Electra and Oedipus complex: Sex and the HPD?

Windowpane wrote, “The result is a distinctively libidinal body language and style of dress, which has been autoerotically over-invested with sexuality that has nowhere to go. As a result, the contemporary diagnosis of histrionic personality disorder (though not exactly the same thing as hysteria) is the only category in the DSM that actually uses the clinician’s subjective visual impressions as diagnostic criteria. If someone comes into the consulting room in six-inch stilettos at ten in the morning, it gets noted. Obviously, it is incredibly difficult and dangerous to define over-flirtatiousness, as this is so culturally dependent and contextual. But most analysts I’ve interviewed say if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

A much more reliable red flag usually comes up when we assess the patient’s sexual history: often, hysterics have trouble consolidating libido into their genitals in orgasm. Orgasm, though consciously desired, is often unconsciously avoided, as this event would release unacceptable realizations and forbidden knowledge about themselves. It would also be a strong symbol of growing up. Depending on the degree to which one believes in emotionally contagious inductions and the mechanisms of projective identifications, one could also say that hysterics enact the desire of others and polymorphously spread it throughout their whole body. To bind this desire in an orgasm, would symbolize the end of the other’s fascination with them so the climax is often deffered indefinitely. In fact, Lacan believed that this is the essence of hysteria; namely, that the hysteric’s desire is always for the desire of the other. At her core level, she takes on and somatizes the other object’s desire as a way of bolstering her own flagging self-love.

According to Dr. Hendrika Freud (no relation), this as if performance of the hysteric—playing at being a lovable person in order to get love in return—is basically a narcissistic problem of poor self-esteem. Dr. Freud says that, fundamentally, the hysterical character has roots in preoedipal, preverbal experiences with mothering that failed to mirror the infant. So, in a conversion situation, where the hysterical patient frequently presents with hypochondriacal complaints, she may be demonstrating a significant other object’s desire to keep her docile and helpless for his own satisfaction. This may echo her infantile experience with her primary objects.

So the hysteric’s dilemma is that life is lived like a dream; a mimetic, as if, performance. Naturally, “intimate” human relationships are foreclosed by this kind of imaginary and dissociated coping. And many hysterics do feel this as a loss but are compelled to repeat their behavior. Secretly, unconsciously, the hysteric believes that adult sexual rapport is cold comfort and a sad attempt at compensation for the failure of their parent’s love. They hopefully enact romantic relationships again and again as ongoing rehearsals for an idealized performance of erotic redemption that never comes.

Their mirror is meant to capture the lover’s internal world and reflect it back to them as illuminated art in the hopes that the preoedipal mother will come around eventually. In essence, the hysteric idyllically dreams up the romantic partner and acts out their desire but doesn’t commit to any real relation. Their body may be on erotic loan to this world, but their true self is safely tucked away as a covert sacrifice and offering to ideal sublime love. In fact, many hysterics romanticize death and casually announce their suicidal dreams as though they were describing a vacation to the Bahamas (la belle indifference). Bollas points out that when an hysteric commits suicide in a mental institution, the staff is struck down by counter-transferential grief. They feel powerless (just like the victim) because they’re convinced that the patient hasn’t really understood what death is and she innocently acted out the fantasy that she would attend her own funeral!

This is probably why the hysteric can suddenly leave and run away from apparently intense involvements with people in their life. It’s as though they’re moving on from a previous, now devalued dream, and merely waking up to another exciting dream; a bit like absent-mindedly and drowsily flipping channels with a TV remote in the hopes of finding a program that will take one out of existential boredom”

As a general rule I typically stay away from threads about sex and sexuality on the forum. I don’t really feel I have issues with sex and don’t mind being overly kind and having sexy mannerisms so I never paid any of it much attention. I wanted to just work on the things I do that is bad and be done with it. But I keep getting the feeling that unless I explore it all I will just keep finding things I do to be over the top and annoying.
I guess my question is to all the HPD’s and their lovers is do you have or did your lover have problems achieving orgasm?
Is it just in the HP’s that sommatize that have issues with having orgasms?
To Windowpane, if you could explain what is meant by the second paragraph. Especially the sentence starting “Depending on the degree to which one believes in emotionally”.. Also how do the parents role in the child’s sexuality play out?
Personally I’ve never had problems having orgasm unless the trust is low for some reason or another. In fact, I don’t really have a cut off number for how many I can have, so the opposite end of the spectrum but is this a way of being overly pleasing to another, or simply good genes?
How does the mother come into the relationship of the HPD? Would embracing a healthier relationship with the mother help the hpd to overcome relationship fears?
Windowpane, I think your onto something with the Electra complex. Are women with HPD and HPD style simply looking for their father in romantic relationships? And if so could this be the issue with orgasm?

