How Sexual Desire Works- The Enigmatic Urge

by Frederick Toates

  These observations do not allow us to conclude what causes what. Although one’s intuitive first guess would be that the conservative morality came first and was the cause of the medical condition, things could be the other way around: maybe the condition triggered a new prioritization with sex assuming a low status, subsequently justified by restrictive moral principles. There is the possibility of a vicious circle of inhibitory effects in which biological condition and beliefs reinforce each other.

  Sexual pain

  In ‘dyspareunia’, the woman suffers from pain accompanying intercourse (Everaerd et al., 2000a). Some regard it as more parsimonious to see dyspareunia and vaginismus as two conditions lying on a continuum, with disgust also playing some role in dyspareunia (Borg et al., 2010a, 2010b). In addition, by means of classical conditioning, stimuli earlier associated with pain might lower the genital reaction (Both et al., 2008b).

  Some divide sexual pain into two types, having either bodily or psychological causes. However, in some cases both factors might be equal contributors. The message from current pain research is that pain can be flexible. It does not bear any simple relation to damage to the body, and cognitive factors, such as beliefs and fears, can play a significant role. There could be a vicious circle set up between bodily and psychological contributions arising from, say, a history of abuse. Some women engage in sexual behaviour in spite of experiencing pain. Investigators speculate that the motives are to please a partner, to avoid conflict and to confirm her image as a ‘real woman’ (Dewitte et al., 2011). This would constitute a high-level consciously available goal overriding inhibition arising at a lower level.

  So far, the discussion has concerned mainly adult sexual desire in the here and now. However, as mentioned in Chapter 2, an entirely complementary way of gaining understanding is to ask how the brain/mind showing sexual desire came into being, the topic of the next chapter.

  In summary

  It is important to distinguish between different levels of inhibition: orgasmic, stimulus-triggered and intentional.

  Disgust can inhibit in terms of both raw stimulus features and a more cognitive extraction of disgust, as in incest.

  The word ‘temptation’ usually describes a situation where there is a powerful incentive lure that is in conflict with a longer-term inhibitory factor.

  The power of an incentive can be particularly evident ‘in the heat of the moment’.

  Thirteen How did sexual desire get here?

  [B]elow the wall, out of sight of their parents but in full view of our porch, their two children, a small boy and girl, were examining each other’s private parts. Someone called my mother’s attention to this, and she sucked in her breath and said, ‘If I caught my boys doing that, I would skin them alive!’

  (B. F. Skinner, 1976, p. 60)1

  Looking back in time, what led to an adult’s brain/mind, with its ‘regular’ as well as idiosyncratic features of sexual desire? Considered in this way, the individual has a history in terms of two related aspects:

  human evolution, starting millions of years ago;

  development of the individual from conception to adulthood.

  To understand how desire got here, it can be insightful to look at events happening over these two very different time scales, which is done in this chapter and the next. Such questions arise as:

  What are the roles of nature and nurture in determining human sexual desire?

  What evolutionary factors contributed to contemporary sexual culture and how did they do so?

  How does the early experience of the child lead to the later emergence of sexual desire?

  What is the role of interactions between the child and its parents in leading to a brain/mind that finds other humans attractive?

  What sort of individual becomes the object of desire and how does this occur?

  How can an unusual development lead to unusual sexual behaviour?

  The development of sexual behaviour can be best understood in terms of general principles of development, described next.

  A broad framework: some general processes underlying development

  From conception and starting ‘simply’ as a single fertilized egg cell, the newly formed individual develops and grows, by means of cells dividing and thereby their number multiplying astronomically. The growing foetus interacts with its physical environment, by absorbing nutrients, making limb movements and bodily adjustments. This is believed to facilitate the wiring of the motor controls of the body, in forming coordination between brain and muscles.

  Hormones have effects on sculpting not only bodily sex organs but also the brain mechanisms that will later come to underlie sexual desire (Chapter 2). Comparing boys and girls, there are early differences in testosterone levels, which appear to play a role in producing differences in brain mechanisms. With puberty these mechanisms are activated by the elevated levels of circulating hormones that appear at this stage.

  Learning about the environment

  The baby interacts with its parents to gain nutrients and warmth and explores its environment by making eye and head movements. The baby assimilates information from the outside world, for example to form representations of important objects, such as the features that define a human face. Nutrients stimulate his/her taste and smell. By eye and head movements, the baby triggers a changing pattern of stimulation of its visual system. Internal bodily conditions, for example temperature and nutrient levels, as well as any serious disturbance to an organ, are monitored and trigger reactions such as crying.

  The baby learns that its actions on the environment have consequences. For example, crying brings reassuring comfort, warmth or food, whereas reaching out to manipulate a toy brings feedback on the result of the action. The baby attaches values of good and bad to those events in the environment with which he or she interacts. Observations have revealed that a baby spends a disproportionately large amount of time looking at what are judged by humans to be attractive faces (Chapter 6). Herein lies the assimilation of values that are used later in the control of behaviour, including those involved in sexual desire.

