Fear

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)

  If someone is counting on children to bring them peace of mind, self-confidence, or a steady sense of happiness, they are in for a bad shock. What children do is complicate, implicate, give plot lines to the story, color to the picture, darken everything, bring fear as never before, suggest the holy, explain the ferocity of the human mind, undo or redo some of the past while casting shadows into the future. There is no boredom with children in the home. The risks are high. The voltage crackling. —Anne Roiphe, Married SEX MAKES BABIES. SO IT is ironic that the child, the embodiment of the couple’s love, so often threatens the very romance that brought that child into being. Sex, which set the entire enterprise in motion, is often abandoned once children enter the picture. Even when children come by a different route, their impact on the sex life of the couple is no less dramatic. Many of the couples I see trace the demise of their erotic life back to the arrival of the first child. Why does parenthood so often deliver a fatal blow? The transition from two to three is one of the most profound challenges a couple will ever face. It takes time—time measured in years, not weeks—to find our bearings in this brave new world. Having a baby is a psychological revolution that changes our relation to almost everything and everyone, from our sense of self and identity to our relations with our partners, friends, parents, and in-laws. Our bodies change. So do our finances and work lives. Priorities shift, roles are redefined, and the balance between freedom and responsibility undergoes a massive overhaul. We literally fall in love with our babies and, as we once understood with our mates, falling in love is an all-consuming affair that pushes everything else aside. The making of a family calls for a redistribution of resources and, for a while, there seems to be less for the couple: less time, less communication, less sleep, less money, less freedom, less touch, less intimacy, less privacy. Even though couples talk about how happy they are as a growing family and how fulfilled they are individually, they nevertheless describe these shifts as taxing to their relationship. Eventually, most of us come to recognize ourselves again within this new context of family. At best, we become more adept at the basic skills of caretaking. We establish the support we need. We lay out a division of labor, both domestically and professionally, that everyone can live with. We arrange for child care; we bond with other parents; we steal time in bits and pieces and get brief intermissions for ourselves. With any luck, we sleep through the night. We start going to the gym again, we finish a magazine before the next issue arrives in the mail, and we manage to create some space where we can connect with each other as adults.

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

  The ideal partnership is said to be one of absolute equality in every area of the relationship, as if, with scale in hand, we could measure power quantitatively. Many of us, steeped in this ideology of fairness and mutuality, want nothing less. But the fact is that negotiating power is part and parcel of all human relationships. We recognize it most easily when it’s expressed outright, through authority, coercion, bullying, aggression, and castigation. The powerful one metes out punishments and rewards depending on one’s degree of compliance with his or her wishes. But there is also the power of the weak. Deference, passivity, withholding, ingratiation, and the moral one-upmanship of the victim are their own manifestations of might. Power and power imbalances are inescapable. Ethel Spector Person, in Feeling Strong , writes that we first learn about power differentials in the power grid of our families. “All power relationships, all desires either to dominate or submit, have their psychological roots in the fact that we were all once little children with big parents, and their existential roots in our feelings of being small people in an out-of-control big world that we need to be able to tame.” Childhood is our basic training for power tactics. We have our will; our parents have theirs. We demand; they object. We bargain for what we want; they tell us what we can have. We learn to resist, and we learn to surrender. At best we learn to balance, to mediate, to understand. All these permutations of power stumble into our adult intimacies, and gender does matter. Boys and girls undergo a radically different initiation in wielding power. Men become adept at direct expressions of power, women at indirect expressions; and these differences are discernible in our sexual scripts. As adults, we seek control in part as a defense against the vulnerability inherent in love. When we put our hopes on one person, our dependence soars. So do our frustrations and disappointments. The greater our helplessness, the more dangerous the threat of humiliation. The more we need, the angrier we are when we don’t get. Kids know this; lovers do, too. No one can bring us to the boiling point as quickly as our partner (except maybe our parents, the original locus of dependent rage). Love is always accompanied by hate. While we fear the depth of our dependence, many of us are even more frightened by the depth of our rage. We resort to intricate relational contortions in order to keep all this combustion in check. Yet the couples who most successfully implement this model of placidity are rarely passionate lovers. When we confuse assertion with aggression, neutralize otherness, adjust our longings, and reason away our hostility, we assemble a calmness that is reassuring but not very exciting. Stephen Mitchell makes the point that the capacity to contain aggression is a precondition for the capacity to love. We must integrate our aggression rather than eradicate it.

