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Sexology notes from thee book "Understanding Human Sexuality"
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Tuesday, 26 November 2024Sexology - book
Chapter 1
Religion
- Most of the Information until about 100 years ago was provided from religion. The
ancient Greeks opnely ackowledged both heterosexuality and homosexuality and
explained the existence of the two in a myth which the original humans were
double creatures with twice the normal number of limbs and organs. Some were
double male, some were double female and some were half male half female. The
gods,fearing them, sperated them and forever after each one continued to search
for the missing half.
- 15th century: christians believed that “wet dreams” resulted from intercourse with
tiny spiritual creatures called incubi and sucubi. The person who had wet dreams
was considered quilty of sodomy, as well as whichcraft.
- Muslims believed that sexual intercourse was the nest pleasures of life.
Science
- The cultural context in which Freud and the other early sex researchers crafted
their research and writing. They began their work in the Victorian Era, Where the
norms about sexuality were rigid and opressive.
- Henry Havelock Ellis
- Physician in Victorian England
- He believed that women are also sexual creatures like men.
- Sexual deviations from the norm are often harmless, and he urged Society to
accept them.
- Richard von Kra t-Ebing
- “Pathological sexuality”
- He coined the terms sadism, masochism, and pedo lia.
- Magnus Hirschfeld
- He founded the rst sex institute and administered the rst large-scale sex
surver, obtaining data from 10,000 people on a 130-item questionnaire.
Unfortunately, most of the Information was destroyed by the Nazis.
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- He established the rst journal devoted to the study of sex.
- He introduced the term “transvestite”.
- Alfred Kinsey
- Massive surveys of human sexual behavior investigating the sexual disorders
and the physiology of sexual response, together with Masters and Johnson.
The Media
- Cultivation theory focuses on the Notion that people begin to think that what they
see on television and in other media really represents the mainstream of what
happens in real life in our culture.
- Acc. to the framing theory, the media draw attention to certain topics and not to
others, suggesting how we should think about of frame the issues. For example,
in 1998 the media chose to highlight the sexual dalliances of President Bill
Clinton, suggesting to the public that these matters were important. In contrast,
the illicit sexual activities of President John Kennedy were not revealed during His
presidency.
- Social cognitive theory is a broad theory in psychology. In media it analyzes hot
the media in uence our behavior, thoughts, and a ect (emotions) through
processes such as modeling, imitation and identi cation (Bandura).
- Selectivity: people select and pay attention only to certain media and their
messages, and not to others.
- Acc to reinforcing spiral theory, one’s social identity and ideologies predict one’s
media use and in turn, emdia use a ects out identity and beliefs.
- Acc to the di erential susceptibility model, not everyone reacts the same to the
same media exposure.
Cross-cultural perspectives on sexuality
- Cultures tend to have one of 3 main themes: individualism, collectivism or
honor(Middle East).
- Ethnocentrism: the tendency to regard one’s own ethnic group and culture as
superior to others and to Believe that its customs and Way of life are the
standards by which other cultures should be judged.
- We mostly have sex in one culture, But that actually tends to di er.
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- Incest taboo: nearly universal.
Chapter 2 - Theoretical Perspective on Sexuality
Evolutionary Theories
1. Sociobiology
- Is de ned as the application of evolutionary biology to understanding the social
behavior of animals, including humans.
- Why do humans choose to mate? One major criterion is physical atractiveness of
the person.
- Men will invest more in their genetic children than stepchildren.
- In addition to natural selection, Darwin also proposed a mechanism that is not as
much a household word, sexual selection = selection that creates di erences
between males and females. It consists of two processes
- Competition among members of one gender (usually males) for mating access
to members of the other gender
- Preferential choice by members of one gender (usually females) for certain
members of the other gender
2. Evolutionary Psychology : focuses on psychological mechanisms that have been
shaped by evolution
- One line of research focused on sexual strategies.
- Women and men face di erent adaptive problems in short-term, long-term or
casual mating. In short term mating, a woman may choose a partner who o ers
her immediate resources, such as food or money. In long term mating, a
woman may choose a partner who appears able and willing to provide
resources for the inde nite future.
- Other studies show that men and women are very similar in their stated mating
preferences. Both prefer long-term strategies and few or no short term
partners.
- Criticism: it assumes that every characteristic we observe must have some
adaptive signi cance, but in fact some human traits may be simply “design
aws”.
3. Gender-neutral evolutionary theory
- Flexibility and adaptability
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- An individual may behave in ways that are more male typical in some situations or
more female typical in others. Likewise, a xed mating strategy for females or
males would not be adaptive across numerous environments.
Psychological theories
1. Psychoanalytic theory
- Freud saw sex as one of the key forces in human life, his theory has much to say
about human sexuality.
- Sex energy libido: one of the two major forces motivating human behavior (the
other being thanatos, or the death instinct)
- He described the personality as being driven by three major parts
- Id: the basic part of personality and is present at birth. It operates on the
pleasure principle.
- Ego: it operates on the reality principle and tries to keep the id in line. The ego
functions to make the person have realistic, rational interactions with others.
- Superego: the conscience. It containts the values and ideals of society that we
learn, and it operates on idealism. Its aim is to inhibit the impulses of the id and
to persuade the ego to strive for moral goals rather than just realistic ones.
- Stages of the psychosexual development
- The oral stage (birth to 1 year): the child’s pleasure is derived from sucking and
otherwise stimulating the lips and mouth.
- The anal stage (2 years): the child is focused on elimination
- The phallic stage (2-6 years): the boy’s interest is focused on his phallus (penis)
and he derives great pleasure from masturbating.
- Evaluation of psychoanalyc theory
- From a scienti c point of view, one of the major problems is that most of its
concepts cannot be evaluated scienti cally to see whether they are accurate.
Freud said that many of the most important forces in personality are
unconscious and thus they can be studied.
2. Learning theory
- Classical conditioning (Pavlov)
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