On the Right Brain and Sex

In some respects sex and primal have a lot in common. First of all, in sex as the orgasm approaches, the left frontal cortex goes dark and the right lights up like a Christmas tree. And in a feeling the same thing happens. But wait! It is the same thing. Feeling is feeling and deep feeling, however it is manifest, is the same. So primal and sex are identical. Something sets it off, there is a build up of tension and excitement or stimulation and finally resolution and release. It is the analogue of most life processes. In the case of primal it is pain that sets it off but in the case of sex it is a handsome guy or pretty girl that does it. But look what happens; Once the sex is set off it gathers up with it the early pain and deep feelings and drives the sexual impulse. Sex is then hijacked by primal feelings and drives it. And the deviations sex takes depends on early life. Maybe it is the need for power over someone else, or the need to dress up like a woman (in males), or the need to be beaten or whipped. Sex is warped by our early lives. And the way we were warped in order to feel loved early on is the way that sex will be warped or deviated.

It is clear that in sex we don’t need a lot of talk, and the same is true in Primal Therapy; the less the better if we are to get into the right brain. And look what happens in both: the left thinking brain goes dark and “dead” and the right looks like a Christmas tree, all joyful and light. You cannot get completely into the feeling while prolix; both sex and primal suffer. But sex is feeling and primal is feeling, and life is feeling so why in hell are we focusing on the left cognitive brain? That brain can suppress sex and primal. And can then produce depression, and then we wonder why we are depressed, so we go to a shrink who helps us think more, and the result is more depression. And then he recommends pills to kill the pain and we feel better because those pills often diminish left brain function. Oh my!

What is then run off in sex are primal feelings and those feelings carry sex toward its ultimate denouement. So it looks like sex but it is primal. The orgasm is in lieu of integrated primal feelings. Full sex happens only with the absence of heavy pain. Too often what looks like a sexy person is someone with leaky gates who is forced to constantly act-out the feelings. Let me give an example: a boy lived with his divorced mother who had to go to work every day because she could not get alimony. The boy had no love and desperately needed it. His mother left her underclothes on the chair when she went to work. He picked it up smelled it. Later he rubbed them on himself; and still later in his teens he did the same thing while masturbating. What was he doing? Still needing to feel loved; still the build up of pain and its tension, and then the need for resolution. What we do in our therapy is finally allow the person to feel the early need, the build up of tension but finally real resolution, not the deviated one in neurosis. He feels the need and the pain deeply; we do not allow it to go into warped alleys but keep the focus on the need. And when this happens there is a systematic drop in all vital signs which work together to relax the system. This does not happen in sex where there is no final resolution, and so we get the Tiger Woods syndrome of the need for constant sex and release. That release is what I all abreaction. It is phony, neither resolving nor integrating. If Tiger could feel his pain his sex drive would diminish and he would not be driven. As far as I know it is the only way to diminish obsessive drive of any kind. It is, after all, symbolic of the real need and feeling. And the drive will be interminable; whether for sex, food, power, money or fame.