SEX AND VIOLENCE

Orlin Baev

web | Transpersonal psychology. Sacred sexuality

I will consider the matter for the relation between sex and violence from two points of view: psychological and biochemical.

Libido and Mortido

In the basis of functioning of our entire cognitive apparatus of the conscious and rational beings, the initial basic instincts, which play a huge role in all human activities, stand.

Libido, as it is understood by the contemporary psychology, is one of the faces of the mental energy - the one of Eros, passion, thirst for life and procreation. In psychoanalysis, it is called life instinct.

Mortido (destructo, aggression) is the opposite pole of libido, the other side of the mental energy - the instinct for destruction, death and aggression.

These two impulses are a basic predisposition of our entire mental life. The way, in which we experience them, the ability to sublimate them defines us as conscious human beings, and the inability to work with them regresses our minds to a primitive animal state. Eros and aggression are the bearers of vitality, of the mental power in us. For better or worse, man is not a robot-like being and the strength of his/her motivation has always emotional meaning, which is invariably bipolar. Like any other energy in the Cosmos, which is based on a bipolar principle, the human power is also bipolar.

This power charges the emotional and cognitive (mental) human life directly in quantitative and qualitative respect. Its quantity determines our prosperity, youth and potential. Its quality determines our ability to penetrate into the secrets of our existence or makes us stand rooted to the daily grind.

According to the degree of consciousness of the individual, the usage of the power becomes at different levels. An intelligent man who understands the incredible importance of the only available fuel -the mental power, manages to harness and channel it to its more subtle manifestations of love and aspiration towards truth, which bear the wisdom of the developing consciousness.

When the conscious of the personality experiences its life cycle at a low level of humanity, understanding and scope of consciousness, the mental power is rapidly qualitatively spent, which in turn leads to increasingly qualitive drawing apart of its poles. The harmony of natural matching of the opposites love and will, merged into an integral wholeness in a conscious person, quickly polarize to their raw primary sources - lust and aggression, passion and hatred, sensual thirst and fear (aggression and fear are the active and the passive manifestation of the same instinct, i.e. aggression is the other face of fear).

In such a modality of raw usage of the mental power, the basic instincts are experienced in rough and primary, purely animal form - such as lust and violence.

The sexual intercourse, performed in the usual way - with uncontrolled orgasm and ejaculation - leads to psycho-energy crash, to emotional roughening and discord.

In order the mental power to be able to serve as a provoker of higher emotional and cognitive manifestations, above all, it is necessary there to be enough quantity of it. During the ordinary sexual intercourse, man loses huge amounts of mental power, which naturally gives rise to a qualitative crash in the charged by it higher levels of the mental apparatus - emotions and cognition. Several hours after the normal orgasm, irritation and aggression occur, mixed with painful emotional thirst for new pleasure stimulus, which to fill the gap of unsatisfaction, aggression and self-aggression. The internal mental states of aggression and irritability are projected onto the daily life of the individual and continue, according to researches, for two weeks after the "normal" orgasmic experiences.

As for women, the normal orgasms have weaker expessed, but qualitatively the same effect on the emotions and mentality.

Sex and Biochemical Basis of Violence

The described above mediator process leads to activation of the chain hypothalamus - pituitary - adrenal glands.

The hormonal result from the hylotropic orgasm (directed to detachment from the whole) is loss of testosterone and increased levels of cortisol and prolactin in the blood plasma. Mentaly, it is experienced as lowered tonicity, neurasthenic and psychasthenic symptoms of easy tiredness, irritability, depression, lack of concentration and aggression, explicitly manifestated as violence. The secreted into interneurons synapse space Delta FosB has addictive effect, which is emotionally experienced as painful thirst and addiction to the pleasure activity, in our case, sexual one. In order to be put out this tormenting thirst, one again starts with hylotropic sex, which, after the brief satisfaction, deepens the vicious cycle of hormonal imbalance and turns it into one more and more deeply going down into the emotional and hormonal deprivation spiral.

The relationship between the primitive way of experiencing sexuality and violence has always been known to mankind, but only few have managed to channel this powerful force. As I have explained above, hormonal and energy consequences of sex with a standard ejaculation (orgasm) raise aggression and self-aggression.

Society is made up of its units - the separate individuals. When each of these units is undergoing one of its basic and most important functions - the sexual one - in the most primitive, animal and barbaric way, the global result is blossoming of violence and primitivism in each sphere of the society.

© Orlin Baev
© Galina Markina - translated from bulgarian
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© E-publisher LiterNet, 29.12.2010
Orlin Baev. Transpersonal psychology. Sacred sexuality. Varna: LiterNet, 2010.