Intentional inhibition
For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.
(St Paul, Romans 7:15–17)
Intentional inhibition is conscious, effortful and deliberate (Fujita and Han, 2009). Such inhibition is also characterized as due to ‘threat of performance consequences’ and arises from cognitive processing in which the prospect of a sexual interaction is put into context (Janssen and Bancroft, 2007). For example, fear of disease is one potential inhibitor, the more positive aspect being a desire for good health. Jealousy and mate guarding, with associated fear of the consequences of transgression, provide other reasons for restraint. People taking high risks sexually tend to be low on this factor.
Sometimes the level of inhibition in the class of ‘intentional’ proves inadequate in the face of strong excitation. The factors that underlie conscious decision-making on whether desire gets translated into action can be in conflict with each other. Sometimes the actual sexual desire that a person feels corresponds closely to what he or she ideally wishes to feel. Such people are the lucky ones, without serious conflict. Alas, in other cases, actual sexual desire does not correspond to how the person ideally wishes (‘desires’) their desire to be (Irvine, 2007). This was illustrated by the American writer Susan Cheever (Cheever, 2008, p. 127): ‘In spite of my love for my daughter, I couldn’t stop cheating on my husband, her father. Consciously, I desperately wanted to be faithful.’ Of course, this is not unique to sex; for example, many heavy smokers wish that they did not desire their addictive activity to the same intensity.
In such cases, it seems as if two levels of the brain/mind are in conflict and an understanding of brain/mind would suggest that exactly this is the case. Researchers can now identify the brain regions and some of their properties. Conflict is inherent to the human condition, never more so than when it concerns sexual desire arising under the condition described as ‘temptation’. A good conscious intention can be inadequate as an inhibitor of desire, as illustrated by the following:
‘Yes, I will go to her, but like the Saint who laid one hand on the adulteress and thrust his other into the brazier. But there is no brazier here.’ He looked round. The lamp! He put his finger over the flame and frowned, preparing himself to suffer. And for a rather long time, as it seemed to him, there was no sensation, but suddenly – he had not yet decided whether it was painful enough – he writhed all over, jerked his hand away, and waved it in the air. ‘No, I can’t stand that!’
…
‘I will come to you directly,’ he said, and having opened his door, he went without looking at her through the cell into the porch where he used to chop wood. There he felt for the block and for an axe which leant against the wall.
‘Immediately!’ he said, and taking up the axe with his right hand he laid the forefinger of his left hand on the block, swung the axe, and struck with it below the second joint.
(Father Sergius, in Tolstoy, 1896/2012, p. 326)
Tolstoy must surely have written these words from the heart, understanding that sexual desire, if strong enough, can only be resisted by an even more powerful aversion. Conscious intentions, drawing upon the past, such as early vows of chastity, or upon the future, such as anticipating guilt-ridden years ahead, often prove to be no match for desire in the ‘heat of the moment’. Although Tolstoy was never driven to quite the same desperate solution of amputation as his fictional creation, the priest Father Sergius, the author had years of conflict in trying to resist the temptation of sexual desire and being tormented by guilt. By his own testimony, sexual desire almost invariably won (A. N. Wilson, 1988).
Typically, a person might anticipate that there will arise a later feeling of guilt, or fear some kind of religious or cultural sanction if discovered. The prospect of an unwanted pregnancy, eternal damnation or disease would also fit into this category. Inhibition arises, not from a physical event in the here and now, but from anticipation of what might happen in future. Richard et al. (1996) asked participants in an experiment to focus on any anticipated negative mood that would follow an unsafe sexual encounter (e.g. regret) and this tended to increase their adoption of safe-sex practices. Intentional and aversive forms of inhibition are perhaps not entirely distinct. For example, revival into memory of a fear of pregnancy or disease might come to act somewhat like a physically present stimulus.
Intentional inhibition can operate at the level of the selection of a target for attention. Thus, a person wishing to maintain fidelity will sometimes voluntarily divert attention from sexually attractive targets other than the partner (Miller, 1997).
Some features of intentional inhibition appear to reflect a general process and not one specifically ‘designed’ to restrain sexual behaviour. For instance, a weight-conscious person, having to decide between chocolate or celery, would appear to be in a similar dilemma. The hedonic impact of the chocolate is immediate, whereas the aversive consequences of weight gain could only be imagined. The term ‘temptation’ describes where a long-term goal is in opposition to an immediate desire.
Adolescence is a time of awakening sexual desire as a result of the activation of hormones. The restraint exerted on putting desire into effect tends to arise from social pressures from family, church and so on (Udry, 1990). Sexual culture and habits have changed with technological advance, for example the availability of contraception (MacDonald and Hershberger, 2005). Thus, this contribution to restraint acting at the level of intention has changed over the decades.
