Excitement

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  In some ways it’s always worked. And I’ve always been in relationships where being the coordinator, competent and in control, was my designated job. There didn’t seem to be any time when I could just let myself go, feel free and giddy and maybe even a little irresponsible” Elizabeth pauses and smiles shyly. “Then I met Vito and discovered just how much I’m drawn to sexual submission. It may not fit the way I always thought of myself, or the way others thought of me, but it’s the truth.” “Because sex is a place where you can safely lose control?” I ask. “Yes.” “It is the one area where you don’t have to make any decisions, where you don’t have to feel responsible for anyone else.” “For me it’s like a vacation,” she explains. “I don’t have to wear makeup; I don’t have to answer the phone; I don’t have to be in charge. It’s like being on a wonderful, distant island, far away from my ordinary life. I can just step out of my world and be somebody else, sexy and a little wild.” Elizabeth wants to be manhandled, told what to do—as if, through her erotic self, she can correct an imbalance in her life and replenish something vital. She delights in the abandon that comes with the sense of powerlessness. And I would add that she also gets a charge from playing in the forbidden zone of inequality. “When he comes on to me forcefully, it makes me feel sexy. It heightens the tension. Like he wants me so much he just can’t help himself,” Elizabeth says. Vito, quick to respond, adds, “She can’t help herself, either. When she gives in, I know I’m irresistible.” The harsh realities of violence, rape, sexual trafficking, child pornography, and hate crimes require that we keep a tight rein on the abuses of power that pervade the politics of sex. The poetics of sex, however, are often politically incorrect, thriving on power plays, role reversals, unfair advantages, imperious demands, seductive manipulations, and subtle cruelties. American men and women, shaped by the feminist movement and its egalitarian ideals, often find themselves challenged by these contradictions. We fear that playing with power imbalances in the sexual arena, even in a consensual relationship between mature adults, risks overthrowing the respect that is essential to human relationships. By no means am I calling for a reversal of history or an antifeminist agenda. Any discussion of modern-day couples and sexuality would be perversely wrongheaded if it did not recognize the enormous and vastly salutary influence of feminism on the shape of American family life.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The previous versions of the PTSD diagnosis have been careful not to suggest a mechanism (or even a theory) to explain what happens in the brain and body when people become traumatized. This absence is important for more than academic reasons: a theory suggests rationales for treatment and prevention. This avoidance, and sole reliance on taxonomy, is an understandable overreaction to the Freudian theory’s previous stranglehold on psychology. I believe that it is only with intimate collaboration that science and praxis will co-evolve into a lively, vibrant partnership capable of generating truly innovative therapies. An open multidisciplinary effort could begin to help us discern what is or is not effective and to improve at our primary aim of helping suffering people heal! The article by Jack Maser and Steven Bracha offers a spirited challenge to those entrusted to write the DSM-V . In their audacious commentary, these two researchers put forth the bold premise that there exists a theoretical basis for the mechanisms underlying PTSD: an evolutionary (instinctual) basis for trauma, similar to what I had observed with Nancy in 1969. With this article, I had come full circle. Gallup and Maser’s 1977 experimental studies on fear and “animal paralysis” had inspired my explanation for her behavior. Now Maser and Bracha concluded their 2008 article with these tickling couple of sentences: Along with the many changes that are being suggested for DSM-V , we urge the planners to seek out empirical studies and/or theories that place psychopathology in an evolutionary context. The field will then have a connection to broader issues in biology, the data on psychopathology can be placed within a widely accepted concept, and clinicians will have the possibility of developing more effective behavioral treatments (e.g., Levine, 1997). 9 Oh, what divine delight! I could not help but wonder if my lecture at the San Diego Medical Conference had contributed in part to stimulating Maser and Bracha to make this proposal. The mere possibility that I might somehow, through fateful detours and twisted turns, have influenced the course of the psychiatric diagnosis of trauma (or at least contributed to the dialogue) was mind-blowing. Let us take a brief look at that diagnostic history. * I use the term renegotiation to refer to the reworking of a traumatic experience in contrast to the reliving of it. † Tragically, Donald Wilson was killed in a rafting accident in 1970. ‡ This transcript was published in the journal Science in 1974. § The Alexander technique takes its name from F. Matthias Alexander, who first observed and formulated its principles between 1890 and 1900.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  After I hung up I wondered why I was so willing to ignore the alarm signals. I realized that Earl’s request at this particular juncture of my life seemed fateful. A colleague and I had just finished three years of empirical research on spousal bereavement, studying eighty men and women who had recently become widows and widowers. I had interviewed each at length and treated all of them in brief eight-person therapy groups. Our research team had followed their progress for a year, collected a mountain of information, and published several papers in professional journals. I had become persuaded that few people knew more than I about the subject. As a bereavement hotshot, how could I, in good conscience, withhold myself from Irene? Besides, she had said the magic words—that I was the only one smart enough to treat her. The perfect plug for my socket of vanity. Lesson 1 : The First Dream A few days later I met with Irene for our first session. Let me say right off the bat that she turned out to be one of the most interesting, intelligent, stubborn, agonized, sensitive, imperious, elegant, hardworking, ingenious, unbending, courageous, attractive, proud, frosty, romantic, and