Today 1 can talk about the 3rd sexual revolution, referred to as the sex revolution. It redefines the existing knowing of sex and psychosexual identity; it emphasizes the importance of the cultural sex (gender) and promotes the thought of "liquid sexuality" and free sex change. The series of essays presented besides examines basic sex doctrines, in peculiar in the context of determining to what degree the revolutionary sex claims are based on science, and to what degree they consequence from the ideological assumptions adopted. In view of the essay form, these considerations are selective and relate to selected issues.
+++++
Sexual revolutions are periods of crucial change in sexual morality, related to questioning and liberalizing conventional norms, the dissemination of contraception and pornography, the improvement of feminism and changes in perception of sexuality. The first revolution, beginning in the 20th century, is connected with the theories of Sigismund Freud. The second, covering the 1960s, is linked to Alfred Kinsey's activities, whose achievements were greatly influenced by John Money.
The roots of modern sexual revolutions
Some researchers, specified as Gabriele Kuba or E. Michael Jones, have been searching for the beginnings of the modern sex revolution as early as the 18th century, looking primarily at them in the aftermath of the French Revolution. This revolution radically transformed French society — and indirectly another countries — under the slogans of worship of reason and liberation from God’s rule. In this context, Marquis de Sade wrote a fresh JustinaIn which he glorified force and sexual sadism, including murder. Voltaire in turn called for a proceeding with the Catholic Church, and his slogans incarnate in the life of the Jacobine with its bloody dictatorship. The period of the French Revolution is simply a time of retreat from religion, a time of demolition of churches, the overthrow of monarchy and all authority. John James Rousseau's “return to nature” was frequently interpreted as liberation from moral restrictions and affirmation of free and frequently perverse sex.
At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Anglican pastor Thomas Malthus gained large popularity, who preached that the world's population was increasing at a geometric rate (1–2–4–8–16), while the increase in food resources was taking place much slower — at an arithmetic rate (1–2–3–4–5...). In his opinion, a hunger disaster is only a substance of time. Although the concepts of malthusianism have been questioned many times, they inactive find supporters who see the future of humanity in reducing natural growth. In practice, these activities are carried out by promoting contraception and free access to abortion. The Rockefeller Foundation, the Soros Foundation and the Gates Foundation played a peculiar function here. Although malthusianism itself did not straight mention to sexuality — rather, it focused on demographic processes — the climate of the population threat created by it has had a crucial impact, which seems to affect much of the world's elite to this day.
Marxist Roots
The essential theoretical foundations of sexual revolutions, as well as contemporary feminism and genderism, can be found in Marxist doctrine and ideology. As is well known, Charles Marx's primary social thesis was the presumption of class conflict — a conflict between the owners of the means of production, or capitalists, and the working class whose work is the origin of the bourgeoisie's profits. This social antagonism, according to Marx, was to be the basic engine of past and to find the improvement of societies. The proletarian revolution was to lead to the creation of a communist society — without classes, exploitation and private ownership of means of production. Frederick Engels developed this concept, extending it to the alleged "female question". According to him, sex inequality was besides born with the emergence of private property and the division of society into classes. "The first class oppression was female oppression by male sex," Engels wrote. In his view, women were subject to double oppression, both from class structure and from patriarchal social standards. It was these that led to the subjection of a female to a man in marriage, the establishment of monogamy as a means of controlling a female and her sexuality, and the establishment of a patriarchal family. Engels referred to this as a "world-wide historical female disaster".
The real liberation of a woman, according to Engels, was to happen only erstwhile private property was abolished and women gained economical independence. kid care and household care were to become a shared social responsibility, specified as through nursery or social kitchens. Women should be freed from coercion and included in production processes; it will only be possible to full align the rights of women and men.
These demands were straight implemented in the russian Union after the October Revolution. Aleksandra Kolłontaj, the first female in the Piotrogrodzka Revolutionary Council, took the lead in the alleged Żenothiel, an institution commonly called the Ministry of Women. Kolłotaj enthusiastically promoted the thought of women's liberation, proclaimed praise for free love, tolerance for homosexuality, and besides introduced easy legalization of divorce and abortion. The female was to be a creature completely liberated from the yoke of the household and conventional social roles. In this spirit the Bolsheviks introduced, among others, alleged matrimony communes, and besides began to take over the upbringing of children by state institutions. The same ideas, although already in a different form, were reactivated in Israeli kibbutzes respective decades later. Today, we are seeing a increasing tendency to restrict parental power to the state — peculiarly seen in the actions of the German Jugendamts or the Norwegian Barnevernet institution.