The goal in competition with sexual expression might have a positive quality, such as a desired state of celibacy or respecting religious devotion. A given choice of behaviour might be motivated by a combination of positive and negative aspects. Whatever the emotions, they are in competition with current sexual desire triggered by the physical presence of a sexual incentive or moves towards reaching one. Perhaps it is not surprising that the restraint arising from anticipation of the future is often no match for the lure of the present. The strength of temptation would be expected to increase as the tempting incentive is approached (Orford, 2001). However, such potentially restraining things as guilt might not be expected to increase in the same way. Hence, there is the notion of a ‘point of no return’. Whether a given level of wanting is translated into action or resisted would depend upon differences in the strength of inhibition exerted on it (Carver and White, 1994), associated with activation of the lateral prefrontal cortex (Chein et al., 2011).
The emotion of disgust, described next, exemplifies a number of features of inhibition, including different levels of processing. It shows where rational choice can prove inadequate in the face of inhibition from physically present stimuli.
Disgust
[S]he was aware of the spot on her hand that his lips had touched, and she shuddered with repulsion.
(Tolstoy, 1877/1977, p. 206)
And he bent over her gently to kiss her. But at the contact of his lips the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her hand over her face shuddering.4
(Gustave Flaubert, 1856/2010, p. 411)
Disgust must surely be the most reliable, irredeemable and durable of passion-killers, its effects lingering long after the triggering event. Under some conditions, the other aversive emotions, fear and even anger, can get converted into sexual arousal, but I know of no such conversion of disgust into anything positive.
Disgust can inhibit sexual desire acting at both a raw level based upon simple physical triggers or at a cognitive level after some elaborate processing. This emotion lowers the chances of either engaging in sexual behaviour at all or in those particular forms that trigger disgust. It appears that disgust can be triggered even if the person is unaware consciously of the presence of this emotion (Kelly, 2011).
Cultures that are highly restrictive sexually, such as the Irish island of Inis
Beag, tend to see almost any expression of sexuality as being ‘dirty’ (Messenger, 1971) and by implication disgust helps to set the norms. A survey of Puerto Rican women in the 1950s found that those not enjoying sex with their husbands reported ‘disgust and revulsion’ (Rainwater, 1971). In the otherwise sexually permissive Mangaia, people caught in incest would suffer filth being thrown at them (Marshall, 1971).
Evolutionary psychologists suggest that disgust has become attached to sexual desire because this served an evolutionary function by restricting mating in situations that were suboptimal in passing on genes (Fessler and Navarrete, 2003). In other words, people could do better by mating with, say, non-relatives or with those lacking unpleasant odours.
In sexual desire, disgust can exert inappropriate inhibition in either of two ways. First, it can be excessive and thwart sexual experience or bring problems to an otherwise harmonious relationship when sexual tastes clash (Borg et al., 2010a, 2010b). For example, the Victorian English writer and social activist John Ruskin never consummated his marriage (Hewison, 2007). He was apparently disgusted by his bride on the first night of their honeymoon, either because of her pubic hair or menstruation. Secondly, by contrast, disgust can be inadequate to serve as a brake on risky or illegal sexual practices (Borg et al., 2008).
The role of raw disgust
Disgust is an ‘old emotion’ that is assumed to have evolved because it protected the body from poisoning by contact with infectious agents, termed ‘pathogens’ (Stevenson et al., 2011). Thus, such things as rotting food, blood, faeces, strong body odours and vomit trigger disgust, their sensory properties indicative of the likely presence of pathogens (Danovitch and Bloom, 2009). Disgust is triggered through smell, taste, vision, hearing (e.g. a disgusting sound as in vomiting) or touch (e.g. a feeling of slime). By means of disgust, such sensory events motivate withdrawal from their source and subsequent avoidance.
Raw stimuli trigger disgust rapidly and automatically with little ‘higher cognitive’ processing (Kelly, 2011; Oaten et al., 2009). Hence, disgust fits the notion of a module, as described by evolutionary psychologists. Bad body odours or bodily sores are usually triggers to disgust and thereby some loss of desire. They are indicative of bad health, signalling that mating might be relatively unproductive. Disgust is associated with nausea and a particular universal facial expression (the ‘gape face’), which is recognized as disgust across different cultures (Ekman et al., 1969). It is hard to disguise this facial reaction by the exertion of the conscious will; the expression tends to ‘leak out’. Out of politeness, you might say to a dinner host ‘it tastes delicious’, but non-verbal signals could be telling a different story.
Disgust can override rationality. For example, a sterilized drinking utensil might trigger rejection, if it is known to have been earlier associated with contamination (Rozin et al., 2000). One can speculate that, in the sexual domain, rationality might often be similarly ineffective in the face of a powerful trigger to disgust (Kelly, 2011). A woman might desperately want to overcome the disgust triggered by a bad odour on her partner, but rationality and explicit reasoning that this arises from nothing more infectious than a rotting tooth can be no match for the automatic triggering of disgust.
Disgust is said to be ‘on a hair-trigger’, primed for rapid action and likely to pick up false positives (Kelly, 2011). Compared to men, women tend to be more sensitive to triggers to disgust and they are better detectors of facial signs of disgust (Tybur et al., 2009). Triggers to disgust are more powerful if they arise from strangers rather than from oneself or kin. One person expressed this as ‘other people’s dirt is dirtier than my own’ (cited in Oaten et al., 2009, p. 310). This makes evolutionary sense in that pathogens are likely to be brought from outside the family.