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

  Sexual rejection at the hands of the one we love is particularly hurtful. We are therefore less inclined to be erotically adventurous with the person we depend on for so much and whose opinion is paramount. We’d rather edit ourselves, maintaining a tightly negotiated, acceptable, even boring erotic script, than risk injury. It is no surprise that some of us can freely engage in the perils and adventures of sex only when the emotional stakes are lower—when we love less or, more important, when we are less afraid to lose love. Stephen Mitchell writes, “It is not that romance necessarily fades over time, but it does become riskier.” Jackie has been listening attentively, and is patiently awaiting her turn. “I hear all this talk about edginess,” she begins, “but with me he’s almost giddy, more like a twelve-year-old boy than a man. It’s hard to really unleash my sexuality with an adolescent. Why does he think he has to go out for this? Maybe I should buy a wig and belly up to the bar,” she jokes. “Not a bad idea,” I answer. I-Chat with Your Spouse I point out that the way Philip has compartmentalized his sexuality, with loving sex at home and hot sex reserved for strangers, has banned eroticism from their relationship. Their repertoire is limited. But he isn’t the only one at fault. For her part, Jackie has transferred her sense of sexual self-worth to him, and I recommend that she take it back. He should not have a monopoly on her sexuality. “Jackie, how long has it been since you flirted?” I ask her. “Can you open yourself up to the eyes of other men, so that Philip isn’t the sole source of your sexual validation?” Philip starts to twitch in his chair. “Just a minute,” he says. “Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting tit for tat here,” I reassure him. “But your wife is a very attractive woman, and if you can’t see that, why shouldn’t she hear it from someone else?” Along these same lines, I also suggest that they create new E-mail accounts reserved exclusively for erotic exchanges between them—their thoughts, memories, fantasies, and seductions. I point out that this correspondence is not meant to be about the problems in their relationship, it is meant to be a space for play. I want them to use cyberspace to elicit curiosity, a sense of intrigue, and a kind of wholesome anxiety. Writing has many advantages over talking. You get to say your fill, craft your response, and give voice in writing to things your lips dare not utter. It provides a built-in distance, and I hope this will help dismantle their inhibitions. By Valentine’s Day Jackie has eased into the art of seduction. She’s playful and daring, not only in her E-mails with Philip, but with other men as well.