infuriating women I have ever known. Midway through the first session, she described a dream she’d had the previous night: I’m still a surgeon, but I’m also a grad student in English. My preparation for a course involves two different texts, an ancient and a modern text, each with the same name. I am unprepared for the seminar because I haven’t read either text. I especially haven’t read the old, first text, which would have prepared me for the second. “What else do you remember, Irene?” I asked when she stopped. “You say each text had the same name. Do you know what it was?” “Oh, yes, I remember it clearly. Each book, the old and the new, was titled The Death of Innocence.” Listening to Irene, I lapsed into reverie. This dream of hers was pure gold, intellectual ambrosia—a gift from the gods. The psychological gumshoe’s daydream come true. The reward for patience, the payoff for countless tedious therapy stakeouts with inhibited engineers. It was a dream to make even the most irritable, the most grumpy therapist purr with pleasure. And purr I did. Two texts—an ancient and a new one. Purr, purr. The ancient text needed to understand the new. Purr. Purr. And the title, The Death of Innocence. Purr, purr, purr.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  “You better do quadruplets,” Smoke told me. “Quadruplets?” I had my wallet open. Smoke plucked out a one and said, “That’s the idea. You get four times as many points this way. Kinda speeds things up.” I went way over what I needed for the clock radio. I was almost up to the binoculars. Smoke whooped, but Rusty sucked in his cheeks. “You trying to give everything away?” he said. “Can I do quadruplets again?” I asked. Smoke said I could. He also said I could play two boards if I wanted, and the second board would have the same number of points as the one I was playing now. That would give me a chance at two big prizes instead of just one. “Goddamnit, Smoke,” Rusty said. I was staring into my wallet. Smoke pulled out a couple of ones and dealt me six disks off the stack, three to each board. The Ballard boys pressed around to see how I’d made out. “I got it!” I yelled. Smoke shook his head. “Almost, buddy. Moon Forfeit. Moon Forfeit should cost you fifty points but I think we can let it go at thirty. Whaddya say, Rusty?” Rusty grumbled. Finally he said okay. At Smoke’s suggestion I opened another board and upped the stakes from quadruplets to double-quadruplets. “Watch for the boss,” Smoke said. “Get a move on,” Rusty said. “Shit,” Smoke said, “Texas Sandtrap. You almost had it, Jack.” The Ballard boys cheered me on. I opened two more boards and played all five for double-quads. My score rose on Carolina Snowflakes and Wizard Wheels, then fell again on Banana Splits, Lonely Hearts, Black Diamonds. I left my wallet on the counter and Smoke took what I owed as he dealt the disks. I was just a couple of points away from winning the whole top shelf when Smoke pushed the wallet back to me. “You’re a little short, Jackson.” It was empty. I knew the Ballard boys didn’t have any money. Arthur was watching me from the small crowd that had gathered around the booth, but I knew he didn’t have any money either. I asked Smoke if I could have one last deal.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  The counterargument to the law of diminishing returns is the principle that consistent investment leads to increased satisfaction. The more you do something, and the better you get at it, the more you’re going to enjoy it. The weekly tennis player who continues to improve his game would argue for the positive effects of frequency. For her, Paris just keeps getting better. The more she practices, the stronger her skills. The stronger her skills, the deeper her confidence. The more confident she feels, the more risks she takes. The more risks she takes, the more exciting the game. Of course, all this practice takes effort and discipline. It is not just a matter of being in the mood; it requires patience and sustained attention. The tennis player knows intuitively that growth is rarely linear; she may experience some plateaus and some slowdowns, but the reward is worth the effort. Unfortunately, all too often we associate effort with work, and discipline with pain. But there’s a different way to think of work. It can be creative and life-affirming, sparking a heightened sense of vitality rather than a bone-deep exhaustion. If we want sex to be fulfilling, then we have to apply effort in just this artful way. The Myth of Spontaneity There is a powerful ideal operating in many people’s view of sex—that it’s an instant fit, a hand-in-pocket, skin-to-skin compatibility that is perfect from the start. Good sex is supposed to be easy, tension-free, and uninhibited. Either you have it or you don’t. This idea is often accompanied by its good neighbor, the myth of spontaneity. The word “spontaneity” comes up like a mantra whenever men and women in my office talk about what constitutes, for them, exciting, thrilling, can’t-wait, truly erotic sex. It is hard to overstate their enthusiastic conviction that really sexy sex is supposed to be spur-of-the-moment. We like to believe that sex arises from an impulse or inclination that is natural, unprompted, and artless. We talk about being swept away. “I couldn’t resist…I felt such a rush through my veins…It was bigger than both of us…I was completely taken over.” This infatuation with the big bang theory of sex suggests our impatience with seduction and playful eroticism, which take up too much time, require too much effort, and—most important—demand full consciousness of what we are doing. For many of us, premeditated sex is suspicious. It threatens our belief that sex is subject only to the machinations of magic and chemistry. The idea that sex must be spontaneous keeps us one step removed from having to will sex, to own our desire, and to express it with intent. As long as sex is something that just happens, you don’t have to claim it. It’s ironic that in such a willful society, willfully conjuring up sex seems obvious and crass. It embarrasses us, as if we’ve been caught doing something inappropriate.