Freud – unawareness and drive
As mentioned, the first sexual revolution is connected with the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and it will not be an exaggeration to conclude that Sigismund Freud's theories and his explanation of psychoanalysis have contributed decisively to its formation, which has had a profound effect on the moral changes of the 20th century. Although Freud himself never called himself a sex revolutionary, his works created the ground for a fresh explanation of human psyche and sexuality, far beyond the medical framework.
Zygmunt Freud (1856–1939) was born in Příbor (then Freiberg) in Moravia, in the household of a judaic wool merchant. erstwhile he was four, his household moved to Vienna, with which Freud would later be inextricably associated. The father was a harsh and authoritarian man, fearing the boy, and the parent — affectionate and caring — became an emotional mention to him. This relation played a key function in Freud's later formulation of the concept of the Oedipus complex. Freud was distinguished by his intellectual abilities from an early age, which made the full household support his education, as a consequence of which he completed his medical studies at Vienna University. Freud's private life had a profound impact on his technological career. He is engaged to Marta Bernays, granddaughter of the chief rabbi of Hamburg. Although this relation was seen as a social husband, the couple married and had six children, including Anna Freud, a later follower of the father's school of psychoanalysis, who was a homosexual.
At a mediate age, Freud allegedly had to quit his sex life, claiming that individual like him no longer needed sexual excitement. Whether that was indeed not the case, possibly it was besides far-reaching a paraphrase of 1 of Freud's letters, in which he wrote that he advocated a much more freer sex life, but he himself enjoyed small of this freedom. He suffered from recurrent migraines and neurotic symptoms that he tried to analyse and treat by autoanalysis. His intellectual condition, according to American writer E. Michael Jones, may besides have been affected by allegations of an affair with Mina's sister-in-law (Minnie) Bernays.
Freud has been a passionate cigar smoker throughout his life, from today's point of view, there is simply a clear addiction to smoking. In 1923, he was diagnosed with oral cancer, but despite many surgeries and suffering, he continued smoking — he smoked about 20 cigars a day for the remainder of his life. After the anschluss of Austria, due to increasing anti-Semitism, he made a decision to emigrate to London, where he spent his last life. After the German attack on Poland in September 1939, a individual doctor, at Freud's request, gave him a lethal dose of morphine.
Sigismund Freud's first investigation into hysteria and experiments with hypnosis led him to the most influential and revolutionary discovery — the concept of unconsciousness, and the creation of a spatial model of psyche. Although the ancients, led by Plato or St Augustine, considered the existence of "dark" pages of the human soul, Freud was the first to propose a coherent, elaborate explanation of the psyche, in which unawareness gained central meaning and was described in an innovative way.
Unconsciousness Effects
In Freud's intellectual model, we separate 3 main levels: consciousness, preconsciousness and unconsciousness. Unawareness is an area that is not straight visible, including those that are repressed memories, especially traumatic memories, and suppressed desires and urges — mostly sexual — whose presence may be a origin of shame or interior resistance. Freud's experience with hypnosis revealed an interesting phenomenon: patients, in a trance state, talked about events that they had completely forgotten after waking up. Freud began to wonder if they were pure fantasies, or if they were genuine memories. Subsequent sessions showed that at least any of these contents were real, though out of memory, experiences. However, since they were “forgotten” and inactive could be reached, they had to be kept out of consciousness — in this area Freud placed unconsciousness.
In Freud's view, personality consists of 3 basic spheres: Id, Ego and Superego. Id (‘one’) is an original, completely unaware part of the personality, containing biological urges and instincts. He's following the rule. Lustprinzip, which in literal translation can be rendered “the rule of lust” and in somewhat softened as “the rule of pleasure”. Id strives to immediately satisfy desires, regardless of real conditions. Id's energy origin is libido, which Freud identified mainly with sexual and life drive (Eros). For most of his technological activity Freud stood firm that libido was primarily sexual, only within the alleged framework. The second explanation of instincts (c. 1925) modified his views and agreed with critics indicating that alongside the instinct of life in our behaviour there are sometimes auto-destructive tendencies as manifestation of the drive of death (Thanatos). It is aggression against others and indirectly hurting ourselves, and sometimes directed straight against each another (self-inflicted injury, suicide attempts). Both urges — Eros and Thanatos — co-create the human motivational structure. Superego (supervisive) is simply a sphere of socially-insured norms and values absorbed during our development. It follows the rule of duty, in another words, Superego “tells us” about what is good and what is bad, how we should act, to look good in the eyes of others. Id is virtually entirely unaware, besides of Superego remains mostly in the sphere of unconsciousness. It's a fundamental difference with a conscience that we usually know about.