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

  When Joni invited Ray to be more assertive and self-directed, this was as liberating for him as for her. For the first time, he felt that there was room for a full range of feelings, not just tender ones. Joni was surprised at Ray’s positive response to her own new assertiveness. Even claiming her desire to be passive was an unprecedented act of agency on her part. Like many women, she had internalized the powerful message that bold expressions of female sexuality are whorish, unattractive, selfish, and certainly not part of intimate love. “I was afraid that if I told Ray, ‘Do this, don’t do that, slow down, stay longer, like this, and this, and this,’ it would feel emasculating to him.” By deferring to Ray in all matters sexual, by looking to him for expertise and ignoring her own, Joni had fulfilled the age-old feminine mission of preserving her man’s ego and shoring up his masculinity. Or so she thought. But her assumptions proved wrong—because Ray gets turned on by her appetite, and even by her demands. For him, having a woman meet him as a sexual equal takes away the burden of guesswork and the persistent insecurity of never being sure he’s doing it right. When she is more forthcoming, he doesn’t have to worry about her, and he no longer feels diminished by her placating, lukewarm response. Her exuberance gives him permission to make some demands of his own, and to experience unrestrained abandon with the woman he loves. Joni never did tell Ray the specific content of her fantasies, but unearthing their meaning nonetheless brought about significant changes in their sexual and emotional relationship. Once Joni knew what she was seeking in sex, and once she understood the personal and social barriers that stood in the way of her pleasure, she was able to approach and respond to Ray very differently. To me she said, “Now that I’m clearer about what sex means to me, and how I want to feel in sex, I can talk to Ray about it without having to spell out the fantasy. Although even doing that doesn’t seem as scary to me now—there’s nothing in there I’m ashamed of or afraid to face.” To Tell or Not to Tell Some couples get an erotic charge from sharing their fantasies in words or in enactments. Catherine and her husband scheme in naughty complicity when they plan out the details of their lascivious one-acts. This is fun, it’s novel, and it allows them to be (and be with) someone new without having to go somewhere else. It creates multiplicity out of monogamy. But not everyone wants a ticket to this theater of seduction.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  And Kovacs terrorized me. I barricaded my doors at night against him and closed the shutters because he wandered around the outside of the house peering in through every crack. Every time we met in the hall, he tried to force himself on me, so I made sure to avoid crossing paths with him. But I was helpless; I couldn’t complain to anyone—Kovacs was a police sergeant. A vulgar, rapacious man. I’ll tell you what kind of man he was. Once I put aside my pride and pleaded with him to keep Merges inside for only an hour a day so Cica could go out in safety. “Nothing wrong with Merges,” he sneered. “My cat and I are alike; we both want the same thing—sweet Hungarian pussy.” Yes, he would agree to keep Merges at home—for a price. And the price was me! Things were bad, but every time Cica entered heat they got even worse. Not only did Kovacs do his usual prowling around my windows and knocking on my door but Merges went berserk: all night long screeching, yowling, scratching at the wall of my house, and flinging himself against my windows. As if Merges and Kovacs were not pestilence enough, Budapest at that time was infested by huge Danube river rats, which swarmed through my neighborhood, pillaged the potato and carrot bins in the cellar, and slaughtered the backyard chickens. One day my landlord helped me set a trap-cage for the rats in the cellar, and that very night I heard ungodly squeals. Descending the stairs by candlelight, I was full of fear. What would I do with the rat or rats I had caught? Then, by the flickering candle, I saw the cage and, peering out from its bars, the largest, most horrible rat I had ever seen or, in my worst dreams, imagined. I flew back up the stairs and decided to call for help later, when my landlord awoke. But an hour later, as dawn broke, I ventured back down and took another look. It was no rat. It was worse—it was Merges! As soon as he saw me he hissed and spat and tried to claw me through the bars of the cage. God, what a monster! I knew just what to do, and it was with great pleasure that I threw an entire pitcher of water on him. He kept on hissing, and I picked up my skirts and pranced with joy three times around the cage.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Good Lord! Ernest thought. What a woman; what an evening! Lucky man! Then, glancing again at the clock, he hurried Halston along. “You said it was one of the great evenings of your life—but only up to some momentous point?” “Yes; the sex was sheer ecstasy. Extraordinary. Unlike any I’ve ever even imagined.” “How so extraordinary?” “It’s all still a bit of a haze, but I remember her licking me like a kitten, every square centimeter, head to toe, until every pore on my body was gaping open, begging for more, tingling with delight, receptive to her touch, her tongue, drinking in her scent and warmth.” He stopped. “I’m a bit embarrassed expressing all this, Doctor.” “Halston, you’re doing exactly what you should be doing here. Try to continue.” “Well, the pleasure just kept spiraling up. It was unworldly, I tell you. The head of my—my—what do you say?—organ—lit up, hotter and hotter, until I had an absolutely incandescent orgasm. And then I think I passed out.” Ernest was amazed. Was this the same boring, constricted man with whom he had spent those tedious hours? “Then what happened, Halston?” “Ah, that was the turning point; that’s when everything changed. The next thing I knew I was somewhere else. Now I realize it must have been a dream, but at the time it was so real I could touch and feel and smell everything in it. It’s faded away, but I can recall being chased through a forest by a menacing giant cat—a house cat the size of a lynx but all black, with a white mask around its red, gleaming eyes, a thick, powerful tail, huge fangs, and razor claws. It was chasing the bloody hell out of me! Far away I saw a naked woman standing in a pond. Looked like Artemis, so I jumped in and waded toward her for help. Closer up I saw that it wasn’t Artemis at all but a robot with enormous breasts out of which streamed jets of milk. Then, even closer, I saw that it wasn’t milk but some kind of glowing radioactive liquid. And then I realized, with horror, that I was standing thigh-deep in the corrosive stuff, which was starting to eat away at my feet and legs. I waded frantically toward land again, but there—still hissing and waiting for me—was that damned cat, now bigger—big as a lion. That’s when I bolted out of bed and ran for my life. I put on my clothes running down the stairs and was still shoeless when I started the car. I couldn’t breathe, and I called my physician on the car phone. He instructed me to go to the emergency room—and that’s when I was referred to you.” “And Artemis?”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  When such disruptions fail to be fully integrated, the components of that experience become fragmented into isolated sensations, images and emotions. This kind of splitting apart occurs when the enormity, intensity, suddenness or duration of what happened cannot be defended against, coped with or digested. Personal vulnerability, such as age, genetics and gender also account for this psychic implosion. The result of this inability for the body/mind to integrate is trauma, or at the very minimum, disorientation, a loss of agency and/or a lack of direction. Trapped between feeling too much (overwhelmed or flooded) or feeling too little (shut down and numb) and unable to trust their sensations, traumatized people can lose their way. They don’t “feel like themselves” anymore; loss of sensation equals a loss of a sense of self. As a substitute for genuine feelings, trauma sufferers may seek experiences that keep them out of touch—such as sexual titillation or succumbing to compulsions, addictions and miscellaneous distractions that prevent one from facing a now dark and threatening inner life. In this situation, one cannot discover the transitory nature of despair, terror, rage and helplessness and that the body is designed to cycle in and out of these extremes. * Helping clients cultivate and regulate the capacity for tolerating extreme sensations, through reflective self-awareness, while supporting self-acceptance, allows them to modulate their uncomfortable sensations and feelings. They can now touch into intense sensations and emotions for longer periods of time as they learn how to control their arousal. Once a client has the experience of “going within and coming back out” without falling apart, his or her window of tolerance builds upon itself. This happens through achieving a subtle interplay between sensations, feelings, perceptions and thoughts. I believe that the people who are most resilient, and find the greatest peace in their lives, have learned to tolerate extreme sensations while gaining the capacity for reflective self-awareness . Although this capacity develops normally when we are very young, one can learn it at any time in life, thankfully. Children gradually learn to interpret the messages their bodies give them. Indeed, it is by learning to coordinate movements (behaviors) and sensations into a coherent whole that a child learns who he or she is. By remembering actions that have proven to be effective, and discarding those that are not, children learn how to anticipate what the most appropriate response is and how to time its execution for maximum effect.