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  You started to talk about Artemis.” “Well, I’m just sorting things out—I’d better start from the beginning of that accursed day—the day before I wound up in the emergency room. . . .” Ernest loved stories and sat back, full of anticipation. He had the strongest feeling that this man, with whom he had spent three puzzling hours, was now going to reveal the key to a mystery. “Well, Doctor, you know I’ve been single for almost three years and a little cautious—more than a little—about another—er—liaison. I informed you that I was greatly injured, emotionally and financially, by my ex-wife?” Ernest nodded. A glance at the clock. Damnit, only fifteen minutes left. He would have to move Halston along if he was to hear this story. “And this Artemis?” “Well, yes, back to the point, thank you. It’s funny, but it was your question about breakfast that morning that triggered something. It’s coming clearly now—stopping to breakfast at a café in the center of Mill Valley, sitting down at a large, empty table for four. Then the café got crowded, and a woman inquired if she could share my table. I looked up at her, and I confess I liked what I saw.” “How so?” “Extraordinary-looking woman. Beautiful. Perfect features, fetching smile. My age, I guess, around forty, but a lithe body, like a teenager. A body, as American films put it, to die for.” Ernest gazed at Halston, a different, animated Halston, and felt himself warming to him . “Tell me.” “A ‘ten.’ Like Bo Derek. Small waist and a most impressive bosom. Many of my Brit friends prefer androgynous women, but I hereby plead guilty to large-breast fetishism—and, no, Doctor, I don’t want to change that.” Ernest smiled reassuringly. Changing Halston’s—or his own—adoration of breasts was not on his agenda. “And?” “Well, I started to converse with her. Her name was strange—Artemis—and she looked . . . what shall I say? Well . . . different, New Age type. Not a customer who would appear at my bank. Imagine, she spread avocado on her morning bagel and then took out of her string purse plastic packets of condiments and sprinkled it with sea salt and pumpkin seeds. And her costume was straight from King’s Road—flowered peasant blouse, long flowery purple skirt, cord belt, lots of gold chains and beads. A flower child grown up, so she seemed. “But,” he continued, his story flowing out all the more forcefully for having been dammed, “in actuality she was down-to-earth, well educated, and most lucid. We struck up an immediate friendship and conversed for hours, until the waitress came to set the table for lunch. I was fascinated by her and invited her to lunch with me. This despite the fact that I had a business luncheon scheduled. And I don’t have to tell you, Doctor, that this was very unlike me.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In moving toward an understanding of this intrinsic relationship between trauma (“raw, latent survival energy”) and spirituality, I was excited to come across a formative article by Roland Fischer published in the prestigious journal Science. A surprising and unexpected tenet emerged: that spiritual experience is welded with our most primitive animal instincts. Transcendental States Roland Fischer’s article, titled “A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States,” 166 described a schema for showing the association of various parasympathetic and sympathetic (autonomic-instinctual) activities with mystical and meditative experiences. While the details of his work are well beyond the scope of this short chapter, suffice it to say, I suspected that his view of the psychophysiological underpinning of various mystical states paralleled the range of “transpersonal” experiences that my clients were encountering as they unwound and released their traumas. Trauma represents a profound compression of “survival” energy, energy that has not been able to complete its meaningful course of action. When in the therapeutic session, this energy is gradually released or titrated (Step 4 in Chapter 5) and then redirected from its symptomatic detour onto its natural course, one observes (in a softer and less frightening form) the kinds of reactions I observed with Nancy. At the same time, the numinous qualities of these experiences gracefully, automatically and consistently became integrated into the personality structure. The ability to access the rhythmic release of this bound energy makes all the difference as to whether it will destroy or vitalize us. Primitive survival responses engage extraordinary feats of focused attention and effective action. The mother who lifts the car off of her trapped child mobilizes vast (almost superhuman) survival energy. These same energies, when experienced through titrated body sensing, can also open to feelings of heightened focus, ecstasy and bliss. The ownership of these primordial “oceanic” energy sensations promotes embodied transformation and (as suggested in Fischer’s cartography) the experience of “timelessness” and “presence” known in meditation as “the eternal now.” In addition, it appears that the very brain structures that are central to the resolution of trauma are also pivotal in various “mystical” and “spiritual” states. 167 In the East, the awakening of Kundalini at the first (or survival) chakra center has long been known to be a vehicle for initiating ecstatic transformation. In trauma, a similar activation is provoked, but with such intensity and rapidity that it overwhelms the organism. If we can gradually access and reintegrate this energy into our nervous system and psychic structures, then the survival response embedded within trauma can also catalyze authentic spiritual transformation. As I began to explore the relationship between trauma transformation and the Kundalini experience, I searched for confirmation of this connection. Around that time (the mid-1970s) I met a physician named Lee Sannella in Berkeley, California. He shared with me a large compilation of notes he had taken about individuals who were experiencing spontaneous Kundalini awakenings. I was intrigued by how similar many of these reactions were to those of my early clients.