Ego (self) is an area of our self-knowledge, contains everything we are aware of about ourselves, besides includes the way we want to present ourselves to the world. Ego governs the rule of realism and in personality acts as a judge, an arbitrator who must settle permanent disputes between Id's demands and Superego's requirements. If the ego is strong adequate and performs well as an arbitrator, the personality is fundamentally mature and harmonious. But if it is besides weak, then they begin to dominate Id or Superego – depending on the effects of this process we will have a different image of the character of the individual. The weak Ego reacts with fear and takes various ways to reduce it through defensive mechanisms, the most common of which is denial, by removing from consciousness or keeping painful content beyond it. These 3 spheres have a constant conflict for influence and dominance, so it is said to be a dynamic personality theory.
Sexual desire is the main motivation factor
Eros, or sexual drive, the main part of libido, is, according to Freud, the basic driving force in human life. Thanatos is much little likely to speak, and sexual desire wakes up very early, although it is supplied in a varied way, with the aid of various erogenous zones of our body. Libido develops in stages, appropriate personality improvement consists in a smooth transition through successive phases of sexual development, or alleged libido stage, ranging from the first oral phase to the last mature phase associated with heterosexual activity. In the phallic phase (3–4 years), children discover genitalia, accompanied by the first observations on the gender-nics. The boys discover that they have pee-pees and the girls “have nothing” which leads to a feeling of superiority in boys and inferiority in girls. At the same time, boys have a fear of castration. A boy arrogant of his penis plays with him, feels agitation and begins to fantasize about his mother's seduction. On the another hand, he fears a father who can castrate him and who he treats as a rival. It's the essence of the Oedipus complex. In girls, the symmetric complex of Elektra consists of dislike of parent and regret for the birth of her incomplete, without a member. That's why he wants to get close to his father, fantasize about having a baby with him. In adulthood, this desire will be met in a heterosexual relationship. The correct improvement of personality consists of a smooth passage through all phases of libido development, a fixation in 1 of them will origin certain features of character.
Man is simply a being driven by the rule of pleasure, and his most crucial desire is to accomplish happiness. Unfortunately, life does not let full implementation of this principle. We are exposed to suffering from 3 sources: weakness of the body (diseases, aging), hostility of the outside planet (catastrophics, conflicts) and relationships with another people (disappointment, rejection). To neutralize these many sources of suffering, we launch defensive mechanisms: denial, denial, projection, sublimation, transfer, rationalization, intellectualization, regression, introjection and others. In addition to various forms of intellectual defence, sometimes people, according to Freud, flee into a religion which he described as “the mass swarm of mankind”. In his opinion, religion, like neurosis, acts as a defence mechanism: it soothes fear and gives an illusion of meaning, but it does so at the expense of the fact about human nature.
Culture and religion as a origin of Slavery
The material and spiritual acquis of humanity creates a culture through which Freud understands the sum of the accomplishments and devices through which our life has drifted distant from the lives of our animal ancestors and which service 2 purposes: to defend man from nature and regulate human relations. But specified a culture fulfills primarily repressive functions – it does not let to make full the basic biological nature of man.
Perhaps the 2 most crucial repressive functions of Freud culture sees in its action against human sexuality and aggression. Culture imposes the standard of sexual intercourse in a monogamous relation between a female and a man, prevents occasional sex for pleasure. In this context, Freud’s amazing claims about incest are: “It may have been the most serious mutilation of human love for centuries.” These words may be shocking, but Freud's intentions become more understandable if we mention them – on the 1 hand – to the concept of the Oedipus complex, which in fact assumes that the desire to commit incest is right for all man and constitutes developmental correctness, and on the another hand, to the individual life of the creator of psychoanalysis, in which he had and very strong relations with his mother, and, as all this suggests, an affair with his own sister-in-law.
Culture besides restricts the ability to express the aggression that Freud saw as an essential component of human nature, of biological and evolutionary roots: "The propensity to aggression is the original, independent disposition of man's drive." The means utilized by culture to pacify aggression are internalization (directing aggression inwards) and possibly the most crucial mechanics – generating guilt through the appearance of fear by the authority and requirements of Superego. According to commentators of the researcher's legacy, Freud's goal was to present guilt as the most crucial issue of cultural evolution and to show that "for the advancement of culture we pay for the failure of happiness as a consequence of increased guilt." specified a functioning culture Freud referred to as "reeurotic", but did not formulate revolutionary demands. He realized that the influences of culture could not be disposed of, it was only to limit its repressive action per individual. But besides in this dimension he had concerns, due to the fact that if our innate aggressiveness were to free itself from the influence of culture, it could mean mass demolition of humanity. The Viennese psychoanalyst expressed the hope that the second of the fundamental instincts, Eros, would be stronger.