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The engaging of these biological processes is equally essential whether treating the acute phase immediately following threatening and overwhelming incidents, such as rape, accidents and disasters, or in transforming chronic PTSD. Until the core physical experience of trauma—feeling scared stiff, frozen in fear or collapsing and going numb—unwinds and transforms, one remains stuck, a captive of one’s own entwined fear and helplessness. The sensations of paralysis or collapse seem intolerable, utterly unacceptable; they terrify and threaten to entrap and defeat us. This perception of seemingly unbearable experiences leads us to avoid and deny them, to tighten up against them and then split off from them. Resorting to these “defenses” is, however, like drinking salt water to quench extreme thirst: while they may give temporary relief, they only make the problem drastically worse and are, over the long haul, counterproductive. In order to unravel this tangle of fear and paralysis, we must be able to voluntarily contact and experience those frightening physical sensations; we must be able to confront them long enough for them to shift and change. To resist the immediate defensive ploy of avoidance, the most potent strategy is to move toward the fear, to contact the immobility itself and to consciously explore the various sensations, textures, images and thoughts associated with any discomfort that may arise. When working with traumatic reactions, such as states of intense fear, Somatic Experiencing® * provides therapists with nine building blocks. These basic tools for “renegotiating” and transforming trauma are not linear, rigid or unidirectional. Instead, in therapy sessions, these steps are intertwined and dependent upon one another and may be accessed repeatedly and in any order. However, if this psychobiological process is to be built on firm ground, Steps 1, 2 and 3 must occur first and must follow sequentially . Thus, the therapist needs to: 1. Establish an environment of relative safety. 2. Support initial exploration and acceptance of sensation. 3. Establish “pendulation” and containment: the innate power of rhythm . 4. Use titration to create increasing stability, resilience and organization. Titration is about carefully touching into the smallest “drop” of survival-based arousal, and other difficult sensations, to prevent retraumatization. 5. Provide a corrective experience by supplanting the passive responses of collapse and helplessness with active, empowered , defensive responses. 6. Separate or “uncouple” the conditioned association of fear and helplessness from the (normally time-limited but now maladaptive) biological immobility response. 7. Resolve hyperarousal states by gently guiding the “discharge” and redistribution of the vast survival energy mobilized for life-preserving action while freeing that energy to support higher-level brain functioning. 8. Engage self-regulation to restore “dynamic equilibrium” and relaxed alertness. 9. Orient to the here and now, contact the environment and reestablish the capacity for social engagement. Step 1. Establish an environment of relative safety After my accident, the first inkling my body had of being other than profoundly helpless and disoriented was when the pediatrician came and sat by my side.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  I ask him, both with my hands and words, “Please back off.” He complies. As though a neutral observer, speaking about the person sprawled out on the blacktop, I assure him that I understand I am not to move my head, and that I will answer his questions later. The Power of Kindness After a few minutes, a woman unobtrusively inserts herself and quietly sits by my side. “I’m a doctor, a pediatrician,” she says. “Can I be of help?” “Please just stay with me,” I reply. Her simple, kind face seems supportive and calmly concerned. She takes my hand in hers, and I squeeze it. She gently returns the gesture. As my eyes reach for hers, I feel a tear form. The delicate and strangely familiar scent of her perfume tells me that I am not alone. I feel emotionally held by her encouraging presence. A trembling wave of release moves through me, and I take my first deep breath. Then a jagged shudder of terror passes though my body. Tears are now streaming from my eyes. In my mind, I hear the words, I can’t believe this has happened to me; it’s not possible; this is not what I had planned for Butch’s birthday tonight . I am sucked down by a deep undertow of unfathomable regret. My body continues to shudder. Reality sets in. In a little while, a softer trembling begins to replace the abrupt shudders. I feel alternating waves of fear and sorrow. It comes to me as a stark possibility that I may be seriously injured. Perhaps I will end up in a wheelchair, crippled and dependent. Again, deep waves of sorrow flood me. I’m afraid of being swallowed up by the sorrow and hold onto the woman’s eyes. A slower breath brings me the scent of her perfume. Her continued presence sustains me. As I feel less overwhelmed, my fear softens and begins to subside. I feel a flicker of hope, then a rolling wave of fiery rage. My body continues to shake and tremble. It is alternately icy cold and feverishly hot. A burning red fury erupts from deep within my belly: How could that stupid kid hit me in a crosswalk? Wasn’t she paying attention? Damn her! A blast of shrill sirens and flashing red lights block out everything. My belly tightens, and my eyes again reach to find the woman’s kind gaze. We squeeze hands, and the knot in my gut loosens. I hear my shirt ripping. I am startled and again jump to the vantage of an observer hovering above my sprawling body. I watch uniformed strangers methodically attach electrodes to my chest. The Good Samaritan paramedic reports to someone that my pulse was 170. I hear my shirt ripping even more.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 3: At His first advent Christ came secretly, although the appointed time was known beforehand by the prophets. Hence there was no need for such signs to appear at His first coming, as will appear at His second advent, when He will come openly, although the appointed time is hidden. Whether towards the time of the judgment the sun and moon will be darkened in very truth?Objection 1: It would seem that towards the time of the judgment the sun and moon will be darkened in very truth. For, as Rabanus says, commenting on Mat. 24:29 “nothing hinders us from gathering that the sun moon, and stars will then be deprived of their light, as we know happened to the sun at the time of our Lord’s passion.” Objection 2: Further, the light of the heavenly bodies is directed to the generation of inferior bodies, because by its means and not only by their movement they act upon this lower world as Averroes says (De Subst. Orbis.). But generation will cease then. Therefore neither will light remain in the heavenly bodies. Objection 3: Further, according to some the inferior bodies will be cleansed of the qualities by which they act. Now heavenly bodies act not only by movement, but also by light, as stated above (OBJ[2]). Therefore as the movement of heaven will cease, so will the light of the heavenly bodies. On the contrary, According to astronomers the sun and moon cannot be eclipsed at the same time. But this darkening of the sun and moon is stated to be simultaneous, when the Lord shall come to judgment. Therefore the darkening will not be in very truth due to a natural eclipse. Further, it is not seemly for the same to be the cause of a thing’s failing and increasing. Now when our Lord shall come the light of the luminaries will increase according to Is. 30:26, “The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold.” Therefore it is unfitting for the light of these bodies to cease when our Lord comes. I answer that, If we speak of the sun and moon in respect of the very moment of Christ’s coming, it is not credible that they will be darkened through being bereft of their light, since when Christ comes and the saints rise again the whole world will be renewed, as we shall state further on ([5048]Q[74]). If, however, we speak of them in respect of the time immediately preceding the judgment, it is possible that by the Divine power the sun, moon, and other luminaries of the heavens will be darkened, either at various times or all together, in order to inspire men with fear. Reply to Objection 1: Rabanus is speaking of the time preceding the judgment: wherefore he adds that when the judgment day is over the words of Isaias shall be fulfilled.

