Sexual repression
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- "In repressive cultures the slightest reference to sex causes undue shame. But do we conclude, therefore, that human beings should never feel shame? Not according to the psychologist Georges Bataille, who reminds us that shame is a natural, universal response to nakedness and eroticism." --Martha Bayles
Sexual repression is a state in which a person is prevented from expressing their sexuality. Sexual repression is often associated with feelings of guilt or shame being associated with sexual impulses.
Reich and Freud
Wilhelm Reich agreed with Sigmund Freud that psychosexual development was the origin of mental disorder. They both believed that most psychological states were dictated by unconscious processes; that infant sexuality develops early but is repressed, and that this has important consequences for mental health. At that time a Marxist, Reich argued that the source of sexual repression was bourgeois morality and the socio-economic structures that produced it. As sexual repression was the cause of the neuroses, the best cure would be to have an active, guilt-free sex life. He argued that such a liberation could come about only through a morality not imposed by a repressive economic structure.
See also
- Antisexualism
- Asexuality
- Erotophobia
- Freudo-Marxism
- Repression
- Sexual abstinence
- Eros Denied (1964), by Wayland Young