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Unbeknownst to them, this may be the greatest opportunity for expansion they’ve had in years, for it allows them to express parts of themselves that have long been denied. It’s tiresome to have to be in control all the time, and Rose was due for a break. It’s equally draining to feel erotically impoverished, and Charles’s refusal to tolerate this situation was his first step in bringing more authentic parts of himself to Rose. Ironically, in the midst of this emotional turmoil they began making love again after many years apart. Rose’s desire for Charles came back to life in tandem with his interest in other women. The more he eludes her, the more she wants him. And for his part, seeing her care so much about what he does has a profound erotic appeal. For a long time their relationship operated on a contract of mutuality. They were not to express feelings or needs that exceeded what they had been allocated. They were not to be irrational, insensitive, or greedy. Now, however, they both were making strong claims. They made demands on each other that they didn’t want to give up on. There was a lot of pain, but at the same time there was a vibrancy that neither could deny. “I haven’t felt this lousy in years,” Rose tells me. “But underneath, I can see it needed to happen. I’ve always focused on the tangible stuff—the money, the house, the kids in college—thinking that’s what’s solid. But who says that what Charles is after is so frivolous? Maybe it’s another way of taking care of a marriage.” By refusing to acknowledge anything that falls outside the accepted range of behavior, Charles and Rose had achieved the opposite of what they were seeking. Rather than making their love more secure, they had, in fact, made it more vulnerable. But allowing both of them to reveal heretofore segregated parts of themselves was not without risk. The very foundation of their relationship was at stake. Each of them would have to tolerate the unfolding of the other, even if it took them beyond their range of comfort. Dismantling the Security System We often expect our relationship to act as a buttress against the slings and arrows of life. But love, by its very nature, is unstable. So we shore it up: we tighten the borders, batten down the hatches, and create predictability, all in an effort to make us feel more secure. Yet the mechanisms that we put in place to make love safer often put us more at risk. We ground ourselves in familiarity, and perhaps achieve a peaceful domestic arrangement, but in the process we orchestrate boredom. The verve of the relationship collapses under the weight of all that control. Stultified, couples are left wondering, “Whatever happened to fun? What ever happened to excitement, to transcendence, to awe?”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Planning Creates Anticipation Anticipation implies that we are looking forward to something. It is an important ingredient of desire, and planning for sex helps to generate it. When Dominick prepares his osso buco, he can almost taste it in advance. He imagines Raoul’s surprise and pleasure. He hopes it will make his boyfriend feel special, and he envisions Raoul’s gratitude. Fantasy is the mortar of anticipation. It’s a way of imagining what something is going to be like. It’s a kind of foreplay that takes place outside the couple’s direct interaction. Anticipation is part of building a plot; that is why romance novels and soap operas are filled with it. I believe that longing, waiting, and yearning are fundamental elements of desire that can be generated with forethought, even in long-term relationships. When Nile and Sarah go out on Saturday, they often have a few things planned. Dinner, music, and—later—sex. In the past, an entire evening’s worth of wooing was undone the instant Sarah had to pay the babysitter. “All of a sudden, I’d be the mother again, and all that tension we worked to build up would just vanish. Now, Nile deals with the babysitter and I go straight to the bedroom. It’s an arrangement that lets me keep up the momentum.” Sarah and Nile have three kids who keep her running all day, every day. She has made it very clear to Nile that it takes a lot to get her out of that role, and very little for her to slip back in. “I used to think that it was a matter of being in the mood, but I was disabused of that idea a long time ago. Waiting for the mood is like waiting for the Second Coming. I like the planning. It gives me something to look forward to when I’m playing with Barbies and checking homework.” What Sarah looks forward to is more than the sex; it’s the ritual. Spending ample time together, woman to man, they temporarily slip out of the chains of reality. Their foreplay lasts hours. They’ve been at this for twelve years, and like a mastered discipline, they miss it when they skip it. They know that great sex generally demands more than fifteen minutes right after the eleven o’clock news. Cultivating Play When couples complain that their sex life is listless, I know it isn’t mere frequency they’re after. They may want more, but they certainly want better. For this reason, I prefer to talk about their erotic life rather than about their sex life. The physical act of sex is too narrow a subject, which easily degenerates into a conversation about numbers. Human nature abhors a vacuum of intensity. People long for radiance. They want to feel alive.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  I have never met Adair, but something about the way she handles Ben makes me feel optimistic. Unbeknownst to him, he has a foil for his (dare I say?) fear of intimacy. In the past his girlfriends have been only too happy to merge with him; but Adair is able to hold her own—she seems to have a real sense of self that exists independently of him. Even after eight months, she is fiercely discreet about her private life. She exudes a quiet equanimity, a sober and subtle intelligence. She is a nurse in a pediatric oncology unit and works in the looming presence of death. Ben makes her laugh; he brings lightness into her world. His thirst for life enlivens her. His erotic ardor is the opposite of morbid. She likes the contrast. Ben certainly brings an entire emotional history to his predicament, and he’s got a lot of stuff to deal with. But the difficulty of reconciling security and excitement is not purely the result of his personal problems. It is the challenge of the modern ideal of love. With this in mind, we examine what sexuality means for Ben. Most of us lament the wilting of erotic passion with melancholy, quiet acquiescence, or severe agita; but maintaining erotic vitality doesn’t become the organizing principle of our lives. Not so for Ben. Sex is where he finds himself most alive. It has a regenerative power that allows him to go back into the world feeling enriched and renewed. In lovemaking he feels connection and nurturance that he does not get anywhere else. He is at once vulnerable and masterful, exposed and