  Ideally, parents are the source of bringing good things and will be ranked positively in the allocation of value in the child’s brain. The parents, as sources of comfort, become attractive stimuli to be pursued. Some children develop attachments to inanimate objects that bring them comfort and which they take to bed with them, such as a teddy-bear or a piece of cloth (Bowlby, 1982, p. 310).

  Contrary to what was long believed, infant attachment seems not to be explicable in terms of ‘cupboard love’, that is a reward or reinforcement system based upon material gain such as food or comfort. Bowlby (1982) writes (p. 260):

  When a mother rebuffs her child for wishing to be near her or to sit on her knee it not infrequently has an effect exactly the opposite of what is intended – he becomes more clinging than ever.

  The similarity with some adult relationships is obvious.

  A working model

  Bowlby proposed that the young child forms a ‘mental model’ (‘working model’) of social interactions (see also Collins and Read, 1994). This is an internal representation of (a) the child, (b) others with whom the child interacts and (c) the nature of interactions between the child and others. The working model appears to have profound implications for the nature of later sexual desire, whether it is expressed sympathetically or coercively.

  Under optimal conditions, the caregiver offers comfort and is available to meet the security needs of the child. Thereby, the child’s working model of the caregiver is as a ‘magnet of positive emotion’ to which the infant can be drawn and derive security and comfort. This representation will later tend to generalize to the individual’s relationship to others beyond the caregivers, who will be treated as trustworthy. The child will tend to develop a feeling of positive ‘self-worth’. Most people have a need for ‘felt security’ (Collins and Read, 1994).

  If, however, the caregiver is unavailable for
the needs of the infant or is rejecting, the child’s representation of others can be one of untrustworthiness. The representation of self might then be one of being unworthy or of having to be self-sufficient.

  The theory suggests that a version of this same working model is subsequently used in adulthood to predict the likely behaviour of others in social interactions. Simulations of the world can be performed with the help of the working model and goals set according to anticipated outcomes. Early in life, working models have a relatively high degree of plasticity in that they can alter their predictions in the light of changing social context and caregiver reactions. With maturity, the working model can become less flexible and less able to reflect changing reality.

  How does a working model influence later emotions, cognitions and behaviour? In social interactions, the working model is activated automatically and gives direction or at least a bias to cognitive and emotional processing and thereby plays a role in behaviour. It sensitizes particular goals, at a largely unconscious level. Collins and Read (1994, p. 78) write:

  if a partner’s behaviour is interpreted as a sign of caring, then a response that communicates positive emotion and is rewarding to the partner may be chosen. On the other hand, if a partner’s behaviour evokes anger and is viewed as a lack of responsiveness, a behavioural response that is punishing to the partner is more likely to be selected.

  Evidence suggests that the early construction of a working model can depend upon multiple influences, for example mother, father, grandparents, siblings and playmates. The child might develop multiple and interacting working models of these different relationships. Which of these is later activated most strongly can depend upon context. For example, in romantic relationships, the working model of the opposite sex parent appears to play the strongest role. Furthermore, working models involve various bits of information. These include memories of particular incidents from childhood associated with the behaviour of the caregiver, such as acts of affection. Early interactions shape the form of the brain, such that emotions, such as love, joy, empathy, fear and shame, which play a role in good or bad sexual interactions, are formed.

  Development of regions of the prefrontal cortex, for example orbitofrontal, occurs post-natally under the influence of social interactions particularly between the mother and child (Schore, 2003). Under the influence of the mother, the infant’s dopaminergic, oxytocin and opioid systems develop with the associated processes that underlie seeking her (dopamine) and gaining pleasure from contact with her (opioids and oxytocin).

  Healthy development of the prefrontal cortex requires the repeated exchange of positive affect between parent and child in the form of gaze and smiles. Evidence suggests that this region plays a crucial role in the embodiment of the working model of the mother and the emotional (‘affective’) value attributed to her presence, particularly mediated via facial signals. The orbitofrontal region of the prefrontal cortex comes to embody the highest level of both control over the emotions and evaluation of the emotions of others. In turn, this region is informed of the states of the body such as its emotional reactions. Its damage can disrupt the capacity to exhibit intimacy and the moral emotion of empathy, as well as to inhibit aggression, surely cardinal features of consensual sexual activity.

  A focus on the development of sexual desire

  The sexual instincts are noticeable to us for their plasticity, their capacity for altering their aims.

  (Sigmund Freud, cited by Doidge, 2007, p. 98).

