Almost remembered youth
Though the sexual may appear as a universal aspect of all social life, the timing of its formal recognition and consequent influence upon other aspects of individual development is far from being equally universal. On the societal level, some form of heterosexual genital intercourse is virtually universal; while not all members of a society need practice heterosexual intercourse or any form of sexual behavior, such intercourse has to occur with sufficient frequency to insure group survival. However, sexuality, the meaning and significance of what is defined as sexual behavior, manifestly varies in dramatic ways. Sexuality varies not merely as culturally inscribed meanings change, but also when change occurs in what might be termed the psychological architecture of the individual (Castoriades 1987; Elias 1978). As Elias noted with reference to the evolution of Western societies:
[Sexual] functions are gradually charged with sociogenetic shame and embarrassment, so that the mere mention of them in society is increasingly restricted by a multitude of controls and prohibitions…. [W]ith the advance of civilization the lives of human beings are increasingly split between an intimate and a public sphere, between secret and public behavior. And this split is taken so much for granted, becomes so compulsive a habit, that it is hardly perceived in consciousness.. In conjunction with this growing division of behavior into what is and what is not publicly permitted, the personality structure is also transformed. The prohibitions supported by social sanctions are reproduced in the individual as self-controls. The pressure to restrain his impulses and the sociogenetic shame surrounding them—these are turned so completely into habits that we cannot resist them even when alone, in the intimate sphere.
(Elias 1978:190, italics added)
In contemporary Western societies, it is this privatizing of sexual experience that gives adolescence its significance in the construction of sexual careers and the attending issues of sexual identity. Adolescence is a time when many must begin the fashioning of their intrapsychic sexual scripts, fashioning them out of diverse and often conflicting materials. Adolescents must construct representations of the
self and the other(s) that signify sexual possibilities, including the emotions the individual and the other(s) are required to experience in order for erotic arousal to occur. As the philosopher Robert Nozick noted:
Sex is not simply a matter of frictional force. The excitement comes largely in how we interpret the situation and how we perceive the connection to the other. Even in masturbatory fantasy, people dwell upon their actions with others; they do not get excited by thinking of themselves or of themselves masturbating while thinking of themselves. What is exciting is interpersonal: how the other views you, what attitude the actions evidence.
(Nozick 1989:62)