Kernberg's Eleven Aspects Of Mature Sexual Love

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Author: Stepanova Maria

Now I have a lot of interest in the topic of mature sexual love and I noticed that this topic also attracts the interest of the people around me - colleagues, clients, friends and those who somehow happened to be nearby.

It so happened that from the works of Otto Kernberg, whom I had long wanted to read, I chose the book "Relations of Love: Norm and Pathology". Otto Kernberg, one of the largest figures in the modern psychoanalytic world, the creator of the modern psychoanalytic theory of personality, president of the International Psychoanalytic Association from 1997 to 2001 …

What can I say, it’s hard to read, it’s interesting to read. And I thought, there are so many important aspects that I would like to share! And which we, gestalt therapists, can perfectly use in our practice, in understanding what is happening with clients or with ourselves.

So, the first, most difficult and controversial aspect is aggression. Kernberg writes:

“Aggression enters into sexual experience as such. We will see that the experience of penetration, penetration, and the experience of being penetrated, entered, includes aggression that serves love, while using the erotogenic potential of experiencing pain as a necessary component of pleasure-bearing merging with another in sexual arousal and orgasm. This normal ability to transform pain into erotic arousal misfires when gross aggression dominates the parent-child relationship.”

Wow! Pain and aggression of penetration and penetration. I'm surprised. Wow, this is a normal ability - to transform pain into excitement … But probably not too much pain, I think. How interesting! If there was a lot of rudeness in the childhood experience, this ability is not. And then the first sexual experiences associated with pain are doomed to failure and will be rather traumatic, followed by the second … It will take a lot of time for this mechanism to work again! Where there is no place for gross aggression, it is in parent-child relationships!

But in parental relationships, aggression, according to Kernberg, is just the place! I comprehend.

I remember: this echoes Rollo May's ideas that strength and activity are necessary for love, love experiences and actions. And also about how powerlessness and passivity generate violence and destroy good love relationships.

It's about how not to be afraid of your natural aggressiveness! She is needed, important and good. Including in order to protect from others your territory, your space of love, the intimacy of a couple from the intrusions of any person who is not included in this intimate space. An intimate space is a space for two, me and my partner. This means that there is nothing for friends, parents, acquaintances, and even our children to do there. Intimacy includes not only physical distance from the rest of the world, but also mystery. Just as closed doors keep us from entering our home, secrecy keeps information from spreading outside of our intimate space. And this requires strength and confident aggressiveness, the ability to say "no" in time and not let mom or girlfriend, for example, even with the best intentions. Yes, and it's okay to chase another sexually mature adult out of close proximity to your partner by viciously telling him that this is your partner.

Why does aggression often fall on our children? Because they are the safest people for us, you can attack a child with impunity. And this is completely irresponsible, it hurts the child. It is impossible to overestimate such harm! In addition, this does not bring the desired result, because, alas, the aggression was directed to the wrong address.

However, if you can learn to be aggressive enough in your mature love for your partner and towards other adults around us, it will be easy to be kind and tolerant with your children.

Kernberg calls the main affect of aggression anger. And highlights the main function of anger - to eliminate the source of pain or anxiety. It is clear that anger has an important and necessary mission. Adulthood, maturity is not about not being angry, but about learning how to deal with your anger. Notice it, measure it, and allow yourself to express it. Addressable. Gently suppressing and eliminating the source of pain and anxiety.

The second aspect of mature sexual love is flirting, yes and no at the same time, or teasing. Kernberg has:

"Erotic desire includes the feeling that the object offers itself and at the same time refuses …"

"The desire to tease, to be teased, is another key element of erotic desire …"

"Escaping" the object itself is a "teasing" that combines promise and avoidance, seduction and frustration. A naked body can serve as a sexual stimulus, but a partially covered body is much more exciting. This explains why the final part of a strip show is complete nudity - quickly ends with leaving the stage."

