a good relationship but have sexual ennui or avoidance. Another significant number of couples seen in sex therapy have an excellent overall love relationship, but one or both partners have a sexual dysfunction that clearly is not a symptom of any deep intrapsychic aberration. When such a couple seek sex therapy and are helped, their sexual relationship may then come to reflect the same qualities as their total interactions. On some occasions we have noted after successful sex therapy that the couple return later with more generalized marital complaints that have surfaced now that sex can no longer be used as the scapegoat or cover-up for other marital problems. Yet, although human sexual expression has been so severely modified by our infantile and childhood training, conditioning, and other parental and societal influences, many persons’ sexual functioning apparently is not as closely linked to cortically influenced factors that affect sex. For reasons often unknown to us at present, some persons are not injured particularly in the sexual and intimacy parameters and are able to separate much of their sexual response and pleasure from the other aspects of their conjugal and love relationship. Those persons who can make this separation without having extensive therapy are fortunate, contrary to so many other civilized persons. For some others, the lack of congruence between poor sexual functioning and a relationship that is good otherwise suggests that their sexual parameter has suffered more than have other important parameters involved in bonded relating. It does appear that sex sometimes does and sometimes does not reflect how a couple may behave in their total interactional systems. The confusion of sex, love, and committed relationships persists. This triadic combination represents the idealized one for most people. Further research is necessary before we are able to make definitive statements about these three areas that have so deeply affected most people. For the first time in the short history of the behavioral sciences concerted efforts are being made to deal with these questions from a multidisciplinary and multifaceted approach. Kernberg’ has described his concept of an ideal relationship:
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Editorial
Downloaded by [University of Iowa Libraries] at 12:58 05 November 2015
Clinical study of couples indicates how dependent the frequency of sexual intercourse, its quality and richness is upon the nature of the relationship; the quality of the sexual experience remains a constant, central aspect of love relations and marital life throughout their entire life. Under optimal circumstances, the intensity of sexual enjoyment and the erotic quality of the relationship of the couple have an ongoing renovative quality which does not depend on the “mechanical features” of sexual gymnastics, but on the couple’s intuitive capacity to weave changing personal needs and experiences into the complex net of heterosexual and homosexual, loving and aggressive aspects of the total relationship expressed in unconscious and conscious fantasies and their enactment in their sexual relationships.
It is difficult to disagree with the description of Kernberg’s ideal relationship, as rare as it may be found clinically. The type of multidisciplinary research now going on and the concept of multicausality do suggest that this state, or parts of it, are not necessarily achieved by new insights into resolution of the Oedipal complex but will include many other facets as well. It is important that research in the triad of sex, love, and commitment continue on many fronts and that the different disciplines are able to communicate their parts of the truth to each other. The conceptualization that will raise our thinking to a new level of integration still lies ahead.
C.J.S.
REFERENCE 1. Kemberg OF: Boundaries and structures in love relations. Paper read at a meeting of the Academy of Medicine, New York,January 6, 1976.
ISSN: 0092-623X (Print) 1521-0715 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/usmt20
Sex as a reflection of the total relationship To cite this article: (1976) Sex as a reflection of the total relationship, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 2:1, 3-5, DOI: 10.1080/00926237608407067 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00926237608407067
Published online: 14 Jan 2008.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 8
View related articles
Citing articles: 4 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=usmt20 Download by: [University of Iowa Libraries]
Date: 05 November 2015, At: 12:58
NOTE: We sincerely regret the delay in publication of the journal due to a variety of scheduling and coordinating problems. The current issue (Vol. 2#1), dated Spring, 1976, follows Vol 1#4, dated Summer 1975. Subscribers should be assured that they will receive all four issues of the volume to which they have subscribed.
