Romance Redux

Nice article on this topic!

And what a gorgeous compliment:)I'm so glad you liked it.

Sabina Spielrein's story hardly began or ended with Jung. Her role in psychoanalysis has always been underappreciated.

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2011/10/sabinas-saga.html

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2011/10/sabinas-saga-part-2.html

Great article. Dr. Malkin has a knack for describing fairly complex psychological issues in a way for everyone to understand and relate to. Also, looking forward to seeing the film.

I have seen the movie but didn't like it. However this is not the place to talk about it.
What I have noticed is that often people marry "good people" (Like in the case of Sabina who did marry a good man) in those cases they can't possibly imagine acting on their sexual desires.
That is why people often turn to someone else to fulfill their deepest sexual desires.
As long as the factor of shame is played & often it is when it comes to sex, people won't include their partners in their sexual play

I think in the long run emotional security is more important than passion. Everlasting desire with the same person is nearly impossible. If you want this you must have a spouse and a lover! But usually the lover disappears one day, but your spouse remains!Other couples often have quarrels and then passionate reconciliations. But this method is very stressing"

To put instinct and volitional control into perspective you might want to consider other research undertaken to understand this matter. I've been reading about Dr Ryan's (previous PT article) views on this subject and have to say that he has expressed my own suspicions and beliefs for more eloquently than I ever could. The areas of particular interest for me (apart from those which deal with monogamous/polygamous relationships) is how these views come to offer some meaningful explanation of the misogynistic aspects of our own "modern" western cultures and the tendency toward a violent and bellicose predisposition in cultures where infantile tenderness is absent and where sexual expression, particularly of young adolescence is proscribed, often initiated and imposed aggressively by religious leaders and their mindless sycophants. Have a read if you're into dangerous ideas :-)

"Cronenberg asks, but doesn't answer, questions about how possible it is to reconcile these vital forces of sex and aggression with the calming influences of stability and security."

Firstly, saw the movie and absolutely loved it because I thought (please correct me) that Cronenberg DID answer that question - both main characters choose long-term stability over short-term joy. The reconciliation was the acceptance that maturity is a battle and being selfless is the higher calling - even for non-believers.

So I agree with Sylvia.

I concur with Magda~ wanting to be 'good' or simply marrying to align with 'what we should want' often leads to stagnation.

Did Jung write about this individuation experience of his? I have not seen anywhere his critical reflection on this anima projection.

"Her body stretched so taught..."
How did this spelling error slip through the editing process?

I was delighted to read this analysis after viewing the film over the weekend. Your discussion highlights many of the themes apparent in the film, and is a great compliment to the viewing experience.

I'm so glad you liked my post, Dr. Aalai. I really appreciate your reading and commenting
Take care
Craig

Wow, I think it's possible that we might still be stuck in the dark ages - with regard to women and sex.

Dr. Malkin makes some really interesting points. Particularly noting that Jung's struggle, as portrayed in the film, has modern relevance. (On that note, it should be mentioned that many plot points of the film were created for the sake of the storyline. For example, we have no historical evidence of any "spanking" activities between Jung and Speilrein.)

However, this struggle is a particularly male struggle. Isn't it? I don't think it's accurate to say that "we" (including both men and women) "long for explosive sex with an id-like Sabina". All too often, young women put on exactly that sort of act that we see depicted by Sabina in the film, of becoming a man's "id incarnate" as a very effective way of enticing him, in hopes of getting what they really desire from him (attention, validation, praise, adoration, some kind of a commitment, etc.) - by purposefully sparking that exact sort of confusion that we see the character of Jung acting out in this film.

It's a game where the behavior of the young woman comes off looking, smelling, and seeming like authentic sexual desire on her part, when very often the personal desire isn't really for sex, itself. To think that it is, is to view women through a very male type of lens. And to try to make women fit into a male mold.