I love flirting, it fascinates, saves from boredom, it has a place for play, fantasy, excitement, risk, curiosity and interest, everything that makes you feel alive. If the partner gets involved in the game and responds, the couple gets all the resources for great sex, a lot of excitement, and as a reward - pleasure. After all, this is a well-known fact, the higher the excitement, the more pleasure, the sharper the sensations. However, a couple who avoid the risk of having sex mechanically, "for health" or performing "conjugal duty" eventually lose interest in this "event".

One of the most common beliefs that help you lose your passion and, as a result, pleasure - your partner is "mine", he will not go anywhere. Needless to say, this has been one of the most widespread human illusions since the abolition of slavery? And from time to time the slaves rebelled or fled. Man is endowed with free will. Everyone seems to know this, but it is somehow forgotten in everyday life, in familiarity, as well as in relationships governed by "debt". Or when love is replaced by power.

And it is worth remembering that a relationship is always a risk, that we are constantly changing, that a partner is not a part of me, not my soul mate. This is another common fantasy that is very useless for arousal. Everyone knows the difference in reaction to their own hands and to the hands of another person making intimate caresses? Yes, one's own hand knows, of course, how it should be, but someone else's hand is felt more sharply and the pleasure from it is greater, and it is not yet known what will happen in the next moment … She can tease! Only another person can tease us. Or try teasing yourself. Or flirt with yourself. Absurd! As well as the idea "I am you, you are me". I am not you, and thank God who made us so different!

By the way, differences are necessary for curiosity and interest. The similarities give a feeling of comfort and kinship, which is already similar to the feeling of family, from where it is not far from incest. So, differences are our faithful assistant in finding mature sexual love. Differences also need to be learned to handle, this includes the mature ability to accept the other with their characteristics, see them, and, if they do not violate our values, some very important essence - to welcome! And not to declare "crusades" against everything unlike that so often saddens me in what is happening around!

The other is not necessarily bad. Or maybe this: interesting, curious, mesmerizing, inspiring and excitingly attractive?

The next, third, very exciting aspect - locked, and their violation. Kernberg has:

“… sexual penetration or absorption of an object is a violent violation of other people's boundaries. In this sense, the violation of prohibitions also includes aggression directed at the object; aggression, exciting in its satisfaction, fused with the ability to feel pleasure from pain and with the projection of this ability onto the object. Aggression is enjoyable because it is part of a love relationship. So, aggression is absorbed by love and guarantees security in the face of inevitable ambivalence."

And also tenderness, which makes the intrusion gentle, “loving”. And further:

“The partner's body becomes the“geography”of personal meanings; so that fantastical early polymorphic perverse relationships with parental objects are condensed into admiration for individual parts of the partner's body and a desire for aggressive invasion of them. Erotic desire is based on the pleasure of unconscious playing out of polymorphic perverse fantasies and actions …"

What is this so complicated, replete with terms, writes Kernberg? We all come from childhood. Accordingly, in early childhood, we all experienced the pleasure of touching our bodies and our touching the bodies of our parents. Psychoanalysts distinguish between preoedipal and oedipal phases of development. Very early, from birth and while we are very young, up to about three years old, our body is undifferentiated sexualized, which means that it is very sensitive to touch almost everywhere and touch causes pleasure similar to erotic. Much later, the sensations from the genitals become more interesting than the rest.

But we grow, and over time we are weaned, and the older we get, the more prohibitions - it is no longer possible to touch mom or dad as we want, there is shyness, embarrassment, shame. Wine … The Garden of Eden is not a biblical place, it is a blissful infantile ignorance of social norms and prohibitions, natural pleasure from one's own body and enjoying the closeness and warmth of others. However, the experience was. And the memory of him is there! And the desire to "visit paradise" again. Psychoanalysts believe that an adult sexual act is always a symbolic repetition, or the embodiment of fantasies about the forbidden, the impossible, therefore they call it perverse, or perverted. I do not like the word "perverted", it seems to me much softer the word "modified".

As we mature and become adults, we always carry in ourselves love for our parents, the memory of those "heavenly" times, and we embody this love in a relationship with a partner, fantastically violating the prohibition on incestuous communication. And in this - the sea of excitement!