confident. Ben is a man with an active brain. Subjected to high-octane libidinal impulses, he’s driven mostly in high gear. He gets frantic and disorganized, yet his hyperactivity has served him well in running his own courier company. For Ben, sex is the ultimate regulatory experience that quells his manic energy: extreme tension is followed by total release. At no other time does he feel as calm as when he has reached the hedonistic apex. It’s a moment of perfect harmony between him and the world. And while Adair likes sex, Ben needs it. Sex is his life support—unplug it and he thinks he’s dying. No wonder he panics at the thought of sex going downhill. Ben is a modern man par excellence. He is action-driven, and that is why his typical response to sexual restlessness is to end the relationship, start going out again, have hot sex with someone else, and start a new relationship that will, he hopes, be inoculated against erotic demise. I point out to Ben that, contrary to popular belief, taking action is not always the best course.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  But Ernest wasn’t sure how to reel his catch in. “I—er—I beg your pardon,” he stammered. He was in shock—the shock of a resignedly unsuccessful fisherman who is astounded by a tug on his line. He had used the book lure countless times through the years and not even once had had a nibble. “That book,” she explained. “Why, I read The Holy Sinner years ago, but I’ve never seen anyone else reading it.” “Oh, I love it, and go back to it every few years. I love some of Mann’s shorter works too and am just starting to reread all of him. This one is the first.” “I just reread The Transposed Head ,” Artemis said. “What’s next on your list? ” “I’m doing them in the order I treasure them. Next’ll be the Joseph and His Brothers tetralogy. And then, perhaps, Felix Krull. But,” he half rose, “won’t you sit down?” “And last?” asked Artemis, setting her bagel and coffee on the table and sitting down across from him. “ The Magic Mountain ,” Ernest responded, not missing a beat, revealing neither his sheer astonishment at hooking this catch nor his uncertainty about how to reel it in. “It just hasn’t aged well—Settembrini’s endless conversations strike me now as tedious. Also, at the bottom of the list is Doctor Faustus. The musicological concerns are just too technical and, I’m afraid, boring.” “I agree with you entirely,” said Artemis, reaching into her shoulder bag and extracting a ripe black avocado and several plastic bags of seeds, “though I never cease to be fascinated with the Nietzsche-Leverkühn connection.” “Oh, I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself—lost in our conversation. I’m Ernest Lash.” “I’m Artemis,” she said as she peeled her avocado, spread half of it on her bagel, and topped it with sprinkles of various seeds. “Artemis; a lovely name. You know, it’s warming up outside. How about grabbing a table and joining your twin out there?” Ernest had industriously done his homework. “My twin?” Artemis pondered as they moved to a table in the sun. “My twin? Oh, Apollo! The golden sunlight of brother Apollo. You are an unusual man—all my life I’ve lived with my name, and you’re the first person who has ever said that to me.” “But you know,” Ernest continued, “I must confess I may put aside Mann for a while so as to get to the new Wilkins translation of Musil’s Man Without Qualities.” “What a coincidence.” Artemis’s eyes opened wide. “I’m reading that book right now.” Reaching into her shoulder bag again, she pulled out a book. “It’s glorious.”

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  home week. I told them some of my amazing stories, like the one about the escaped lunatic who’d left his hook hanging on the door handle of Bobby Crow’s car, and they told me some of theirs. They were good friends with the cousin of a guy who’d lost his dick in an automobile accident. He crashed his convertible into a tree and his girlfriend was thrown high up into the branches. When the police got her down they found the guy’s dong in her mouth. If I didn’t believe them I could ask anyone from Ballard. When we ran out of true stories we told jokes. The Silver Saddle. The Glass Eye and the Wooden Leg. The Chinese Milkshake. One of them asked me if I smoked. “Do I smoke?” I said. “Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?” “Let’s go.” The four of us walked outside and sat down under some trees beside the football field. I noticed Arthur coming toward us. He stopped under the goalposts. I couldn’t believe he had followed me out here. The Ballard boys noticed him too. “Who’s that?” one of them asked. “Just a guy,” I said. “From your troop?” I nodded. “What’s his name?” “Arthur.” “As in King?” We all laughed. The Ballard boy held up a package of Hit Parades. “Hey Arthur,” he yelled. “Want a weed?” Arthur shook his head. He stuck his hands in his pocket and looked away. After a while he sauntered back toward the school. The Ballard boy passed the Hit Parades around. He took out another, smaller package and handed it to me; it was a six-pack of Trojans. I took out the one foilwrapped rubber left inside, looked at it, then put it back in the box and returned it to him. “That was full last night,” he said. We had a few cigarettes and went back to the school to catch our rides over to

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  It was important that I validate his legitimate fear and offer him an image (thawing from freeze) that would help mitigate his fear, inviting him to explore his internal experience. Adam then sat down and looked around the room. I asked him to describe what he saw. j This provided the opportunity to connect the warmth in his belly with how he perceived the external world in the here and now. He looked perplexed. “Oh, I didn’t notice those flowers before—or the table they’re on.” Almost like the inquisitive expression of someone coming out of a coma, his face showed another minute flickering of awakening. He looked around noticing an oriental carpet and a painting. “They have colors, rich colors,” he said innocently. “So as you look at those colors, I want you to find the place inside of your body that can feel—even, just the tiniest bit, those colors.” k He looked back at me with a puzzled expression, perhaps awaiting further instructions. But then he closed his eyes and went inside. “It feels warmer in my belly, and the circle, it’s growing bigger in size.” After a few moments I asked