To the question of, "How might Jung's adoring wife have come alive had he brought his fantasies into the marital bed?", I'd urge readers to seriously consider biology here. Sex has significant consequences for the female body that the male body is, and always will be, exempt from. Sexual "freedom" for the male body is biologically quite different from what freedom is for the female body. It's not popular right now to discuss this openly, in the midst of our current cultural assertion that women must do their best to act like men sexually - in order to be considered equal with men socially and politically (and in order to avoid being harshly judged and pathologized, specifically for not acting like men in bed).

And, indeed, a woman acting like a man sexually - as the character of Speilrein depicts in the film - is, as we know, a quite effective way to win a man's expressive praise, special attention, and adoration!

Yet Heterosexual intercourse is (as Sabina Speilrein noted in her writings), by nature, an invasion of the woman's body. It's normal, and natural, but no small matter to merely gloss over. Intercourse carries with it the very natural consequence of causing significant bodily transformation - plus pain and suffering (aka: natural bodily horrors such as infection, pregnancy, childbirth, abortion, adn miscarriage), and even potentially death, for the female body. Considering these basic biological facts, why are we suprised when women continue (despite the "Sexual Revolution") to express ambivalence about - or even disinterst in - sex?

So back to the question of: "How might Jung's adoring wife have come alive had he brought his fantasies into the marital bed?". I think it's very possible that she may've been mortified and/or resentful(if not repulsed). Or that she may've felt such fantasies and desires for "sexual passion" were very male-centric, possibly even juvenile, and ultimately disrespectful to her physical realities as a female human being. (On a gut level - even if she was not able to articulate her feelings as such.)

Isn't that perhaps what many women are going through, when playing out the "Oh god, please not tonight, I have a headache" routine. Which is still so very common (again, despite the Sexual Revolution).

In the conversation about sexual freedom and liberation, I think we need to seriously consider (re-consider) the realities of the human body. Sexual liberation often means something very different for the female body, than to the male body. It's not about shame here anymore - it's about basic biological facts, health and normal/natural feelings regarding personal bodily integrity.

Craig, thank you for this thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion of A Dangerous Method and the important issues explored in the film.

The dialectic tensions that exist between our seemingly contradictory human needs for passion/excitement/novelty and security/stability/familiarity is a challenge for many of us to reconcile, especially those trying to navigate the emotional terrain of long-term, committed relationships. To anyone interested in this topic, in addition to your excellent article, I recommend two important books: Mating In Captivity by Esther Perel and Can Love Last? by Stephen Mitchell.

In my work as a clinical psychologist, I've observed the tendency for people to idealize one position over the other: for some, the experience of passion/excitement is seen as the sine qua non of a meaningful union, while for others, security/familiarity is the pinnacle of relationship fulfillment. And unfortunately, idealizing one side of this dialect as somehow more central or authentic to our truest selves often involves a minimization or devaluation of the other.

I think a convincing argument can be made that while these experiences evoke very different subjective states that seem irreconcilable, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive psychic events. I think it's safe to speculate that Sabina Spielrein felt some sense of safety and security with Dr. Jung, a security that allowed her to express her deepest longings and hidden conflicts, the parts of herself that felt unspeakable (though the acting out of these experiences with a boundary-less therapist is an unfortunate re-enactment of the sexual/emotional abuse dynamics she was attempting to put to rest).

Passion, I believe, has become one of those terms that conceals just as much as it reveals. The experience of passion is layered with meaning—the sexual-passionate experience exists at the intersection of the psychological, emotional, physiological, interpersonal and cultural—all powerful influences that continually shape and color our experiences, including passion and sexuality.

For some, passion is about abandon and escape from the confines of domesticity; for others, it is the selfless giving to another that is passionately restorative and enlivening; for some, passion, power and control go hand-in-hand; for others, feeling sexually alive is about being “bad” and getting caught; yet for some people, passion awakens when tinged with aggressiveness and the need to push oneself and one's relationship beyond certain limits without worrying about the other's feelings...and so on. What is passionate for one may appear subdued and highly ordinary for another—we are indeed varied, complex and layered beings, and our turn-ons and turn-offs reflect this complexity.