Therefore, it is very sad when with one or both parents the experience of interaction was rather rude and unsatisfactory, cold, rejecting. Then, unfortunately, there are obstacles for mature sexual love, fear of invasion, pain, inability to be aroused by a partner of the opposite sex, or one's own "numbness". You have to get to pleasure through many years of psychotherapy, if you have the opportunity, and courage, and resources.

The next two aspects of mature sexual love, the fourth and the fifth - exhibitionism and voyeurism, from my point of view, are completely in vain considered perverse, flow smoothly from teasing. Kernberg writes:

"The manifestation of female sexuality, both exhibitionistic and rejecting, that is, teasing, is a powerful stimulus that arouses erotic desire in men."

“Voyeurism is a very important component of sexual arousal in the sense that any sexual intimacy includes an element of personal and secret and, as such, is an identification with the Oedipus couple and potential triumph over them. Many couples are able to enjoy sex only in a secluded place, away from their own home and from children, which demonstrates the prohibition of this aspect of sexual intimacy …"

From the word exhibitionism breathes social prohibitions and a figure in the park, revealing the hem of his cloak … In fact, exhibitionism is a demonstration of sexuality, often quite socially acceptable. This is a chest in a cleavage, and a skirt above the knees, and thongs peeking out over jeans, and jeans that have slid down to half of the priests. And also biceps under a tight T-shirt and cubes in the same place, and jeans, with their bulges in the back and front, and exuberant growth in a shirt unbuttoned with top buttons. The current fashion is quite exhibitionistic, thanks to its creators! And - voyereistic, because where there is the one who shows, there is also the one who glances, or even spies. It remains to admit that to show and watch this is quite exciting activity, as well as to show it not to the end, and to watch it as if in secret. In this sense, the soft half-light-half-darkness is much more interesting than both complete darkness and bright lighting, and for more excitement and involvement in the process of mature sexual love, it is worth learning how to show and watch.

I would like to gently mention that there will be more excitement if you try to open your eyes in sex … consider your partner, yourself, which is happening as if "from the outside." Although those of us who tend to evaluate and devalue ourselves should not practice voyeurism before we have achieved a stable positive self-image.

The sixth aspect of mature love that I would like to mention is caring, the ability to care.

Rollo May (1969) emphasized the importance of 'caring' as a prerequisite for the development of mature love. Caring, he said, “is a condition, the components of which are the recognition of another as a human being like yourself; identification of my Self with the pain or joy of another; feelings of guilt, pity and the realization that we are all dependent on the observance of universal human principles. " He suggests that concern and compassion might be other terms to describe the same characteristics. Indeed, his description of care-care (one of the meanings is “caring for someone”) is very close to what Winnicott (1963) described as care-concern (one of the meanings is concern and concern)."

Caring, on the one hand, is what we were greeted with in this world when we were still completely helpless and what we would not have survived without. In this sense, only children can be carefree - because someone cares about them. On the other hand, as we grow up, mature, we learn to take care of ourselves, and this is a normal condition for growing up. However, the desire to take care only of yourself is a sign of immaturity, under-maturity. As well as the desire to take care of me, one way. In exchange for my untold beauty, for example. Caring is, in a sense, a gift, a gift to another, and this process can bring a lot of joy to the one who cares and pleasure to the one who is being cared for. Since balance is important in a mature relationship, exchange, playing in one direction will not work for a long time. The relationship will collapse. Yes, sometimes you want to be carefree like children, for this there is a special time and place, for example, a vacation in an all-inclusive hotel. They have already taken care of everything, and the couple can calmly enjoy the carelessness, take a break from all the worries of the adult world - so that there is a resource to return to this world again! And continue to care.

The seventh aspect concerns the experience of sadness.

“There are aspects of falling in love that are associated with developing the ability to be sad and caring. Josselyn (1971) suggests that parents who deprive their children of grief over the loss of love objects contribute to the atrophy of their ability to love.

