States that in 99 percent of sexual aberration cases, the
perpetrator is a man. Men have the ability to segregate the sexual from
the personal; Liam Hudson and Bernadine Jacot, authors of 'The Way Men
Think'; Due to a 'wound' they suffer in the course of development; Male
desire inclines toward the impersonal.
By
PT Staff, published on March 01, 1992
The Male Wound
Obscene phone calls. Exposing private parts to strangers. Incest.
Copulating with corpses--the Jeffrey Dahmer way. Fetishism. Name the
sexual aberration and in more than 99% of cases the perpetrator is a
man.
If intimate acts often come with aberration and violence, it is
because men have the ability to segregate the sexual from the personal.
"Although squalid, such practices may have a preventive
function--releasing tension otherwise disruptive. In doing so, they may
allow the individual to express his imaginative energies in other
directions," suggest Liam Hudson and Bernadine Jacot, authors of The Way
Men Think, a new book exploring the roots of male behavior.
The team does not subscribe to the view that such behavior is
simply a distortion imposed by culture, the by-product of a narrow-minded
upbringing, or sexist biases in education. They argue it is the result of
a "wound" males suffer in the course of development, a psychic fracture
that occurs when boys separate from the mother and establish themselves
as male. In doing so, they must rip themselves away from their source of
primal comfort.
The wound has severe costs--a sense of loss, anxiety, an eternal
inability to sustain sexual intimacy. In the wake of the wound, men
confuse people with figments--the root of fetishes. They see people--and
treat them--as emotionally charged objects. Seeing people as things and
things as people makes them subject to sexual perversions.
Liam and Jacot claim that under the influence of the wound, male
desire naturally inclines toward the impersonal. But under the influence
of hostility, fear, or alienation, this tendency becomes totally
bent--"specialized, self-perpetuating, and addictive." The pervert moves
in a world where people and things are serving a particular need.
However, "once they are the focus of a pervert's desire, other people's
thinghood frees him from any compunction he might otherwise experience
toward them."
If the wound distorts some men forever, it has its benefits, too.
It is what makes others excel at mechanical and abstract reasoning. And
in still others it fuels the creative drive, as they try to make up for
their loss in symbolic terms.
Photo: DAHMER: Wounded or just sick? ((c) Mark Gubin/Gamma
Liaison)
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