Sexual Development

In doing research for an essay on psychosexual development I made a conection that I had as clearly recognised before that "as we grow the person with whom we have intercourse with changes and becomes more intimate". This 'intercourse' does not have to be sexual (meaning genital, linguistic, energetic, physical, emotional, spiritual sexual intercourse) intercourse but can also be intercourse through words or music or art (or meditative presence) but it can be one form.

Now Developmental Psychologists such as Kegan and Benjamin make a very good case for the ways in which the relationship towards another subject (person) becomes more complex and mature as our understanding of ourself becomes more complex and mature. They posit a kind of 'average' scenario in which we do not really relate to the other person as the other person and allow them their 'otherness' or their nature that is always to some degree different and inexpressible to ours, I'm sure we all recognise this. This means that in some ways we relate towards the other person as if they were us or as if they don't exist seperate from our needs, they are sort of an extention of what we think/feel/desire etc. This is not such an ideal place to be because we often do more or less violence towards the other person because we our incapable of really taing and feeling into their perspective, their felt reality, their wants and needs. When we are stressed we may also 'revert' in some sense towards this position.

The next stage however is recognising all the things we didn't recognise in the previous stage and we are often termed 'individuated' when we walk around in this head space for most of the time. This is because we know what we want seperate from other people and we also know what other people want seperate from us, we are more able to take responsability for ourselves from here and also allow people to take responsibility for themselves or not feel over-burdened with trying to 'fix' the other person as if that was actually up to us. So, to pause a bit, at the first stage being described the other person is 'inside' us, they are not really seperate from our wishes and so forth. With this second stage however the person is now 'outside' of us however the intimacy that can occur is dramatically increased because we can actually feel the vulnerability and openness of interacting with another person! This is not so clearly felt in the first stage because we don't feel the person as particularly seperate from us so there's nothing to really be vulnerable or open to. It is not as intimate as the third stage however because there is a feeling of "well, I don't really need you [as we do in the first stage, we feel dependant] and I've got my freedom and etc."

In the third stage we fully recognise the other person's seperateness, otherness and indivduality but we also recognise that they are again 'inside' of us. That is to say that the person we are with somehow defines who we are by our very relationship to them or that even though we are seperate people together we are creating a 'system' or 'habitat' together and while I do exist as seperate I also exist as a part of that system/habitat. This moves us towards a great degree of intimacy, if we actually live and percieve from that place - which is rare, because we recognise our inherent interdependance even though we are also independant indivduals.

This also works with fucking.

1st Stage; we are fucking ourselves to some greater or smaller extent "yeah, you love that don't you, yeah, yeah", we our lost in our own experience of sexuality and therefore it's not so intimate.

2nd Stage; we are mutually fucking each other "do you like that? I like it so and so" etc. Partners in this place are a lot more even.

3rd Stage; we feel so much into the pther person that we actually become them and feel what gives them their deepest joy. This type of experience is often characterised by a loss of the boundary of the individual self, which can be frightening, and also an engagement with the sexual act more so for the pleasure of the other as it's felt as more pleasurable than our own.

Interesting huh?!