The culture, according to Freud, is pushing an individual into a spiritual area, which is simply a kind of slavery. And for Freud, religion is simply a stalker disorder. He criticizes all religion from anthropological, ontogenetic, and ethnological levels. In the anthropological dimension, religion appears to be an infantile defensive attitude against human weakness: man, through the character of God, has personified the forces of nature and elevated them to the heights that defend powers. In the ontogenetic dimension, the ambivalent attitude of the kid towards the father—whose he fears and loves—in the life of a mature man is continued in the attitude of spiritual faith; man, despite being afraid of the gods, carries upon him the demands of defence against dangers. The concept of monotheistic God is simply a consequence of various defensive mechanisms related to references to the father, his exaltation, transformation, creation of images, sublimation, creation of replacement objects and various substitutes, recognition with him. In the ethnological dimension, it is essential to look for sources of religion in the “primary horde” (in mention to evolution), in which – according to Freudian communicative – the father as an absolute despot enjoyed worship in his sons, though they hated him at the same time. due to hatred and jealousy, the sons jointly murdered their father to break his authoritarian power and take over his goods. In time, however, they began to fight and compete for influence. There were permanent conflicts, and the sons began to regret their actions and yearn for the authoritarian but fundamentally peaceful regulation of their father. They decided that from now on specified an act would be prohibited, that only women belonging to another tribes could be enriched and married. And a totemic feast will be celebrated in remembrance of his father’s spirit. Thus the consciousness of guilt, which plagues all mankind, became the nucleus of social organization, religion, and moral limitations. According to Freud, these mechanisms are at the heart of the Christian concept of first sin.
Freud’s Wide Influence
As you can see, in Freud's view, man is simply a being determined by his biological instincts, the most crucial of which is sexual desire, he determines our choices most. The behaviour of the individual, in synthesizing summary, is an accident of sexual desire and unawareness, which on the 1 hand sustains these urges, but on the another hand, imposes a number of limitations.
Freud's concepts were criticized from many sides, primarily pointing out that they were of a speculative and weak methodological basis. The deficiency of empirical support is besides characteristic for most Freudian. Freud considered man as a self-contained monada, completely overlooked interpersonal factors. He created a image of a clinical man in the power of drive, devoid of actually free will. Nevertheless, his imagination of man as a being determined by the first biological urges, to a large degree in the power of ignorance and bound by spiritual limitations, had a broad social resonance and rapidly gained many supporters. To religiously indifferent persons, he gave the concept of man as an alternate to Christianity.
In its first form Freudian psychoanalysis did not hold up the test of time. However, on all charges, whether we like it or not, Freud has made a crucial contribution to moral change. The Vienna psychoanalyst referred to himself as an atheist and “enemy of religion in all form”. Regardless of whether we agree with his diagnosis, Freud recalls that the sources of our beliefs and values are frequently deeper than we would like to admit – in unconscious desires, fears and the request for security. By the way, with all theoretical and methodological objections to Freud's concept, his theories provoke questions whether modern man has truly liberated himself from past forms of enslavement, or possibly he just replaced them with fresh ones – a cult of success, technology or consumption.
Freud's theories broke the social taboo against sexuality, you could say he introduced sex to the salons. He challenged the intellectual authenticity of religion and postulated the release of man from neurosis caused by spiritual restrictions. Marx treated religion as “opium for the people”, by demolishing social classes he wanted to liberate man from economical and ideological enslavement. Nietsche questioned Christian morality and dreamed of creating a “superman” autonomously creating the meaning and value of his life. These 3 thinkers, referred to as “the top enemies of God”, gave philosophical-psychological foundations both for the first and for the second sexual revolution in the 1960s. But this is most closely related to the technological activity of Alfred Kinsey, as in the next text.
Dr Andrzej Margasiński – psychologist, lecturer at Jan Długosz University in Czestochowa. More information: andrzejmargasinski.com. In February this year the author's book was published Genderism – between ideology and science, presented essays are developed in chapters of this monograph.
Genderism – people, discipline or ideology? sex Roots of Sexual Revolution #1
