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THE PSYCHE, LOVE, SEXUAL EXPRESSION, AND CREATIVITY

Your ideas about sexuality and your beliefs about the nature of the psyche often paint a picture of very contradictory elements. The psyche and its relationship to sexuality affects your ideas of health and illness, creativity, and all of the ordinary areas of individual life. In this chapter, therefore, we will consider some of the implications that result.

Chapter heading: “The Psyche, Love, Sexual Expression (louder and humorously), and Creativity.”

In those terms and in that regard, the psyche is a bank from which sexual affiliations are drawn. Basically, however, there are no clear, set, human, psychological characteristics that belong to one sex or the other. Again, this would lead to a pattern too rigid for the development of the species, and give you too-specialized behavior patterns that would not allow you to cope as a species — particularly with the many varieties of social groupings possible.

Your psychological tests show you only the current picture of males and females, brought up from infancy with particular sexual beliefs. These beliefs program the child from infancy, of course, so that it behaves in certain fashions in adulthood. The male seems to perform better at mathematical tasks, and so-called logical mental activity, while the female performs better in a social context, in value development and personal relationships. The male shows up better in the sciences, while the female is considered intuitional.

Beliefs about the infant’s sexual nature are of course a part of its advance programming. We are not speaking here of forced growth patterns, or of psychic or biological directions, impressed upon it so that any later divergence from them causes inevitable stress or pain. The fact remains that the child receives patterns of behavior, gently nudging it to grow in certain directions. In normal learning, of course, both parents urge the child to behave in certain fashions. Beside this, however, certain general, learned patterns are biologically transmitted to the child through the genes. Certain kinds of knowledge are transmitted through the genes besides that generally known, having to do with cellular formations and so forth.

New paragraph: As simply put as possible, love is the force out of which being comes, and we will consider this statement much more thoroughly later in this book. Love seeks expression and creativity. Sexual expression is one way that love seeks creativity. It is hardly the only way, however. Love finds expression through the arts, religion, play, and helpful actions toward others. Period. It cannot be confined to sexual expression only, nor can rules be given as to how often normal adults should sexually express themselves.

Love can be expressed quite legitimately through the arts. This does not mean that such a person is repressing sexuality in any given case, and stealing its energy for creative production — though, of course, this may be the case. Many natural artists in any field normally express love through such creative endeavors, rather than through sexual actions.

(10:05.) This does not mean that such persons never have sexual encounters that are enjoyable, and even of an enduring nature. It means that the thrust of their love is, overall, expressed through the production of art, through which it seeks a statement that speaks in other than corporal terms.

A great artist in any field or in any time instinctively feels a private personhood that is greater than the particular sexual identity. As long as you equate identity with your sexuality, you will limit the potentials of the individual and of the species. Each person will generally find it easier to operate as male or female, lesbian or homosexual, but each person is primarily bisexual. Bisexuality implies parenthood as much as it implies lesbian or homosexual relationships. Again, here, sexual encounters are a natural part of love’s expression, but they are not the limit of love’s expression.

Many quite fine nonsexual relationships are denied, because of the connotations placed upon lesbianism or homosexuality. Many heterosexual relationships are also denied to persons labeled as not being heterosexual, by themselves or society. People so labeled often feel propelled out of sheer confusion to express their love only through sexual acts. They feel forced to imitate what they think the natural male or female is like, and on occasion end up with ludicrous caricatures. These caricatures infuriate those so imitated — because they carry such hints of truth, and point out so cleverly the exaggerations of maleness or femaleness that many heterosexuals have clamped upon in their own natures.

When physical conditions are adverse, such social traditions have often emerged. In times of overpopulation, so-called homosexual and lesbian tendencies come to the surface — but also there is the tendency to express love in other than physical ways, and the emergence of large social issues and challenges into which men and women can throw their energies. There are “lost” portions of the Bible having to do with sexuality, and with Christ’s beliefs concerning it, that were considered blasphemous and did not come down to you through history.

Again, it is natural to express love through sexual acts — natural and good. It is not natural to express love only through sexual acts, however. Many of Freud’s sexual ideas did not reflect man’s natural condition. The complexes and neuroses outlined and defined are products of your traditions and beliefs. You will naturally find some evidence for them in observed behavior. Many of the traditions do come from the Greeks, from the great Greek play-writers, who quite beautifully and tragically presented the quality of the psyche as it showed itself in the light of Grecian traditions.

(10:54.) The child is simply the male child. He is not jealous of the father with the mother, in the way that is often supposed. The male child does not possess an identity so focused upon its maleness. I am not saying that children do not have a sexual nature from birth. They simply do not focus upon their maleness or femaleness in the way that is supposed.

To the male child, the penis is something that belongs to him personally in the same way that an arm or leg does, or that his mouth or anus does. He does not consider it a weapon (humorously). He is not jealous of his father’s love for the mother, for he understands quite well that her love for him is just as strong. He does not wish to possess his mother sexually in the way that adults currently suppose. He does not understand those terms. He may at times be jealous of her attention, but this is not a sexual jealousy in conventionally understood terms. Your beliefs blind you to the sexual nature of children. They do enjoy their bodies. They are sexually aroused. The psychological connotations, however, are not those assigned to them by adults.