Downloaded by [University of Iowa Libraries] at 12:58 05 November 2015
Editorial SEX AS A REFLECTION OF THE TOTAL RELATIONSHIP The implications of the new sex therapy have a growing effect on the theory and practice of psychiatry and the psychotherapies. Sex therapy is prompting a second look at many long-accepted concepts and truisms. Many professionals had accepted as a truism that the sexual relationship of a couple may be regarded as a microcosm of their marital relationship. Those of us who made this assumption did not, at that time, work conjointly with couples. We did not observe the couple’s interaction but dealt only with the individual spouse. Possibly because psychoanalytic writing for so many years had been based on a theory of sexual development and arrest that presumably influenced all behavior, many professionals assumed therefore that how two spouses functioned sexually could be regarded as representative of the developmental level and quality of that pair’s total relationship. Now that we are better attuned to taking a detailed current and past sexual history from a couple we find that sex, love, and commitment may each be qualitatively and quantitatively different within this relationship. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln’s epigram: Some couples who have good sex have a good total relationship all the time; all couples who have good sex have a good total relationship some of the time; but all the couples who have good sex do not have a good relationship all the time. Conversely, there are those who have a poor sexual relationship but who may have a good, loving relationship in other parameters of interaction. Often the nuances of the parasexual and sexual aspects of the relationship of the couple do mirror their total relationship. The same power struggles, similar defense mechanisms, the same ability to be close or distant, the same spoiling of one’s own or partner’s pleasure at the moment of fulfillment, the same demands, the same masochistic or sadistic stance, the same dependent, childlike, or parental attitudes may prevail in sex as may generally prevail for the couple. But for many committed couples sex does not reflect a one-to-one similarity to their total relationship. Sex sometimes appears to be a special 3
Downloaded by [University of Iowa Libraries] at 12:58 05 November 2015
4
Editorial
parameter of their interaction in which either or both may act differently than is customary. Sometimes their sexual activity appears to be dissociated from their other joint activities. There are couples who fight, disagree on most values, have constant power struggles but who do continue to have an intense sexual attraction for each other and who are able to enjoy and t o fulfill each other sexually as they are unable to do in other areas. Conversely, there are loving couples whose relationships are excellent, whose ways are congruent, and whose individual propensities and needs either complement each other’s nicely or are at least acceptable and nonabrasive. Yet, sexually, they are not excited by each other. The closeness, openness, and excitement that they can sustain emotionally and verbally just are not there for them sexually. Some of these couples are among those who have a good relationship but have sexual ennui or avoidance. Another significant number of couples seen in sex therapy have an excellent overall love relationship, but one or both partners have a sexual dysfunction that clearly is not a symptom of any deep intrapsychic aberration. When such a couple seek sex therapy and are helped, their sexual relationship may then come to reflect the same qualities as their total interactions. On some occasions we have noted after successful sex therapy that the couple return later with more generalized marital complaints that have surfaced now that sex can no longer be used as the scapegoat or cover-up for other marital problems. Yet, although human sexual expression has been so severely modified by our infantile and childhood training, conditioning, and other parental and societal influences, many persons’ sexual functioning apparently is not as closely linked to cortically influenced factors that affect sex. For reasons often unknown to us at present, some persons are not injured particularly in the sexual and intimacy parameters and are able to separate much of their sexual response and pleasure from the other aspects of their conjugal and love relationship. Those persons who can make this separation without having extensive therapy are fortunate, contrary to so many other civilized persons. For some others, the lack of congruence between poor sexual functioning and a relationship that is good otherwise suggests that their sexual parameter has suffered more than have other important parameters involved in bonded relating. It does appear that sex sometimes does and sometimes does not reflect how a couple may behave in their total interactional systems. The confusion of sex, love, and committed relationships persists. This triadic combination represents the idealized one for most people. Further research is necessary before we are able to make definitive statements about these three areas that have so deeply affected most people. For the first time in the short history of the behavioral sciences concerted efforts are being made to deal with these questions from a multidisciplinary and multifaceted approach. Kernberg’ has described his concept of an ideal relationship:
5
Editorial
Downloaded by [University of Iowa Libraries] at 12:58 05 November 2015
Clinical study of couples indicates how dependent the frequency of sexual intercourse, its quality and richness is upon the nature of the relationship; the quality of the sexual experience remains a constant, central aspect of love relations and marital life throughout their entire life. Under optimal circumstances, the intensity of sexual enjoyment and the erotic quality of the relationship of the couple have an ongoing renovative quality which does not depend on the “mechanical features” of sexual gymnastics, but on the couple’s intuitive capacity to weave changing personal needs and experiences into the complex net of heterosexual and homosexual, loving and aggressive aspects of the total relationship expressed in unconscious and conscious fantasies and their enactment in their sexual relationships.
It is difficult to disagree with the description of Kernberg’s ideal relationship, as rare as it may be found clinically. The type of multidisciplinary research now going on and the concept of multicausality do suggest that this state, or parts of it, are not necessarily achieved by new insights into resolution of the Oedipal complex but will include many other facets as well. It is important that research in the triad of sex, love, and commitment continue on many fronts and that the different disciplines are able to communicate their parts of the truth to each other. The conceptualization that will raise our thinking to a new level of integration still lies ahead.
C.J.S.
REFERENCE 1. Kemberg OF: Boundaries and structures in love relations. Paper read at a meeting of the Academy of Medicine, New York,January 6, 1976.