Hmmmmm...mine would orgasm....rest and then orgasm again. This wenmt on for at least 90 minutes. She must have had at leaast 12 orgasms. So to sum up, the first one dod not "end our adventure"...it was only the beginning....

goodbyenormajean wrote:
As a general rule I typically stay away from threads about sex and sexuality on the forum. I don’t really feel I have issues with sex and don’t mind being overly kind and having sexy mannerisms so I never paid any of it much attention. I wanted to just work on the things I do that is bad and be done with it. But I keep getting the feeling that unless I explore it all I will just keep finding things I do to be over the top and annoying.
I guess my question is to all the HPD’s and their lovers is do you have or did your lover have problems achieving orgasm?
Is it just in the HP’s that sommatize that have issues with having orgasms?
To Windowpane, if you could explain what is meant by the second paragraph. Especially the sentence starting “Depending on the degree to which one believes in emotionally”.. Also how do the parents role in the child’s sexuality play out?
Personally I’ve never had problems having orgasm unless the trust is low for some reason or another. In fact, I don’t really have a cut off number for how many I can have, so the opposite end of the spectrum but is this a way of being overly pleasing to another, or simply good genes?
How does the mother come into the relationship of the HPD? Would embracing a healthier relationship with the mother help the hpd to overcome relationship fears?
Windowpane, I think your onto something with the Electra complex. Are women with HPD and HPD style simply looking for their father in romantic relationships? And if so could this be the issue with orgasm?

There's an old thread on this forum which addresses this (http://www.psychforums.com/histrionic-personality/topic54126.html) with the work of a crazy but brilliant analyst named Wilhelm Reich. Definitely worth a look. Though, it's pretty out there.

Major disclaimer: what I'm writing here IS ALL THEORY. Pure conjecture and nothing more. This stuff is guesswork at best. I really, really hope if someone feels offended by this that they'll understand this is academic.

re: "emotional contagion" and "projective identification," this basically means that when the hysteric was a baby, there was a kind of dialogue going on between the mother and her child before the child had language. The message that mother gave to the child (perhaps when it tried to masturbate, she slapped its hand away) was that the body is contemptible. But the hysteric's mother made a big show (mom was a kind of show off) of loving the being or the existence or even the soul of her child, but was disgusted on some level with its sexuality.

Result: There's a split in the child's sense of self from this. So for the hysteric, the figure of the mother is a big riddle, an unanswered question.

This why hysterics try to stay childlike as long as they can. Hysterics decline to own their adult sexuality, because mature sexuality is a way of creating bonding with another adult and that puts them too close to the position of the mother. When non-hysterics have sex, there's an increasing pressure and demand for a genital orgasm from both people. But unconsciously hysterics find this mutual sliding towards the genital orgasm to be a sad loss of something, even a betrayal of some value.

Instead, they tend to use sexuality as a way of entering into an innocent, almost sacred and transcendent state of mind. Some hysterics absolutely do reach orgasm with another person... but unconsciously the orgasm serves a higher authority (the question of why did mom love only the "pure" part of me). So when hysterics have sex, they usually harness its power as a way of transporting themselves into an imaginary fantasy apart from the lover; or for the higher purpose of making a child; or, most importantly, pleasing and responding to the partner's desire for them to be a spectacular sex object.

So on a conscious level, hysterics may truly desire sex and orgasm. But below the surface, they are using the defense mechanism of splitting to stay somewhat apart from the act. In a way, much of their sexuality is autoerotic. They may have intercourse with a partner, but because they're pretty walled off from intimacy, the partner is basically a masturbation aid. It's as if the hysteric is saying, "you can have my body, but my mind belongs to me."

This is why hysterics may ironically prove to be great at talking about sex. But mostly they'd rather talk about it than do it.

The father's role in all this is an ambivalent one from the hysteric's point of view. On the one hand, he is her first love. His presence represents the first demands of sexuality (but mom implicitly communicated that these feelings were disgusting). So the hysteric rejects dad who couldn't live up to the ideal set up by the mother: the ideal of a pure, omnipotent male, completely interested in perfectly nurturing but not making intrusions with his desire. No man can be that idealized figure: the mother with a penis.