• From Story of O (1954)

  O had finished bathing, but she had not done her hair or put on her make-up, and was not dressed. To her surprise, she saw that Sir Stephen was carrying a golf bag, though she saw no clubs in it. But she soon got over her surprise: Sir Stephen told her to open the bag. Inside were several leather riding crops, two fairly thick ones of red leather, two that were long and thin of black leather, a scourge with long lashes of green leather, each of which was folded back at the end to form a loop, a dog’s whip made of a thick, single lash whose handle was of braided leather and, last but not least, leather bracelets of the sort used at Roissy, plus some rope. O laid them out side by side on the unmade bed. No matter how accustomed she became to seeing them, no matter what resolutions she made about them, she could not keep from trembling. Sir Stephen took her in his arms. “Which do you prefer, O?” he asked her. But she could hardly speak, and already could feel the sweat running down her arms. “Which do you prefer?” he repeated. “All right,” he said, confronted by her silence, “first you’re going to help me.” He asked her for some nails, and having found a way to arrange them in a decorative manner, whips and riding crops crossed, he showed O a panel of wainscoting between her mirror and the fireplace, opposite her bed, which would be ideal for them. He hammered some nails into the wood. There were rings on the ends of the handles of the whips and riding crops, by which they could be suspended from the nails, a system which allowed each whip to be easily taken down and returned to its place on the wall. Thus, together with the bracelets and the rope, O would have, opposite her bed, the complete array of her instruments of torture. It was a handsome panoply, as harmonious as the wheel and spikes in the painting of Saint Catherine the Martyr, as the nails and hammer, the crown of thorns, the spear and scourges portrayed in the paintings of the Crucifixion. When Jacqueline came back … but all this involved Jacqueline, involved her deeply. She would have to reply to Sir Stephen’s question: O could not, he chose the dog whip himself.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Daylight made their outfits look strange and menacing. Some valets wore black stockings and, in place of the red jacket and the white ruffled shirt, a soft, wide-sleeved shirt of red silk, gathered at the neck and with the sleeves also gathered at the wrists. It was one of these valets who, on the eighth day at noon, his whip already in his hand, made a buxom blonde named Madeleine, who was seated not far from O, get up off her stool. Madeleine, whose bosom was all milk and roses, had smiled at him and spoken a few words so quickly that O had missed them. Before he had time to touch her she was on her knees, her hands, so white against the black silk, lightly stroking the still dormant sex, which she took out and brought to her half-open mouth. That time she was not whipped. And since he was then the only monitor in the refectory, and since he closed his eyes as he accepted the caress, the other girls began talking. So it was possible to bribe the valets. But what was the use? If there was one rule to which O had trouble submitting, and indeed never really submitted to completely, it was the rule forbidding them to look the men in the face—considering that the rule applied to the valets as well, O felt herself in constant danger, so compelling was her curiosity about faces, and she was in fact whipped by both the valets, not, in truth, each time they noticed her doing it (for they took some liberties with the instructions, and perhaps cared enough about the fascination they exercised not to deprive themselves, by too strict or efficacious an application of the rules, of the gazes which would leave their face or mouth only to return to their sex, their whips, and their hands, and then start in all over again), but only when in all probability they wanted to humiliate her. No matter how cruelly they treated her when they had made up their minds to do so, she none the less never had the courage, or the cowardice, to throw herself at their knees, and though she submitted to them at times she never tempted or urged them on. As for the rule of silence, it meant so little to her that, except in the case of her lover, she did not once break it, replying by signals whenever another girl would take advantage of their guards’ momentary distraction to speak to her. This was generally during meals, which were taken in the room into which they had been ushered, when the tall valet accompanying them had turned around to Jeanne. The walls were black and the stone floor was black, the long table, of heavy glass, was black too, and each girl had a round stool covered with black leather on which to sit.

