Sexual desire, civilization and psychoanalysis

YouthRightsRadical wrote:

cumulusjames wrote:You would sexually abused a kid before you would take a path where you would never sexually abuse a kid?

How the ###$ did you get that from what I wrote?

Because I was sexually abused. It hurt me. If no one fancied me as a boy I would not have had this misery.

It took one wondering hand to unleash a lifetime of hurt. You can't understand that?

Surely you would rather die than inflict that on a kid?

Cumulusjames, based on what I know from your story, there are many things that could have theoretically happened to prevent you from being abused. Don't just blame pedophiles here.

cumulusjames wrote:

YouthRightsRadical wrote:

cumulusjames wrote:You would sexually abused a kid before you would take a path where you would never sexually abuse a kid?

How the ###$ did you get that from what I wrote?

Because I was sexually abused. It hurt me.

And that interfeared with your reading comprehension?

cumulusjames wrote:If no one fancied me as a boy I would not have had this misery.

Given that 90% of child molesters aren't pedophiles, the odds are against this being an accurate assessment of the situation.

cumulusjames wrote:It took one wondering hand to unleash a lifetime of hurt. You can't understand that?

What I can't understand is what this has to do with what we were talking about.

cumulusjames wrote:Surely you would rather die than inflict that on a kid?

Tampering with someone's mind and sense of identity is the worst violation that can possibly be inflicted on another human being. Under my ethical system, there is no higher sin. If you want your mind tampered with, I'll disapprove, but I won't stand in your way. If you want to inflict that on someone else against their consent, I'll fight to the death to prevent that.

None of this means I approve acting on harmful drives, and I'm insulted you misrepresented me as doing so.

cumulusjames wrote:So if one day one of the scientists came to you and said "hey! we found the cause, and we got a really effective treatment" you would not want that?

There's been times in my life, some of them quite recent, when all I've wanted to do is tear necrophilia out of my head, and throw it as far away from me as I can.

Right now though, and I think I'd probably say the same even in my darkest moods, I wouldn't accept such a treatment.

I'm nearly forty. I first fell in love at the age of ten, believing I was the only person in the world to be attracted to dead people. I've come such a long way, through some bloody agonising times, I don't want to be changed now, and have feelings that I've carried for three quarters of my life reduced to a 'madness that I used to have'. However hard it's been, not being able to be with her, the thought of erasing my feelings for one particular dead woman is horrific to me. The prospect of picturing her in the way that most 'normal' people say they'd see a mummified dead person, is genuinely distressing.

No. I couldn't willingly erase so much of what's been 'me' for thirty odd years.

Chessplayer wrote: Cumulusjames, based on what I know from your story, there are many things that could have theoretically happened to prevent you from being abused. Don't just blame pedophiles here.

If there are two things I have learned, they are that paedophiles did not abuse me, and, that I am not a paedophile.

Also that child sexual abuse is more complex than "paedophiles".

Well, good.

Chessplayer wrote: Well, good.

Chessplayer, sorry if I am speaking out of turn, but is anyone helping you? Something about reading your stuff makes me think you were really badly hurt at some point.

Graveyard76 wrote:I'm nearly forty. I first fell in love at the age of ten, believing I was the only person in the world to be attracted to dead people. I've come such a long way, through some bloody agonising times, I don't want to be changed now, and have feelings that I've carried for three quarters of my life reduced to a 'madness that I used to have'. However hard it's been, not being able to be with her, the thought of erasing my feelings for one particular dead woman is horrific to me. The prospect of picturing her in the way that most 'normal' people say they'd see a mummified dead person, is genuinely distressing.

I feel the same way, why would I want to erase the only feelings of romantic love I've ever had?
I like who I am, I don't view it as a curse at all.

Once again, a thread has been turned into an off-topic debate.

I made this thread to give some insight into the reasons why we paraphiles tend to feel guilty and develop depression, offering a possible solution (redirectig libido).

Please notice that by "redirecting libido" I mean using the enerfy given by sexual desire to do something else, following Freud's teachings.
I wasn't talking about reorientation. I don't believe in it and I consider it extremely harmful.

But now the thread has become another place for aggressive debate.

I just invite you all to discuss things without getting offensive. Can we all do this? Thanks.

Why don't we try to focus on solutions? Why don't we focus on the original topic of the thread? I'm sure you guys can come up with nice ideas.

Elkahn wrote:I made this thread to give some insight into the reasons why we paraphiles tend to feel guilty and develop depression, offering a possible solution (redirectig libido).

The thread hasn't gone off-topic. It's glistening with relevance. Civilization and the ego it constructs imbue two qualities shown above: the one is fixed belief in personal identity (persona), the second is an internalized big other and the self-inflicted punishment (guilt, depression) that brings.

Most civilized people are strictly identified with their personal identity, rarely does it occur to someone he or she can walk away at any time from who they are.

And tightly related to that identity is the self-punishment that comes with not meeting the standards of the identity most people hold themselves to. They are addicted to their hurt.

Look at these posters above first of all clinging to their socially imposed and constructed identities, and secondly wreaking emotional torment on themselves for failing to measure up.

"Life is a struggle -- but it doesn't have to be". - Stuart Schwartz http://youtu.be/F5Pgs_SZg1w

I've done my part; I've read Civilization and it's Discontents... lets talk about it! I wrote you a big long reply about Marcuse and Foucault and the only bit you responded to was this "off-topic", as you say, issue of being born gay or not.

Freud's theory of sublimation has important corollaries today. School boys could play football instead of playing sex -- but why? James W. Prescott tells us that intimacy in necessary for healthy development and repression of sexuality in cultures in directly proportional to levels of violence. Or Jean-François Lyotard tells us, contra Freud, there is no innate sex drive, building like pressure in a pressure-cooker, instead, desire is taught through the family, school, advertising, and institutions. When I build a model train, is that really sexual energy I'm building it with? Certainly that was Wilhelm Reich's view, but Reich also maintained that sexual repression creates emotionally stunted autistics.

I would also suggest that Freud's 4 Fs assumption is not backed up by modern neurology and that the 3 Fs theory is. Freud links sexuality and aggression -- which surely are linked in patriarchy -- but do they have to be? Neurology is showing us that Fornication, Feeding, Fighting, and Fleeing are not part of a single system as was commonly believed. Instead, eating and sexual expression are governed by the rest state Parasympathetic nervous system, and the 3 Fs: Fight, Flight, and Flee are operated by the egoic Sympathetic nervous system.

Have you even read the book you want to discuss? Here's the pdf link,

http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth/freud_civi ... 5B1%5D.pdf
https://ia801409.us.archive.org/28/item ... ntents.pdf
http://www2.winchester.ac.uk/edstudies/ ... l-Disc.pdf

Looking forward to your topical rely!