him to stand again: “Adam, I’m going to ask you to do something that might seem strange ... I’m going to ask you to visualize the picture of the children with their kites ... Feel your feet on the ground and how your legs support you. Now feel your arms as you hold the kite string ... and imagine that you are there in the field with the children.” Adam responded almost gleefully, “I can feel that in my arms and in my belly ... It’s even warmer and bigger ... I can see the colors; they are bright and warm ... I see the kites dancing in the clouds.” After a few quiet moments Adam sat down and looked around the room. “Take all the time you need, Adam ... Just feel the rhythm of that ... of the inside and the outside.” l His eyes went back and forth between the table with the flowers and the painting. He focused on the table and started to describe the color and grain of the wood as warm ... he paused ... “like the warm feeling inside.” He closed his eyes again, without my instruction this time, rested for a bit and then opened them slowly and turned toward me, unabashedly looking into my eyes. This was the first time that Adam’s social engagement system (see Chapter 6) had awakened and come online.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Anything that might distinguish her from ‘the mother.’” Carla had been quiet for much of the session, but the following week I had no doubt she’d been paying attention. Laughing, she told me the story. “I really wanted to let go with Leo. I wanted to give him an involved, prolonged, great blow job. Not just the compulsory head, not just the polite head. But I knew there was this thing with the wife, ‘the mother.’ Would he let me? So I initiated this game and said, ‘You know, we can have a couple of different kinds of sex and you can call it what you will, but if you want this blow job to continue it’s going to cost you.’ I said, ‘A hundred bucks if you want that kind of head. A hundred bucks.’ I thought the money would be fun, but I was really into seeing if Leo could de-role that mother. Well, you don’t pay the mother of your kids for a blow job, do you? You don’t pay your wife for a blow job. It was a lovely experiment, that’s all I’m going to say.” “Maybe you could start taking credit cards. Keep a credit card machine by the bed,” Leo jokes. Carla’s playful erotic intervention has stayed with me for years. In one gesture she cleverly captured and subverted the whole issue: how to retrieve the lover from the mother. Leo feared expressing the rawness of his desire to the mother of his children, a woman too worthy of love and respect. Carla took a risk, interrupted the pattern, and invited him into an erotic complicity. She uncloaked the repression and became a sexually provocative, slutty woman who demanded to be paid. In the midst of this explicitly staged endorsement of blatant sexuality, Leo’s lustfulness was finally unleashed. Escaping the Siege of Family Life Having a child is one of our grand aspirations. In a way we reproduce, be it biologically or through the other ways we create a family, so as not to die. We carve a place in the cycle of life and become inscribed in the course of history. We extend ourselves beyond mortality by leaving something, some one, behind: a representative of our union. In this way, having a child speaks of desire. It is a pure, life-affirming act. How cruel to see it erode the force that brought it into being. There is no question that children make the erotic connection more difficult to sustain.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Do you know what it was?” “Oh, yes, I remember it clearly. Each book, the old and the new, was titled The Death of Innocence .” Listening to Irene, I lapsed into reverie. This dream of hers was pure gold, intellectual ambrosia—a gift from the gods. The psychological gumshoe’s daydream come true. The reward for patience, the payoff for countless tedious therapy stakeouts with inhibited engineers . It was a dream to make even the most irritable, the most grumpy therapist purr with pleasure. And purr I did. Two texts—an ancient and a new one. Purr, purr. The ancient text needed to understand the new. Purr. Purr. And the title, The Death of Innocence. Purr, purr, purr. It wasn’t only that Irene’s dream promised an intellectual treasure hunt of the highest order; it was also a first dream. Ever since 1911, when Freud first discussed it, a mystique has surrounded the initial dream that a patient reports in psychoanalysis. Freud believed that this first dream is unsophisticated and highly revealing because beginning patients are naive and still have their guards down. Later in therapy, when it is evident that the therapist has highly skilled dream-interpretative abilities, the dreamweaver residing in our unconscious grows cautious, goes on full alert, and takes care thereafter to manufacture more complex and obfuscating dreams. Following Freud, I often imagined the dreamweaver as a plump, jovial homunculus, living the good life amidst a forest of dendrites and axons. He sleeps by day, but at night, reclining on a cushion of buzzing synapses, he drinks honeyed nectar and lazily spins out dream sequences for his host. On the night before the first therapy visit, that host falls asleep full of conflicting thoughts about the upcoming therapy, and as usual the homunculus goes about his nighttime job blithely weaving those fears and hopes into a simple, transparent dream. Then, with great alarm, the homunculus learns that the therapist has deftly interpreted his dream. The homunculus graciously doffs his chapeau to his able opponent—the therapist who has broken his dream code—but from that time forward takes care to bury the dream meaning ever deeper and deeper in nocturnal disguise. A foolish fairy tale. Typical nineteenth-century anthropomor-phization. The widespread error of concretizing Freud’s abstract mental structures into independent, free-willed sprites. If only I didn’t believe it! For decades many have regarded the first dream as a priceless document that represents the translation into dream language of the whole content of the neurosis. Freud went so far as to suggest that the full interpretation of an initial dream would coincide with the entire analysis. The first dream in my own analysis is fixed in my mind with all the freshness and detail and feeling of the day I dreamed it forty years ago, shortly after beginning my psychiatric residency. I am lying on a doctor’s examining table.