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

  around with me and read them with elation. DWIGHT CAME INTO the kitchen one afternoon while Pearl and I were eating some hot dogs I’d cooked up. He noticed a jar of French’s mustard in the garbage pail and fished it out. “Who threw this away?” he asked. I told him I had. “Why did you throw it away?” “Because it was empty.” “Because it was empty? Does this look empty to you?” He held the bottle close to my face. There were a few streaks of mustard congealed under the neck and in the grooves at the bottom. Pearl said, “It looks empty to me.” “I didn’t ask you,” Dwight told her. “Well, it does,” she said. I said that it looked empty to me, too. “Look again,” he said, and pushed the open neck of the jar against my eye. When I jerked away he grabbed me by the hair and shoved my face back down toward the jar. “Does this look empty to you?” I didn’t answer. “Dad,” Pearl said. He asked me again if the jar looked empty. It was hurting my eye, so I said no, it didn’t look empty. He let go of me. “Clean it out,” he said. He handed me the jar. I picked up a knife and began scraping at the mustard while he watched. After a time he sat down across the table. The streaks were hard to get at, especially under the neck where the knife wouldn’t go. Dwight grew impatient. He said, “You’re going to have to do better than that if you think you’re ever going to be an engineer.” Back in the days when Skipper talked of going to engineering school I had insincerely declared the same ambition, hoping to pick up some points by echoing his sober program. The more I said it the more possible it seemed. I had no interest in the specifics of the profession, and no aptitude, but my father was