The function served by disgust is clear (Stevenson et al., 2011). Close intimacy often involves an exchange of fluids as in saliva, semen and vaginal secretions, these being potential sources of pathogens. A running nose, repeated sneezing or scratching are likely to cool a partner’s passion.
Cultural and individual variation
By genetic inheritance and early development, humans are given certain strong predispositions for what to find disgusting, for example strong body odours. However, there is not universal agreement and this points to imitation in ‘reading this information off’ from the culture (Oaten et al., 2009; Rozin et al., 2000). What is one person’s ‘turn-off’, mediated via disgust, might well be another’s particular ‘turn-on’, exemplified by different attitudes towards, say, oral sex. Such attitudes are not invariably set in stone. Even the inveterate lecher Walter started out with an aversion to oral sex, but over the years acquired a liking for it (Kronhausen and Kronhausen, 1967, p. 306).
Thus, so-called deviant sexual acts have the common property of their capacity to trigger disgust in some people, but the exact form of what is judged as deviant varies between individuals and between cultures (Kelly, 2011). Although the disgust system and its effects on behaviour seem to be universal, as is the capacity for extracting inputs to disgust from the environment, there is extensive variation in exactly what these inputs are.
Expressions of disgust on the faces of parents and siblings convey information to the young child. Consider the different reactions to particular foods across cultures. This reading-off gives the facility for fine-tuning of disgust according to the experience within a particular culture. At this level, religious proscriptions, meanings and symbols enter the picture. Disgust tends to be empathetic; seeing an expression of disgust on the face of another normally triggers some disgust in the observer (Kelly, 2011).
The criteria of body cleanliness compatible with sexual desire these days might well have seemed somewhat excessive to most of our ancestors. Clearly, acting at a high level, cultural and social factors relating to individual experience strongly interact with the basic emotion of disgust. So, again the notions of hierarchy and a merging of biological and social influences are evident.
So-called ‘social norms’ are presumably based in part upon what triggers disgust (Kelly, 2011). For example, the Bible condemns sex with non-human animals:
Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.
(Exodus 22:19)
The writer of this edict probably felt a sense of disgust at the prospect of ‘lying’ with a beast. Most of us probably find sex with non-human animals disgusting, but for some it is a turn-on, with its own scientific name: zoophilia.
Almost all of us would surely feel intense disgust at the thought of intimate ‘relations’ with a dead body (Kelly, 2011). Yet some men are particularly turned on by intimacy with a corpse, known as necrophilia, and will go to the most extraordinary lengths to achieve it (Chapter 19). Menstruation and its associated cultural taboos might lower a woman’s feelings about her own body and thereby her sexual desire (Leiblum, 2002). However, blood, the archetypal trigger to disgust, is a fetish for some people.
An evolutionary trade-off: sexual arousal and sexual disgust
Speaking metaphorically from a design perspective, disgust presents evolutionary processes with a dilemma. Genetic perpetuation invariably involves a trade-off and a compromise (Stevenson et al., 2011). Of course, there are dangers inherent in sexual activity, some of them signalled by disgust. However, there are some obvious disadvantages in not engaging in sexual activity! A high risk runs a high probability of disease, whereas taking too little risk could result in missing fruitful mating opportunities. In this context, it seems that evolution has arrived at a brain that performs a cost–benefit analysis.
Consider the thoughts of Count Tolstoy:
But I do know for certain that copulation is an abomination which can only be thought of without revulsion under the influence of sexual desire. Even in order to have children you wouldn’t do this to a woman you love. I’m writing this at a time when I’m possessed myself by sexual desire, against which I can’t fight.
(A. N. Wilson, 1988, p. 391)
I always felt between two fires, their lure remained strong, but it was always mingled with violent revulsion.
The Victorian sex diaries of Walter reveal that even he occasionally felt disgust after he had finished a sexual encounter and satiation set in (C. Wilson, 1988), exactly the same story being told by ‘Casanovas’ some hundred years later (Trachtenberg, 1989).
When males are sexually aroused, they tend to lower the disgust value attributed to stimuli associated with sex (Stevenson et al., 2011). There is a conflict involved such that some tolerance of disgust appears to be the optimal strategy. A high arousal value would signal a highly attractive potential partner, with whom there would be much to gain by mating. If not deterred at the outset of the sexual advance, it would make little sense to stop the sexual activity once high arousal kicks in and thereby waste time. By contrast, low arousal value would signal little attraction value and the possible wisdom of exhibiting disgust.
This effect would surely be familiar to many. We might not like to share a feeding utensil with someone else or eat food located in the vicinity of their sneeze, but our disgust is likely to be considerably lower if the other individual is sexually attractive to us. Any disgust at mixing of saliva with another would most usually fall to zero at the time of subsequently exchanging an erotic kiss. However, this appears not to be the case for everyone. There are cultures where such mixing of saliva is considered to be disgusting (Ford and Beach, 1951). This is (or at least used to be) equally true within certain social groups in the United States (Kinsey et al., 1948). Such evidence again suggests a learning and imitation process in what is perceived as erotic and acceptable.
How Sexual Desire Works- The Enigmatic Urge Page 24
