Content area
Full Text
This paper explores certain subjective dimensions of sexuality by proposing that erotic experience is predicated on an experience of otherness within the self. I suggest that the ability to lust where one loves is contingent on the capacity to bring this otherness of self forward in the context of attachment. The dampening or deadening of desire in long-term relationships may be understood, counterintuitively, not as a failure of the integration of lust with love but as a breakdown of the normative dissociative processes on which the emergence of lust depends. I theorize that the otherness of lustful states of mind emerges via the impact and dynamic interplay of social regulatory intrusions on identity formation. This understanding helps explain both the psychic tensions and potential sources of breakdown present in combining lust with love.
Introduction
I found that if I allowed these various fantasies to rove uncensored, they would uncover parts of myself that were otherwise entirely hidden. I became particularly interested in the fraction of time that preceded the moment of orgasmic inevitability. What thought, what dynamic, what image would cause that final, magical, loss of control? That was the pivotal moment that seemed to join consciousness to the divine - and more often than not, I found this lofty pathway to be inspired by completely slutty activities. ... This meeting of the galaxies in the gutter fascinates me still.
Toni Bentley (2004), The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir
In both cultural discourse and traditional psychoanalytic thinking, when we plumb the murky depths of the erotic, it is the object of desire that captures the lion's share of attention. The primary source of desire has been understood to reside in the otherness of the object, most often exemplified by its material, sexed body. In contrast, the compelling, multifaceted self-experiences that are stimulated by or deemed possible in relation to others we find alluring are frequently relegated to a secondary position, given center stage only when the expression of one's desire is deemed problematic or perverse.
I begin with a quote from Toni Bentley's (2004) erotic memoir because it serves to instantly locate us within this neglected psychic realm: the subjectivity of lustful experience-caught sight of here in the contemplation of "the moment before." As...