Ironically, when the hysteric rejects her father, she actually celebrates the number one function of the father: the father's responsibility to say "no." His presence represents the superego, the law, the cut, the NO. So every time an adult hysteric cuts off on a relationship, says "no" to it, she is unconsciously celebrating and reviving her father by identifying with him.

So to heal all this, my guess is that the hysteric would have to identify the various thoughts and feelings which are inside her. The voices of her parents which she introjected into herself. And then to deeply accept these voices? That last part I'm really just guessing at.

windowpane wrote:But below the surface, they are using the defense mechanism of splitting to stay somewhat apart from the act.

I'm not understanding the proposed relationship to splitting here. Could you expound?

Deep and invaluable information.

Tied in with this theme is "counterphobia:" the simultaneous attraction to and repulsion of, the sexual drama and tension the HPD creates, and maybe her own orgasms?
A probable HPD/NPD woman (who is very beautiful) I know endlessly suggests, or even sets up, all these steamy themes and laisons (some involving restraint and bondage, which might be a confirmation of Reich's controversial observation that HPD's need to be, and perhaps want to be, taken against their will), but she never shows up for them or otherwise fulfills them; instead she goes into denial (or even dissociation?) as if it all never happened.
Needless to say, baffling, frustrating, and very distracting for her male co-workers; this has led her them (and myself, at first) to angrily conclude that she is a coquette, or c---k tease, to put it in pissed-off guy vernacular. While this might be a sadistically manipulative feature of her NPD side, or maybe just a transfer of rage against some male figure in her past who hurt her, there are other moments when she appears inexplicably scared of me (and presumably the other guys) she just a few minutes ago spent so much time seducing.

It's a terrible compulsion and a waste of her own life; like a computer algorhythmn running over and over that produces nothing.

The c-ck tease algorithm is the push/pull. Come here, daddy, go away.

I'm not understanding the proposed relationship to splitting here. Could you expound?

Splitting in sex: the bad object (sex) stays on the outside, it's happening "out there" as if to someone else. Kind of a bit dissociated. The good object (in here, inside myself, says the hysteric) I am a good child. Beloved by all, innocent of filthy, guilty pleasures like sex.

The lover is also split. The hysteric cannot see the lover as a whole object. They become parts, bits and pieces. A foot here, a hand there, a penis, ears, etc. But not quite a whole person.

Wow, my mother did catch me doing that and "made a show" of it. Then later as a teen I had sexual fantasies about men that I would never be attracted to or felt were gross because I associated sex with something that was dirty and wrong. I eventually came out of that style of thinking though I can't remember when probably in my 20s. My mother who I strongly believe to be HPD always had a holier than thou attitude, which I have adopted to an extent. She projected all the proper ways of doing things onto me and I was constantly in trouble for something yet she cheated and drank and did all this stuff. Lots of repression.

I had read Wisdoms post before but I guess I wasn't there yet and it makes much more sense now. And its true I've no idea how to be intimate. How do you see someone as a "whole"? It doesn't sound hard, but then, none of it does until you actually have to put it into practice.

Orion,
If your friend is like I used to be she probably does wish to do most of the things she speaks of but has never met anyone that she feels safe, or comfortable, or that fully accepts her to actually do them. She may be telling you all of these things as a means for attention, but she would not speak of them if she did not fantasize about them. She doesn't follow through because she is waiting on her rescuer.

Anyways, It's sounding like splitting and idealization is something I need to explore a lot further. Any suggestions, Anyone? Where is that AliceWonders when I need her?!

Thanks
Jean

Your article, it's true. I didn't need my emotional world on a daily basis rehashed to me.


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Ok, I feel better now. Now I will continue reading the thing to see if there is any insight into how I can fix the problem (which there never is anyways All the research studies show there is no recovery from HPD)

- Labor.

joliver54 wrote:Hmmmmm...mine would orgasm....rest and then orgasm again. This went on for at least 90 minutes. She must have had at least 12 orgasms. So to sum up, the first one did not "end our adventure"...it was only the beginning....

Im HPD and had a ?PD woman, and the more sex she had, the more she wanted. It would start slowly and went on and on for hours and hours, say 10pm til 4.00am. And even at 4.00am, she could have 8/10 orgasms in 20 mins. When she went into the devaluation phase, after six weeks, she said it was over between us, but she actually suggested we still meet for sex. But I rejected it, because I was in love (idealised love) with her, and would just get more hurt.