Greetings to Psychology Today readers. This is the first post for my blog on this site, so let me just say how much I appreciate being invited to contribute to such a well-known and respected journal and website.
My background is this: I am a board-certified urologist and surgeon at Harvard Medical School who specializes in "guy stuff," namely sexual and reproductive issues, and have been in practice for twenty years. However, my interest in male sexuality goes back even further, to research I performed at Harvard University as an undergraduate, where I worked in the laboratory of the brilliant biologist Dr. David Crews (now at University of Texas), investigating the effects of hormones on the sexual behavior of lizards. Life sometimes comes full circle- following my years of medical school and subsequent training, I chose to specialize in a specialty area of urology that addressed hormones and sexual behavior in human males. What could be more perfect? After all, women often claim there isn't much difference between men and lizards anyway!
What really interests me is how sex and sexuality play out in our lives. I'm fascinated by the dance of the sexes, by the interplay of biology, psychology, and culture. A couple of weeks ago I lectured to students at Harvard Medical School in a course on Human Reproduction, and we covered the male part of the story- how sperm are made, the anatomy of the male reproductive structures, and so on. One thing that amused me was that no one, in a class of approximately 30 students, was able to tell me the difference between ejaculation and orgasm. Can you? See below for the answer.
A key concept that is often overlooked is that sex is actually part of reproduction. Thanks to our big brains and something we call consciousness, humans have been able to separate out sex from baby-making by virtue of birth control, and have come to think of sex largely as an activity complete unto itself. In other words, most couples have sex because they want to have sex, and only in certain circumstances is it because they specifically want to achieve a pregnancy. Yet throughout the animal kingdom, the drive for sex is an imperative designed to result in offspring. If it didn't exist, the species would rapidly die out. Yet men are not usually conjuring up images of babies when they are in full-throttle lust mode! Even when trying to achieve a pregnancy, it is highly unlikely that the image presenting itself to the man at the point of his climax is of a gurgling baby. Somehow, the brains of men are driven more by lust for sex itself than for the biological result of sex. I wonder if it's the same for lizards?
Did you know the difference between ejaculation and orgasm? Ejaculation refers specifically to the process involved in expulsion of the semen, whereas orgasm is used to describe the total-body experience of the climax, including the fireworks in the brain. Usually these two events happen together, which is why we tend to confuse them, but not always. After surgery for prostate cancer, for example, men are able to have an orgasm, but do not have an ejaculation.
In future posts I will comment on stories of the day that relate to sex and sexuality, and their interplay with psychology, and will share interesting cases from my practice.