But whether acknowledged or not, the experience of passion (in whatever shape and form it takes) rests on the desire to express our deepest selves and vulnerabilities—passion offers a momentary potential to become unencumbered by the masks we wear and the roles we take on in our day-to-day lives. And because of this, passion includes the need for and negotiation of emotional safety and security.

Thanks again, Craig, for starting such an important and lively discussion!

Rich Nicastro, Ph.D.

Craig, thank you for this thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion of A Dangerous Method and the important issues explored in the film. The dialectic tensions that exist between our seemingly contradictory human needs for passion/excitement/novelty and security/stability/familiarity is a challenge for many of us to reconcile, especially those trying to navigate the emotional terrain of long-term, committed relationships. To anyone interested in this topic, in addition to your excellent article, I recommend two important books: Mating In Captivity by Esther Perel and Can Love Last? by Stephen Mitchell.

In my work as a clinical psychologist, I've observed the tendency for people to idealize one position over the other: for some, the experience of passion/excitement is seen as the sine qua non of a meaningful union, while for others, security/familiarity is the pinnacle of relationship fulfillment. And unfortunately, idealizing one side of this dialect as somehow more central or authentic to our truest selves often involves a minimization or devaluation of the other. I think a convincing argument can be made that while these experiences evoke very different subjective states that seem irreconcilable, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive psychic events.

I think it's safe to speculate that Sabina Spielrein felt some sense of safety and security with Dr. Jung, a security that allowed her to express her deepest longings and hidden conflicts, the parts of herself that felt unspeakable (though the acting out of these experiences with a boundary-less therapist is an unfortunate re-enactment of the sexual/emotional abuse dynamics she was attempting to put to rest).

Passion, I believe, has become one of those terms that conceals just as much as it reveals. The experience of passion is layered with meaning—the sexual-passionate experience exists at the intersection of the psychological, emotional, physiological, interpersonal and cultural—all powerful influences that continually shape and color our experiences, including passion and sexuality.

For some, passion is about abandon and escape from the confines of domesticity; for others, it is the selfless giving to another that is passionately restorative and enlivening; for some, passion, power and control go hand-in-hand; for others, feeling sexually alive is about being “bad” and getting caught; yet for some people, passion awakens when tinged with aggressiveness and the need to push oneself and one's relationship beyond certain limits without worrying about the other's feelings...and so on. What is passionate for one may appear subdued and highly ordinary for another—we are indeed varied, complex and layered beings, and our turn-ons and turn-offs reflect this complexity.

But whether acknowledged or not, the experience of passion (in whatever shape and form it takes) rests on the desire to express our deepest selves and vulnerabilities—passion offers a momentary potential to become unencumbered by the masks we wear and the roles we take on in our day-to-day lives. And because of this, passion includes the need for and negotiation of emotional safety and security.

Thanks again, Craig, for starting such an important and lively discussion!

Rich Nicastro, Ph.D.

Hi Rachel,

Regarding your suggestion of “opening the door to profound intimacy”, that is exactly my idea here, as well! I truly believe that we have the best chance for accomplishing this if we become culturally willing to grant women the *freedom* (FREEDOM) to honestly express their – quite normal- feelings of ambivalence. But we must become willing to refrain from shaming and strong-arming them into merely fitting into the current status quo.

There is no longer a cultural message that eroticism is shameful.

That was true in the past. It’s quite the opposite now.

Our girls and young women today feel more pressure to perform sexually than ever before – and much of this is geared around a male-centric idea of sex, pleasing men sexually, proving that one is exceedingly comfortable with her body, pregnancy, abortion, etc., even if she’s not. Our girls and young women face the pressure today to develop a “no big deal” attitude and to be “cool” with an anything-goes approach to sex. Young women today cite going along with very male-centric expressions of sexuality (ie: pornography and going to strip clubs) even when deep down they find these things distressing, because culturally it’s just “not cool” right now to make a fuss about these things, or to appear “uptight”. Boys and men do not like it.

But is this true female sexual liberation?