It is not only children who grieve over the loss of their love objects. Grief has its own purpose - some kind of "grief work" that makes it possible to survive the loss. Sadness carries with it the end of the pain of loss. The ability to grieve assures us that we are able to cope with the loss, and at the same time preserve ourselves, stay alive. After all, no object of love can guarantee us that it will stay with us "forever". This is always an illusion. Neither marriage vows, nor one's own firm intention "forever" are not a guarantee that the loss will not happen. And only the experience of the experienced loss brings with it liberation from the catastrophic fear of losing a loved one.

The danger of losing - there is, of course, the more acutely the value and importance of the other and the relationship with him is felt. But it is just as important to preserve yourself. Because the most disgusting lack of freedom, blackmail, threats, attempts to control the other and the relationship … and, as a result, their destruction, grows out of the catastrophic belief “I will not survive this”. For which they fought, as they say. It’s very scary to let go of control and just love the other, but what if there’s a loss? It is very important to be able to grieve, to know that I will survive this loss.

The eighth aspect is loyalty, devotion, oneness. Kernberg writes:

“There is a prevailing opinion that it is the woman who wants to preserve the closeness and“uniqueness”of the relationship, and the man wants to get out as soon as possible after sexual satisfaction. Clinical evidence suggests the opposite: in many men, the desire for intimacy breaks down against the barrier of feeling that emotionally the wife belongs entirely to the child, and many women complain about the inability of the husband to maintain sexual interest in them.

In intimacy, the contribution of everyone, both women and men, is equal. Everyone wants intimacy and uniqueness as its main condition.

However, those partners who have not chosen the other completely or without coercion are likely to have fantasies about possible other choices or fears, suddenly the partner wants to "re-elect" which is essentially a projection, a reflection of his own under-choice. The choice made has its price - the rejection of all other possible options. And the reward is intimacy, space that will only be for the couple.

The appearance of the third, letting him into the relationship of the couple always violates intimacy, each next sexual connection destroys the previous one.

In intimacy, attachment grows, and accordingly, with the growth of attachment, fear of loss can become actual. People with attachment disorders in their childhood or early adolescence cannot stand the growth of intimacy and find ways to break it in every possible way. It does not depend on gender, whether it is a man or a woman. The statement about a monogamous woman and a polygamous man, from my point of view, is rather superficial.

A child conceived by a couple is at first an object of great joy and pride for both, but nevertheless it becomes "the third" and jeopardizes the intimacy of the couple due to the depth of the emotional connection between the mother and the child. Karl Whitaker argued that with the birth of each child, the mother cheats on his father for a while, and then gradually returns. It is always a crisis. The couple will need maturity and love to survive and survive.

The ninth aspect of mature sexual love is continuity issues.

"There are quite normal alternations between the intensity of the couple's communication and the temporary withdrawal from each other."

“Although the continuity in sexual relations between men and women is disrupted in different forms, the very fact of their existence and periodic cooling even in stable and prosperous unions are an important addition to the aspects of privacy, intimacy and the desire to merge erotic desire and behavior. In the absence of such breaks, sexual relations become part of everyday life, and this can lead to the accumulation of aggression in the experience of merging, which is a threat to the relationship as a whole. The Japanese film Empire of the Senses directed by Nagisa Oshima (1976) is a good illustration of the gradual increase in unbridled aggression in the relationship of two lovers, whose sexual passions consumed everything and severed their contact with the outside world."

In Gestalt therapy, we are not talking about continuity, but rather about the cyclical nature of any processes. Each contact occurs in its own cycle, which has a beginning and an end, a precontact when we are hungry, and assimilation when we are full, satisfied and want to calmly "digest" what has happened. In this sense, the alternation of intensity that Kernberg writes about is an understandable process. A decrease in intensity, especially the first, can cause anxiety in a couple, but it is important to understand that this is natural and to be able to switch. The ability not to "cycle" neurotically and not to be afraid of temporary cooling, not to make quick conclusions, noticing a "cold snap" in oneself or in a partner is very important for a mature relationship.

As the tenth aspect of mature sexual love, I would also like to say about the body, bodily experience and participation as an aspect of mature sexual love, but far from the first and not the most important! Kernberg has:

“Love received in the form of erotic stimulation of the surface of the body stimulates the emergence of erotic desire as a motor for the manifestation of love and gratitude.