  It is useful to trace the development of sexuality back to the beginning of life. Freud recognized that the various forms that adult sexual desire can take do not simply exist preformed (‘pre-packaged’) in the child to be revealed in time. Rather, early experience plays a decisive role in sculpting the form of adult sexuality.

  The genital reaction

  In early childhood, ‘protosexuality’ (early rudimentary features of sexuality) are exhibited (Doidge, 2007). It appears that genital arousal occurs as an automatic reflex even before birth (Langfeldt, 1990; Money, 1990). Having an external organ, the penis, arousal is easier to observe in baby boys than in girls. Technology does not permit any comparable swelling of the vulva to be seen in girl babies. However, it seems reasonable to speculate that something similar happens in both sexes.

  Psychologists now recognize the existence of what is called a ‘critical period’ or ‘sensitive period’, during which the brain is most sensitive to sculpting. Money describes what he calls ‘sexual rehearsal’, a kind of simulated run that precedes any actual desire or sexual behaviour. The sexual system might be under construction even during sleep in the young child. This is associated with rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep), which is later known to accompany dreaming. This dreaming could later take an erotic form. Although penile erection is simply a reflex, there would be feedback from the genitals that could link with brain regions underlying pleasure.

  Young infants are responsive to tactile stimulation of the genitals and act in such a way as to trigger it themselves, for example by directed rubbing of the area (Fisher, 1986). As early as the first year of life, children appear to experience sensual signals from their genitals in response to tactile stimuli, and a few years later exhibit rhythmic thrusting of the pelvic area (Money, 1986). This is presumably a candidate for later linking to sensory impressions of playmates. From their facial expressions, it appears that many young children enjoy such sexual self-stimulation (Fisher, 1986), so an intrinsic capacity for pleasure could be a universal capacity given normal development.

  In a sample of boys, some 50 per cent reported first memories of erections that were triggered by non-erotic events, most of these occurring in the age range 10–12 (Kinsey et al., 1948; Ramsey, 1943). The situations had the most common general feature of fear and/or excitement and included playing sports, fear of punishment, giving a recital to a class, arson and anger. There was a similar non-erotic content of dreams which were associated with an erection on awakening. This would appear to be evidence of an early precursor of the cross-linkage between different sources of emotional arousal, described earlier. Kinsey et al. (1948) suggested that, building from this diffuse array of triggers to genital arousal, a more specific and discriminatory link is sculpted. That is, with increasing age, sexual stimulation, either tactile or, say, visual or involving the imagination, is needed to obtain an erection, though a range of other sources of arousal might still play some role. Similarly, with development, orgasm becomes closely tied to specific tactile stimulation.

  For many, if not most, children, the first experience of pleasure derived from the genitals, as in masturbation, might not be explicitly linked to sexual stimuli in the outside world or erotic images (Spiering and Everaerd, 2006). Only later does this pairing occur and sexual meaning in terms of an attractive other is attached to the genital pleasure. It has been speculated that as much as a year can go by before this association starts to form (Kinsey et al., 1948). This highlights the rich opportunities that exist for the formation of a wide range of different objects of desire according to the idiosyncrasies of individual experience. Even for a significant percentage of adults, particularly women, genital pleasure in masturbation happens without associated sexual imagery in fantasy (Jones and Barlow, 1990).

  Masturbation can be an accidental ‘self-discovery’ or under guidance and instruction from another child or at least with social facilitation (Langfeldt, 1990). Thereby, the child experiences the intensity of the link between arousal of the genitals and the pleasure derived from there. This would encourage a repeat of the experience, something captured in his own inimitable style by the psychologist, B. F. Skinner, describing life in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Skinner based his science of psychology on observables and presumably in this case it was his own subsequent behaviour (Skinner, 1976, p. 60):

  another boy and I had gone out of town on our bicycles and walked up a creek, beside which we were later to build a shack. We were sitting in the sun engag
ed in rather idle sex play when I made several rhythmic strokes which had a highly reinforcing effect. I immediately repeated them with even more reinforcing results. I began a steady movement, making an excited comment to my companion, and then, although I was too young to ejaculate, I had my first orgasm.2

  Although Skinner’s background was somewhat Calvinist and so he had the potential for the development of erotophobia, reading the autobiography shows that peer influences can sometimes rather effectively counter this!

  While growing up and later, the two sexes could place different interpretations upon bodily signals. The male has an unambiguous interpretation, which provides an input to erotic arousal, whereas in females erotic associations have negative connotations, such as social disapproval and fear. In other words, males tend to put more weight upon raw stimulus information arising from the genitals and women more weight upon subtle external cues and the meaning triggered by bodily sensations. For various cultural reasons, girls are more reluctant than boys to label bodily sensations as sexual. They are brought up to be more cautious, if not suspicious, of sensations from the genitals, as evidenced by the notion of the impurity of menstruation (Everaerd et al., 2000a).