We see - as evidenced by our popular media, advice columns in magazines, the rote answers that women give to one another on these matters, and even in your reply back to me – that we are very quick to pathologize females who express ambivalent feelings regarding sex, it’s consequences, the full scope of the female body and experience, or any kind of sexual hesitation or reserve – even when those feelings are coming from inside a woman or girl’s own heart and mind (and are quite clearly in opposition to the social pressure to be hypersexual and fearless). “Prude” is considered a far more shameful label these days than is “slut”.

Is it possible that we’ve created a new, contrived, oppressive image of how we think females should think/feel and act sexually, and have turned it into a false emblem of female empowerment?

Consider this: There was a brief article in the most recent issue of PT, discussing the reasons why women today so often fake their sexual performances with men. Listed as the most common reasons were: To get the deed over with, to hide their own sexual insecurities, to protect the male ego (to avoid hurting their partner’s feelings), and to “just to be nice”. (To be nice! Faking sexual feelings and behavior “to be nice”). Oh, and… general social pressure.

Does this sound like sexual liberation to you? Notice that none of these are based on any feelings, nor messages, of eroticism being shameful. They’re based on social expectations for the woman to deny her true feelings and experience and to instead be more sexual/porn-star like, to focus on pleasing/exciting the man, and shame regarding not being *more* sexual, according to what’s expected of her. ("Expected" = expectation.)

If we want to encourage women to be authentic and pave the way for greater intimacy, I think we need to first respect women, and their honest/true feelings, and then next, be willing to*allow* them to voice their deepest feelings regarding sex, their bodies, pleasures, hopes, fears and reservations. The positives and the negatives. Resisting the urge to belittle them out of our own fear of the previous social reality (shame regarding female sexual pleasure) will somehow suddenly return as a byproduct of allowing full female authenticity and honesty.

Lastly, specifically regarding physical differences between men and women: Pregnancy, birth (and any radical bodily transformation) *are* often very replulsive and risky. Don’t you think? And the biology of the female and male bodies do bear out major differences between men and women, and their experience of sex. Don’t they? Is this idea really all that threatening to consider?

To admit how very different the female body is from the male body does not make the female body “less than” the male body! Acknowledging the differences will only take power away from women if the presupposition beneath it all is that “male” is the superior standard by which all else must be compared.

Do you get my point there? I do not believe that it is shameful to be fully female, and to embrace – and be honest about - all that being female entails.

Acknowledging the huge biological differences also does not negate the fact that sex can be also *very* enjoyable for women. These are not mutually exclusive facts and ideas (pleasure vs. aversion). They can coexist. And indeed, I think they quite naturally do coexist – whether we wish to acknowledge it, currently, or not.

Birth, for example, is beautiful, amazing, awe-inspiring - *and* is also, at the same time, quite horrific, bloody, painful and heart-stoppingly terrifying (to both men and women). We don’t have to pick only one as being true/real.

To highlight our gender bias here, and to point out another way in which we accept male feelings and biology as more legitimate than female feelings and biology: We culturally embrace the notion that men have been "biologically programmed" over the millenia to have a deep desire to "spread their seed". This doesn't mean that men are incapable of being monogamous. We embrace and accept both notions, as being true and possible in our modern world and within the minds of modern men. We allow them to coexist.

Yet it’s so unpopular to voice scary ingrained realities about sex and the female body and mind these days; the ambivalence that probably needed to be present in order for females to have both successfully reproduced *and* to have protected their own lives and offspring througout the course of human history.

We thereby deny that other part of the female experience. Suppressing and repressing women’s legitimate feelings and voices about sexuality and their bodies. Your reaction to my post exemplifies this. You expressed that you found my point of view “confusing”, “disturbing” – and attempted to condescendingly belittle it by even going so far as to say you “saddened” (for me). And that you wonder “what in my life” has led me to my point of view.

So... what *has* led me to my point of view?

Research.

And *listening* to the voices of our young women. Allowing them to open up and listening to what they have to say about the true shame, embarasment and social pressures they’re facing today: the social pressure to deny the full scope of their feelings, in order to instead present the more socially acceptable Fearless Hypersexual Female front, even when that acceptable front sometimes does not really match up with their true, deeper feelings that reside inside of them.