On the other side of the spectrum are those who have lost their sexual desire or never had it in the first place. People with hyposexuality have low sexual fantasies or desire for sexual activity. In Chapter 14 we discussed sexual aversion disorder, in which a person cannot engage in sex, feeling disgust, aversion, or fear when confronted by a sexual partner (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). People with such conditions are different from those who choose celibacy as a sexual lifestyle, which we discussed in Chapter 10; in contrast to those who choose to be celibate, people with hyposexuality often have low sexual desire or lack sexual desire altogether. Their problems may be due to substance abuse, hormonal disturbances, or psychological causes, and various therapies may be recommended, depending on the cause.
VARIATIONS, DEVIATIONS,
AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE?
What criteria should we use to decide whether or not a sexual behavior is “normal”? The number of people who engage in it? What a particular religion says about it? Popular opinion? Should we leave it up to the courts or psychiatrists? Stoller (1991) suggests that we are all perverse to some degree. Why should some people be singled out as being too perverse, especially if they do no harm to anyone else?
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Perhaps the need we feel to brand some sexual behaviors as perverse is summed up by S. B. Levine and colleagues (1990, p. 92), who write, “Paraphiliac images often involve arousal without the pretense of caring or human attachment.” We tend to be uncomfortable with sex for its own sake, separate from ideas of love, intimacy, or human attachment, which is one reason that masturbation was seen as evil or sick for so many years.
Paraphilias are still labeled “perversions” by law and often carry legal penalties. Because even consensual adult sexual behavior, such as anal intercourse, is illegal in some states, it is not surprising that paraphilias are as well. Yet these laws also contain contradictions; for example, why is it illegal for men to expose themselves, yet women are not arrested for wearing a see-through blouse? We must be careful deciding that some sexual behaviors are natural and others are unnatural or some normal and others abnormal. Those that we call paraphilias may simply be part of human sexual diversity, unproblematic unless they cause distress, injury, or involve an unconsenting or underage partner.
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suggest that paraphilias develop be-
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are recurrent, intense sexually arousing fan-
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tasies, sexual urges, or behaviors that involve a craving for a(an) (b) ___________________ object for 6 months or more, that in
volves a nonhuman object, the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner, or children or other nonconsenting persons. This behavior causes significant (c) _______________________ and
interferes with a person’s ability to work, (d)___________ with
friends, and other important areas.
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back to problems during the Oedipal crisis and with castration anxiety. Developmental theories claim that a person forms a
template in his or her brain that (c) _____________ his or her
ideal lover and sexual situation, and this can be disrupted in several ways. Paraphilias may also be due to courtship disorders in which the behavior becomes fixed at a preliminary stage of (d) that would normally lead to sexual inter-
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