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

  This is what happened to Charles and Rose. Married for almost four decades, they’ve had a lot of time to define one another. Charles is mercurial, a provocateur, and a playful seducer. He is a passionate man in need of a container, someone to help him channel the unbridled energies that distract him. “If it weren’t for Rose, I don’t think I would have the career and family I have today,” he says. Rose is strong, independent, and clearheaded. She possesses a kind of natural equanimity that calibrates his intemperateness. As they describe it, she is the solid; he, the fluid. The few times Rose ventured into passionate territory before meeting Charles, she found it overwhelming. It left her depleted and unhappy. What he represents for her is passion that she doesn’t have to own. What scares Rose is the loss of control and what scares Charles is that he enjoys the loss of control too much. The complementarity of their relationship allows them to flourish within a bounded space. This fertile arrangement worked reasonably well until the day it didn’t. As so often happens, there is a moment when we recognize that what we’re doing is no longer working. Often it follows significant events that make us review the meaning and the structure of our lives. Suddenly, the compromises that worked so well yesterday become sacrifices we no longer want to brook today. For Charles, a succession of losses—the death of his mother, the death of a close friend, and a scare regarding his own health—have made him keenly aware of his own mortality. He wants to charge at life, to ply his vitality, to reconnect with the exuberance that he’s kept in check in order to be with Rose. He can no longer bear to keep that part of himself tucked away, even in exchange for the solid ground Rose offers. But every time he tries to talk about this hunger, Rose feels threatened and dismisses him. “You’re having another midlife crisis? What are you going to do, buy a red Trans-Am?” Rose and Charles have both had their nonmonogamous interludes over the years. The facts were known, the details were not; and they put these episodes behind them. Or at least Rose did. “I thought we were past our turbulent years. We’re in our sixties, for God’s sake,” she moans. “And that precludes what?” I ask her. “Hurting me! Risking our marriage! I’ve come to accept the terms of our relationship. Why can’t he?” “And those terms are?”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Wholeness as Balance As above, so below. As below, so above. —Kybalion We are more than speaking animals; we are language creatures. However, whether we are confined by the tyranny of language, or liberated by it, is a question that is up for grabs. How we use, or abuse, language has a good deal to do with how we live our lives. Words, in and of themselves, are of little importance to an infant when it is upset. Language needs to be accompanied by close physical soothing in the form of holding, rocking and gentle sounds such as coos and ahs. It is our use of nonverbal tone and cadence that gives language its power to calm and dulcify a baby’s upset. As children develop, they begin both to understand the actual words and to be soothed by the mode in which they are uttered. However, words must still have a physical context in order for them to be healing and salubrious. You may recall a young boy named Elian Gonzalez, who became the pawn in an outrageous political battle in the state of Florida. Elian’s distant cousins (Cuban exiles living in Miami), supposedly concerned for the boy’s welfare, fought vehemently against Elian’s own father (who was living in Cuba) for custody of this young child. As in Bertolt Brecht’s play The Caucasian Chalk Circle , they were literally pulling this bewildered six-year-old child apart. Eventually, the Supreme Court interceded and blocked Governor Jeb Bush’s efforts to keep Elian in the United States as a “model anti-Castro citizen” and returned him to the custody of his father. National Guard soldiers were ordered to remove and guard Elian against a hostile, placard-wielding mob as a female federal agent snatched him from the cousins and angry onlookers, holding him securely to her body. Clearly, this unexpected and unwanted embrace from a stranger terrified the already frightened, disoriented and brainwashed child. But then something quite remarkable happened. The agent held him firmly enough to not be ripped away by the angry mob, yet gently enough for her embrace to match the words she calmly recited in Spanish: “Elian, this may seem scary to you right now, but it soon will be better. We’re taking you to see your papa … You will not be taken back to Cuba [which was true for the time being] … You will not be put on a boat again [he had been brought to Miami on a treacherous boat ride]. You are with people who care for you and are going to take care of you.” These words were carefully scripted, as you might have suspected, by a child psychiatrist who had known of Elian’s history and plight.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Biological, or postural, tuning is also the foundation for the “therapeutic resonance” that is vitally important in helping people heal from trauma. A therapist who is not aware of how his or her own body reacts to (i.e., resonates with) the fear, rage, helplessness and shame in another person will not be able to guide clients by tracking their sensations and navigating them safely through the sometimes treacherous (albeit therapeutic) waters of traumatic sensations. At the same time, by learning how to track their own sensations, therapists can avoid absorbing the fear, rage and helplessness of their clients. It is important to understand that when therapists perceive that they must protect themselves from their clients’ sensations and emotions, they unconsciously block those clients from therapeutically experiencing them. By distancing ourselves from their anguish, we distance ourselves from them and from the fears they are struggling with. To take a self-protective stance is to abandon our clients precipitately. At the same time, we also greatly increase the likelihood of their exposure to secondary or vicarious traumatization and burnout. Therapists must learn, from their own successful encounters with their own traumas, to stay present with their clients. This is the reason healing trauma must necessarily engage the awareness of the living, sensing, “knowing” body in both client and therapist. “Perhaps the most striking evidence of successful empathy,” says the analyst Leston Havens, “is the occurrence in our bodies of sensations that the patient has described in his or hers.”14 Through the Eyes of a NeuroscientistThe ability to detect danger in the posture of others has been studied by the neuroscientist Beatrice Gelder.15 Her research has demonstrated that the brain of an observer reacts more powerfully to the body language of a person in a posture denoting fear than it does even to a fearful facial expression. Like the Gorgon Medusa, looks of fear can paralyze or, at least, evoke our own potent fear-based reactions. Yet, as powerful as facial expressions are in conveying danger, a person’s uptight posture and furtive movements make us even more uncomfortable.† Wouldn’t you, too, startle to the sudden recoiling of the hiker in front of you a split second before you heard the hissing and rattle of a coiled snake? This type of imitative behavior occurs throughout the animal world. If, for example, one bird in a flock on the ground suddenly takes off, all the other birds will follow immediately after; they do not need to know why. The hypothetical contrarian bird that stays behind may not live to pass its genes to the next generation.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The Good Samaritan fires off questions in rapid succession: “What is your name? Where are you? Where were you going? What is today’s date?” But I can’t connect with my mouth and make words. I don’t have the energy to answer his questions. His manner of asking them makes me feel more disoriented and utterly confused. Finally, I manage to shape my words and speak. My voice is strained and tight. I ask him, both with my hands and words, “Please back off.” He complies. As though a neutral observer, speaking about the person sprawled out on the blacktop, I assure him that I understand I am not to move my head, and that I will answer his questions later. The Power of KindnessAfter a few minutes, a woman unobtrusively inserts herself and quietly sits by my side. “I’m a doctor, a pediatrician,” she says. “Can I be of help?” “Please just stay with me,” I reply. Her simple, kind face seems supportive and calmly concerned. She takes my hand in hers, and I squeeze it. She gently returns the gesture. As my eyes reach for hers, I feel a tear form. The delicate and strangely familiar scent of her perfume tells me that I am not alone. I feel emotionally held by her encouraging presence. A trembling wave of release moves through me, and I take my first deep breath. Then a jagged shudder of terror passes though my body. Tears are now streaming from my eyes. In my mind, I hear the words, I can’t believe this has happened to me; it’s not possible; this is not what I had planned for Butch’s birthday tonight. I am sucked down by a deep undertow of unfathomable regret. My body continues to shudder. Reality sets in. In a little while, a softer trembling begins to replace the abrupt shudders. I feel alternating waves of fear and sorrow. It comes to me as a stark possibility that I may be seriously injured. Perhaps I will end up in a wheelchair, crippled and dependent. Again, deep waves of sorrow flood me. I’m afraid of being swallowed up by the sorrow and hold onto the woman’s eyes. A slower breath brings me the scent of her perfume. Her continued presence sustains me. As I feel less overwhelmed, my fear softens and begins to subside. I feel a flicker of hope, then a rolling wave of fiery rage. My body continues to shake and tremble. It is alternately icy cold and feverishly hot. A burning red fury erupts from deep within my belly: How could that stupid kid hit me in a crosswalk? Wasn’t she paying attention? Damn her! A blast of shrill sirens and flashing red lights block out everything. My belly tightens, and my eyes again reach to find the woman’s kind gaze. We squeeze hands, and the knot in my gut loosens.