• From Story of O (1954)

  He had told her nothing about the place to which he was taking her, nor indicated the time they would have to leave, nor had he said who the Commander’s guests would be. But he came and spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping beside her, and in the evening had dinner brought up to the room, for the two of them. They left an hour before midnight, in the Buick, O swathed in a great brown mountaineer’s cape and wearing wooden clogs on her feet. Natalie, in a black sweater and slacks, was holding her chain, the leather strap of which was attached to the leather bracelet Natalie was wearing on her right wrist. Sir Stephen was driving. The moon was almost full, and illuminated the road with large snowlike spots, also illuminating the trees and houses of the villages through which they passed, leaving everything else as black as India ink. Here and there, groups of people were still clustered, even at this hour, on the thresholds of streetside doors, and they could feel the people’s curiosity aroused by the passage of that closed car (Sir Stephen had not lowered the top). Some dogs were barking. On the side of the road bathed in moonlight, the olive trees looked like silver clouds floating six feet above the ground, and the cypresses like black feathers. There was nothing real about this country, which night had turned into make-believe, nothing except the smell of sage and lavender. The road continued to climb, but the same warm layer of air still lay heavy over the earth. O slipped her cape down off her shoulders. She couldn’t be seen, there was not a soul left in sight. Ten minutes later, having skirted a forest of green oak on the crest of a hill, Sir Stephen slowed down before a long wall into which was cut a porte-cochere, which opened at the approach of the car. He parked in some forecourt as they were closing the gate behind him, then got out and helped Natalie and O out, first having ordered O to leave her cape and clogs in the car. The door he pushed open revealed a cloister with Renaissance arcades on three sides, the fourth side being an extension of the flagstone court of the cloister proper. A dozen couples were dancing on the terrace and in a courtyard, a few women with very low-cut dresses and some men in white dinner jackets were seated at small tables lighted by candlelight; the record player was in the left-hand gallery, and a buffet table had been set up in the gallery to the right.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  This seems to be exactly what Jesus wanted to convey or, better, what Jesus believed would happen. He was not, after all, offering a new theory for people to get their minds around. He was announcing that something was happening and that it would happen immediately, an event through which freedom and kingdom would become realities in a whole new way. He was launching a revolution. What he did in Jerusalem brings all this into sharp focus. By itself, his dramatic action in the Temple might have various interpretations, as it has had in much subsequent discussion. Where people have tried to turn Jesus’s one-off kingdom movement into a “religion,” it has been seen as an attempt to clean up the “religious” establishment, to oppose commercialism, and so forth. This is all very worthy and no doubt necessary from time to time; but it has almost nothing to do with a one-off new Passover, a unique Exodus moment. When we put Jesus’s Temple action (Mark 11:12–18) into a Passover context, however, it suddenly carries the memory of Moses’s confrontation with Pharaoh. This echo is heightened when we add in material (Mark 13:1–31 and elsewhere) in which language about the imminent fall of the Temple awakens biblical echoes of the fall of Babylon. More particularly, what Jesus did in the Temple, interpreted (as seems most likely) as a Jeremiah-like symbolic prediction of its forthcoming destruction, must have had to do in some way with his aim of declaring that Israel’s God, returning to his people at last, had found the Temple sadly wanting and was establishing something different instead. This in turn points back once more to the Exodus. Moses had told Pharaoh all along that the point of the Israelites leaving Egypt was ultimately in order to worship their God (Exod. 3:12, 18; 4:23; 5:1–3; 7:16; 8:1, 20;9:1, 13; 10:3, 24–26). The climax of the book of Exodus is not the giving of the law in chapter 20, but the construction of the tabernacle, the “microcosm” or “little world” that symbolized the new creation, the place where heaven and earth would come together as always intended. If Jesus did and said things that pointed to a “new Exodus,” many in his day would have understood this to mean some kind of renewal or even replacement of the present Temple. Those who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, believed that the present Temple hierarchy was irredeemably corrupt and that they themselves constituted the true Temple, the place where Israel’s God was now at home and was to be worshipped and served. Such things were indeed thinkable at the time, even if it was extremely dangerous to attempt to put them into practice. Did Jesus believe something like that? All the signs are that he did—and that he connected this too to Passover.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Besides, I was intrigued. She felt just like I did; she was saying the very same things I didn’t dare say. She wanted more. She was hungry, too. She missed her freedom. She kept becoming more interesting to me, more foreign. The wine really loosened her tongue.” “What else did she say?” I, too, was curious. The actor in him couldn’t resist playing her part. “‘ I feel like we’re just stuck together,’” he said, again imitating her voice. “‘Sometimes I fantasize about other lives, other men. Not any one man in particular—I just imagine a clean slate, unencumbered, no history, no problems. Someone I could be different with. I get so resentful that I am stuck in this house, in this family, inside my body. All I want to say is leave me alone, don’t bother me.’” Ryan shared with me the unexpected denouement of the evening. “I started out shocked and then defensive and then angry. But, weirdly, the more she was going on and on, the more I wanted her. She was on fire. At first I thought, oh, just quit the diatribe; but then I was captivated by her, I identified with her, and in a strange way I felt closer to her and more turned on than I had in a long time. My fascination with Barbara vanished. And I knew that if I’d married Barbara I’d be longing for Christine.” “And you didn’t have to work for it,” I say. “I couldn’t have sent you home with an assignment that would have had this kind of result.” I explain to him that his renewed desire came from her reassertion of her separateness and her dreams. When she voiced her unrequited longings, she gave Ryan permission to unleash his. It’s all highly impractical sometimes. The same scenario with a different couple might have triggered a fear of abandonment that would have caused the fight of the century. Nobody can plan for this; that’s the point. Desire is an enigma; it’s insubordinate, and it chafes at impositions. That evening, Ryan was receptive to Christine. In her honesty, he discovered her again. Even more important, he was choosing her again, and it’s the act of choosing, the freedom involved in choosing, that keeps a relationship alive. The flambé that Ryan and Christine savored that night had nothing efficient or expedient to it. It wasn’t a task they could incorporate into their weekly routine. Christine rattled the cage, and Ryan was dislodged. She claimed her individuality, and the end result was greater intimacy. Desire emerged from a paradox: mutually recognizing the limitations of married life created a bond between them; acknowledging otherness inspired closeness.

