The other day I called at a friend’s house to give her a book and she gave me one in return, by a sex therapist. Before you wonder the significance of this exchange, I hasten to add that the book’s co-author, a professional writer, is a friend of hers, and presumably had left her with some complimentary copies.
Wouldn’t you think a book about sex should be a bit sexy, just as a book on humour should be a bit funny, or at least have jokes in it? This one has questionnaires; pics of models acting out relationship difficulties; coy symbols like a vase with a droopy flower, or a girl eating a banana.
The book assumes that its reader, already partnered with someone of the opposite gender, has problems in the sex department. Where does it go from this premise?
If it were my book, not that I’m qualified at anything at all, it would go very widely indeed. Sex is so fundamental to our existence as human animals that there is nothing that I would not touch on. I would have got the reader to examine the nature of the attraction towards his or her partner, the state of spiritual health, their life-situation and reproductive prospects, their stresses and anxieties, their attitudes to life, their aesthetic and emotional reactions with the Other—not just one another but the world. My premise would be, “Don’t try to fix a dysfunctional sex life: see how your whole life may be dysfunctional by comparison to your true nature and needs”. I’d point out that mankind has managed for 400,000 years without benefit of sex manuals in fulfilling the three main purposes of sex: reproduction; keeping parents together for child-rearing & mutual support; solid basis for love. I’d give more than a passing nod to the main “sex problem” known to men and women in the last 400,000 years: not getting any. It’s easy to forget the social pressures and restrictions in most civilisations before the Pill and social welfare.
I almost started writing the book right here! But let’s get back to our author, a “psycho-sexual therapist within the National Health Service, who also runs a successful private practice”. Reproduction plays little part in his scheme, apart from cursory references to contraception. Nor does he have much time for love:
I have not talked much about love in [this book] because I see it as part of the relational whole. . . .People [who] come to the clinic . . . see love as a magical and spiritual feeling, experienced when they were first attracted to one another . . . [but] now love has ‘gone’. They don’t see how it can be fixed. . . . Love is proportionate to the amount of spadework they have done.
He’s a doctor, they don’t like words like “lust” and “love”. No, it’s “libido” and “spadework”. And as a doctor working for the National Health Service, he needs to make sure that no romantic or spiritual notions infect his practice, let alone the prose in this book. It is written with the passion and poetry of an accountant’s report, or the Yearbook of the Institute of Epidemiology. The foreword is entitled “Our vision for high quality sex”. A vision statement, yes. Perhaps the author is planning to export high-quality sex to places in the world where, for lack of appropriate guidance, sex is scarce and of mediocre quality.
Or perhaps the quality of sex is inhibited by inappropriate scripts. There’s a whole chapter about this.
A script is a belief or set of ideas or stories, often rigidly held. . . . Scripts tend to limit choice: this is one of their key attributes.
What, you may ask, is their book but a “script”?
You’d think sex was a traded commodity, or one of the booming leisure industries. What a pity that some conglomerate can’t expand its interests from brewing & gambling, say, and gain control of the Basic Instinct in a hostile take-over bid. Too late, methinks. Marketing has already done that. Not to mention commercial pornography. Drug companies are surely involved: Pfizer, which owns Viagra. A bandwagon worth jumping upon. Sex doesn’t belong to nature any more. It’s a racket like all the others.
To my mind unfathomably, the book recommends fantasy, pornography and masturbation. Not requiring a partner, these activities can undermine the couple’s relationship.
My sex book, if I ever write it, will recommend finding out who you really are, and how you can adapt to the Other. Then sex will take care of itself.
a wayfarer’s notes 
write the book. your random thoughts suggest ability, and i think we can all agree, “…what the world needs now…”:-)
Well, thank you for this and in gratitude, there’ll be a dedication: “To Anonymous, without whose timely suggestion this book might never have seen the light of day”.
I agree on the book, go ahead, expound on your beginnings here, and write it. Give the world something that will benefit them, Vincent.
That is hilarious, spadework, lol, man, what a book. The prescription for a cure/remedy is incredibly smallminded. Yours on the other hand, including the parts you already wrote above it, are right on. Total person. What a world, what a world to come, if this kind of stuff doesn’t change somehow. I’d say ‘therapy’ needs to be raised up a few notches, taken out of the playpen and brought into some integrated thought processes.I am impressed with your art piece, I like the trees in particular and the blog itself with the tower and ball, the central roundish window is terrific, everything holds its place really well. You are an Artist Yves, great work. Was it fun? Would be for me!
Thanks, Jim. I’ve done a Preface so far:“After many years labouring in the fruitful fields of his chosen subject, much of it Spadework, the author had begun to notice a slight diminution in Libido, and accordingly, on the occasion of his 95th birthday, determined to Write about that which he was no longer so inclined to Do. The research involved so much additional Spadework and more besides, that now, on the occasion of his 100th birthday and the publication of this modest volume, he is pleased to report a complete restoration of Libido, and dedicates the book to his Beloved, to Jim and to Anonymous (including all the Girls who helped him practically in his not so mis-spent Youth), in the hope that the Reader will gain commensurate joy from ploughing the same Furrow.”Will there be a reference to Golden Balls in the volume? Perhaps (after consultation with the Publisher) not. Seriously though, I am not serious at this stage. The Muse will dictate! Thanks for encouragement on the sketching too. So much to learn!
Hmmmmm. I have always found fantasy, pornography and masterbation substitutes for good sex. I certainly agree with your take on the subject, if love is involved the sex is amazing and in most cases doesn’t need anything in addition. Thanks for your comments on my “Father’s Day” post. I appreciate your words and also feel connected to those in similiar circumstances. It’s quite the experience. Please post your story as well.
Re “Father’s Day”, Shandi, thanks for your encouragement. One day I will write that story! Will it match yours in quality, though?
I agree. Sex is straightforward enough. It’s the socialising beforehand some of us find difficult.
Good point Rob. Different cultures have come up with different solutions, e.g. arranged marriages, or the world’s oldest profession.