• From Story of O (1954)

  But, in Sir Stephen, she thought she detected a will of ice and iron, which would not be swayed by desire, a will in whose judgment, no matter how moving and submissive she might be, she counted for absolutely nothing, at least till now. Otherwise why should she have been so frightened? The whip of the valets’ belt at Roissy, the chains borne almost constantly had seemed to her less terrifying than the equanimity of Sir Stephen’s gaze as it fastened on the breasts he refrained from touching. She realized to what extent their very fullness, smooth and distended on her tiny shoulders and slender torso, rendered them fragile. She could not keep them from trembling, she would have had to stop breathing. To hope that this fragility would disarm Sir Stephen was futile, and she was fully aware that it was quite the contrary: her proffered gentleness cried for wounds as much as caresses, fingernails as much as lips. She had a momentary illusion: Sir Stephen’s right hand, which was holding his cigarette, grazed their tips with the end of his middle finger and, obediently, they stiffened further. That this, for Sir Stephen, was a game, or the guise of a game, nothing more, or a check, the way one checks to ascertain whether a machine is functioning properly, O had no doubt. Without moving from the arm of his chair, Sir Stephen then told her to take off her skirt. O’s moist hands made the hooks slippery, and it took her two tries before she succeeded in undoing the black faille petticoat under her skirt. When she was completely naked, her high-heeled suede sandals and her black silk stockings rolled down flat above her knees, accentuating the delicate lines of her legs and the whiteness of her thighs, Sir Stephen, who had also gotten to his feet, seized her loins with one hand and pushed her toward the sofa. He had her kneel down, her back against the sofa, and to make her press more tightly against it with her shoulders than with her waist, he made her spread her thighs slightly. Her hands were lying on her ankles, thus forcing her belly ajar, and above her still proffered breasts, her throat arched back.

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

  Far be it from me to disparage the liberating expression of casual or recreational sex. An erotic encounter can span a range of interpersonal intensities without being disaffiliated. But this particular type of sexual activity seems less an expression of liberation than an acting out of underlying anxiety. To my surprise, Ratu agreed with this idea completely. “The drinking and the sex, of course they go together. They’re both things we know we’re not supposed to be doing.” As I listened to Ratu, I wondered how this new sociology of sex would manifest itself later in their committed relationships. “What about love and marriage?” I asked her. “Does that ever come up?” “We see commitment as a life sentence. I know especially for many of my male friends it’s a terrifying thought. They can’t imagine having the same sexual partner for more than a week, let alone ten years.” Then Ratu says more seriously, “For the women it’s different. They can see the appeal. Some really seem to want it, though a lot of us take on the stereotypical male fear and see monogamy as a restriction. Commitment means sacrificing your own goals and ambitions for something that you can’t control and that you could potentially fail at. At least that’s how we think of it now. Relationships are a loss of independence. When you let another person in, romantically, you make less room for yourself.” “So relationships are about what you lose, not what you gain?” I ask. “Exactly.” “And romance?” “Hah. There was none in high school. The few couples here at college stand out as almost weird, like they’re married or something.” I am intrigued by Ratu’s portrayal of relationships. It had always seemed to me that coupling (or at least the dream of romance) enlarges us, and is about what you can discover with someone. At least, I was convinced of that at her age. Ratu and her friends seem to find more security in an MBA than in the power of a sustaining, loving bond. Why do they feel this way? One reason might be that having embraced the cultural mandate of self-reliance, they are apprehensive about relationships. “If you add love to sex you make yourself extremely vulnerable,” she tells me. “I think that might be the heart of the issue for my whole generation, this lack of trust. We were taught to rely on ourselves, not to depend on others.” It’s an unromantic attitude, but perhaps a wise one, given the precariousness of modern marriage. Gender equality is made manifest in all its irony: both men and women now have the right to be terrified of commitment.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  An analogy might help in understanding Paul’s use of “Lord” for Jesus—but please do not push it beyond the linguistic level. In German the ordinary word for a leader is Führer and, like all nouns in that language, the initial letter is uppercase. In itself, that titular term could be used of any leader, but in the early 1930s it was the official title of Adolf Hitler. He was not simply a leader, ein Führer—he was the Leader, Der Führer. In that specific context, to call Jesus “our Leader” or to say that “our Leader is the Leader” would have sent you straight to Dachau. As with the word “Leader” in the German context, so with the word “Lord” in the Roman context. Any exclusive and absolute usurpation of that title was lethally dangerous, because it was deliberately treasonous. The problem for Rome was not calling others “Lord” or even speaking of “our Lord.” That could be quite ordinary, innocent, and acceptable. But it was treasonous confrontation to claim that “our Lord” was “the Lord,” and if for us today “Lord” is simply a quaintly archaic or flatly patriarchal title, the confrontational choice between the peace of Caesar and the peace of Christ does not thereby disappear. If, therefore, the lordship of Caesar meant that vision of peace through victory inscribed on stone from Actium to Ankara, what was the content of the alternative lordship of Christ? Bluntly put, once more, how else do you obtain peace on earth except through violent victory? THE JUSTICE OF EQUALITY IN CHRIST JESUS Why was it only after Onesimus’s conversion to Christianity that Philemon’s duty was to liberate him by manumission? Why—for the radical Paul—cannot a Christian master like Philemon own a Christian slave like Onesimus? Why are Christian women and men, wives and husbands equal with one another? Why must Christians be equal with one another? For the principle involved we go into the wider matrix of Pauline theology as noted in his letter to the Galatians. This absolutely crucial statement must be read fully, and to assist us in doing so, we set it out as follows: As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ…(3:27–29) That central triad must never, ever, be cited without those framing statements containing “into” and “with Christ” and “in” and “to Christ.” Quoted without those frames, they might correctly deny the validity of slavery, but they also incorrectly deny the validity of the difference (as distinct from the hierarchy) between women and men, and the ongoing validity of Judaism as a religion separate from Christianity.