A woman experiences erotic arousal from the intimate parts of the body of her beloved man, and, what is remarkable, when love passes, her interest and idealization of the partner's body also cease.

In contrast to one of the main illusions supported by the mass media, the beauty industry and the immature teenage tendencies of modern society - that sexuality directly depends on the beauty of the body, its shape, parameters, youth, I would like to say that love is still primary.

Because when love is destroyed, the most beautiful body will cause nothing but bewilderment and disgust, the desire to push away and run away. We are all subjective. We are people, we need meanings. Without meaning, we can mechanically perform a certain sequence of actions, which can by definition be called sex, but the pleasure will be below average, and then instead of being full, we will pay with a feeling of devastation.

And then a question will arise, which is asked by one of the heroes of the film "What Men Talk About" - the most important question, deafening in the absence of an answer: WHY?

What is important, from my point of view, is to have a healthy body. Yet sex is, among other things, an instinct for procreation, for its continuation you need a healthy, suitable partner. Hence - smell as a way to biologically, naturally recognize a suitable partner, appearance as a reference point. This is some basis, it is impossible to deny our animal nature, but it is definitely not primary.

Nature has endowed each of us with a unique body, some were more fortunate, a beautiful and healthy body, some less. Our responsibility is what we do with this gift. We develop or cripple, maintain a healthy diet and sleep, or destroy abuse and psychosomatic diseases. Now there is a lot of quite accessible information on what can be done to move in one direction or another.

Orientation to external data, leg length, eye color or hair is typical for adolescent, immature choice. Teenagers do not yet know how to create mature, full-fledged relationships, because they themselves are immature, until a certain age this is normal. Up to 20-25 years. Remember how in the song of the Nautilus: cruel children, they know how to fall in love, they don't know how to love?

Mature sexual love is interesting for its depth, fullness of meanings, and also because it is not scary to grow up in it.

It's probably always scary to grow old, as well as to understand that we are all mortal, and so am I. life becomes very valuable. Fully valuable!

And the last, eleventh aspect - orgasm and orgasmic experiences, of course! Otto Kernberg wrote about it this way:

“The central dynamic characteristic of sexual passion and its culmination is the experience of orgasm during coitus. During the experience of orgasm, the growing sexual arousal reaches its peak in an automatic, biologically determined response, accompanied by a primitive ecstatic affect,requiring for their full embodiment to temporarily abandon the boundaries of the I - to expand the boundaries of the I to the sensation of subjectively diffuse biological foundations of existence …

… an important aspect of the subjective experience of passion at all levels is going beyond the boundaries of one's own I and merging with another."

An amazing, paradoxical experience. The case when the experience of fusion is a reward for a long individuation. I suggest enjoying Kernberg's description:

“There is a fascinating contradiction in the combination of these most important features of sexual love: clear boundaries of the I and the constant awareness of the incompatibility of individuals, on the one hand, and the feeling of going beyond the boundaries of the I, merging into a single whole with a loved one, on the other. Separation leads to feelings of loneliness, longing for a loved one and fear of fragility in all relationships; going beyond the boundaries of the Self in unity with another evokes a feeling of unity with the world, constancy and creation of a new one. We can say that loneliness is a necessary condition for going beyond the boundaries of the I”.

Staying within the boundaries of the Self, at the same time overcoming them through identification with the object of love, is an exciting, touching state of love associated with bitterness and pain."

“The Mexican poet Octavio Paz (1974) described this side of love with extraordinary expressiveness, noting that love is the intersection point between desire and reality. Love, he says, opens reality to desire and creates a transition from an erotic object to a loved one. This discovery is almost always painful, since the beloved is both a body that can be penetrated and a consciousness that cannot be penetrated. Love is the discovery of another person's freedom. The contradiction in the very nature of love is that desire seeks to be realized by destroying the desired object, and love discovers that this object cannot be destroyed and cannot be replaced."

Spring soon. And then, as Hemingway wrote, in the end, spring always comes. I hope what I am writing about tonight will help fill someone's life with meaning and love.