• From Story of O (1954)

  But how admirably suited to blows and irons was little Yvonne, how lovely it was to hear her moans and sighs, how lovely too to witness her body soaked with perspiration, and what a pleasure to wrest the moans and the sweat from her. For on two occasions Anne-Marie had handed O the thonged whip—both times the victim had been Yvonne—and told her to use it. The first time, for the first minute, she had hesitated, and at Yvonne’s first scream O had recoiled and cringed, but as soon as she had started in again and Yvonne’s cries had echoed anew, she had been overwhelmed with a terrible feeling of pleasure, a feeling so intense that she had caught herself laughing in spite of herself, and she had found it almost impossible to restrain herself from striking Yvonne as hard as she could. Afterward she had remained next to Yvonne throughout the entire period of time she was kept tied up, embracing her from time to time. In some ways, she probably resembled Yvonne. At least one was led to suspect as much by the way Anne-Marie felt about them both. Was it O’s silence, her meekness that endeared her to Anne-Marie? Scarcely had O’s wounds healed than Anne-Marie remarked: “How I regret not to be able to whip you! … When you come back … But let’s say no more about it. In any event, I’m going to open you every day.” And, daily, when the girl who was in the music room had been untied, O would replace her until the bell rang for dinner. And Anne-Marie was right: it was true that during those two hours all she could think of was the fact that she was opened, and of the ring, hanging heavily from her (after one had been placed there) which, after they had inserted the second ring, weighed even more. She could think of nothing save her enslaved condition, and of the marks that went with it. One evening Claire had come in with Colette from the garden, come over to O and examined both sides of the rings. “When you went to Roissy,” she said, “was it Anne-Marie who brought you there?” “No,” O said. “It was Anne-Marie who brought me, two years ago. I’m going back there the day after tomorrow.” “But don’t you belong to anyone?” O said. “Claire belongs to me,” said Anne-Marie, appearing from nowhere. “Your master’s arriving tomorrow, O. Tonight you’ll sleep with me.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Myrna hadn’t shared these poems with Dr. Lash. She had plenty to talk about in her therapy sessions, and the poetry seemed irrelevant. Besides, her poems might have invited questions about the theme of secrecy, and they might have led directly to the secret of the dictation tape. Sometimes she worried that her withholding would create a wedge between them. But she assured herself that she could overcome that. Nor did she need Dr. Lash’s approval of her poetry. She found plenty of affirmation elsewhere. The singlepoet.com Internet chat room was crowded with single male poets. Life had become exciting. No more overtime at her Silicon Valley office. Nightly, Myrna rushed home to open her e-mail box, which bulged with praise for her poetry and her refreshing directness. Perhaps she had been too hasty to dismiss e-mail relationships as impersonal. Perhaps the opposite was true. Perhaps electronic friendships—because they did not depend on skin-deep physical attributes—were more genuine and complex. The electronic suitors who praised her poetry never failed to include their personal profiles and phone numbers. Her self-esteem surged. She read and reread her fan mail. She collected: praise, profiles, phone numbers, information. Dimly, she remembered Dr. Lash’s admonition about making withdrawals from data banks. But she liked collecting. She developed a meticulous suitor-rating scale, which weighed earning potential, stock options, corporate influence, and quality of verse as well as personal characteristics such as openness, generosity, and expressivity. Several of the singlepoet chat room suitors asked for a face-to-face meeting—for an afternoon espresso at a Silicon Valley café, for a walk, lunch, dinner. Not yet—she wanted more data. But soon. 6 [image file=image_154.jpg] The Hungarian Cat Curse But tell me, Halston, why do you want to stop therapy? It seems to me we’re only just beginning. We’ve met only, what—three times?” Ernest Lash skimmed though the pages of his appointment book. “Yes, that’s right. This is our fourth meeting.” Waiting patiently for a response, Ernest gazed at his patient’s gray paramecium-patterned tie and his six-button gray vest and tried to remember when he had last seen a patient who wore a formal three-piece business suit or a paisley tie.