Sexuality: a search for perspective; Sex and the soul

You were outed that is not this or that thing. It's the whole range of way in which we relate I suppose from a sexuality which certainly begins in the cradle. It is not only the act of intercourse eroticism It's that whole range of affectionate intimate responses would certainly have a root in the instinct of the same to have another route in the spirit and where these opposites come together is where one knows joy that last an ecstasy doesn't abandon in the sense of being carried beyond the moment. That is more than a trip which is covered by some artificially induced Michigan State University radio presents sexuality. A search for perspective a series of recorded lectures from an interdisciplinary colloquy on human sexuality held on the campus of Michigan State University. The purpose of this series is to provide a comprehensive discussion of human sexuality in its broadest possible perspective. And yet deal with this important and timely topic in an organized informed and rational manner. The

lecturer today will be Dr. Otis a Maxfield the director of training for the American Foundation of religion and psychiatry in New York. Dr. Maxfield is also senior minister for the second Congregational Church in Greenwich Connecticut and president of the American Association of pastoral counselors. His topic today will be Sex and the solo. Now Dr. Otis a Maxfield what I'd like to talk about is sex in the soul. I don't like to read. We're kind of stuck with quotes and what's reproduced and where it is so I'd like to read a bit but ad libs have no intention of taking us more than 40 minutes or so. Do you think by the ads and talks by the yard to be kicked by the foot. And I noticed my own learning curve rapidly goes down after a half hour or less I fabricate all sorts of fantasy interests. So I commend you to read all of this later whether it's published or it's written and footnoted and quotes and all the stuff that goes with it. There's a little book

called advice to a young wife. From an old mistress and I commend it strongly to you. Advice to a young wife from an old mistress. To begin with what the old mistress said. I want to end with what she said which in no way is to slander the wisdom of young wives. At one point. The old mistress gives this advice to the young wife. When my own friends discuss sex they speak of it as being close to someone or having something of my own while making me feel special. This betrays that I live in spiritual and sensual void. It's an attempt to extract from sex the sense of unity and continuity that can only be poured into it. Taken in the abstract sex is in no way glorious. Children upon first hearing of it spontaneously regarded as a disqualifier are absurd and they are right. It acquires its character from us. Eroticism in or out of marriage cannot

endowed life with meaning and sex retains its richness just as long as we bring meaning to it. When it is new to us sex provides not only sensation but a hint of wondrous realms beyond sensation as any other fresh intelligence. But like other newborn creations an idea a baby a talent a purpose. It requires to be developed sexual poise is not expertise which is only a kind of proficiency in mechanics and they remain quite ignorant sensation and experience are not identical and the muddled effort to make them interchangeable is one of the saddest of modern confusions. Feelings always accompany experience but they do not constitute it. That is why any attempt to regain experience merely by repeating this sensation is doomed to failure and bitterness in the spear of sex. This results in the empty chase after gratification else apathetic compliance with incidental physicality. Both of which are immoral because

they isolate and insult the body. Sexuality is lonely. I'm convinced that what we got going on is a new kind of Puritanism. In the Victorian era we had a kind of Puritanism which said in effect let's try to have love without sex. And I think in our era a lot of what I see is another kind of Puritanism which says let's try to have sex without love and either form of Puritanism. It seems to me it sort of isolates the body from the rest of us. And the matter how we get drawn back to our animal ancestors my perspective with one foot in religion and one in psychotherapy but also with one sense of my own being tells me that I can't go back without getting dehumanized and I can't go back to the model of my animal ancestors without striking a blow at my own self realisation which in the final analysis is my deepest longing

not the gratification of this or that instinct or the having of this or that pleasure or the reduction of this or that loneliness my deepest longing is to be who I am and then to live that with as much authenticity is as I'm able. Well in this kind of machine look then we say what is this going on and what's taken place. For me morality not in any attempt to dis define it exhaustively. It is not one particular set of human acts but all human action. I know some thoroughly detestable people who've never been sexually promiscuous and I know some some awful people who hardly had a juicy fantasy for years. You know what a problem righteousness can be and there's no sense in beating that into the ground. A little girl who said dear God make all the bad people good and all the good people nice and knew what she was talking about. You know Emerson said once If I see someone coming at me indicating their only intent is to help me I run like the dickens in the other direction. We're all aware of this

and I think we also know that if you have to choose between an attractive sinner and a dried up saint you know which way you vote. There is a kind of awful problem for righteousness but be that as it may morality that is not this or that thing. It's the whole range of way in which we relate. And I suppose for me sexuality which certainly begins in the cradle is not only the act of intercourse or eroticism It's that whole range of affectionate intimate responses that would certainly have a root in the instincts that seem to have another root in the spirit and where these opposites come together is where one knows joy that last an ecstasy doesn't abandon in a sense of being carried beyond the moment. That is more than a trip which comes by some artificially induced method. When I looked briefly back at the tradition out of which I come from no one has done it before and it was one of the

suggestions in the requirement to me that the argument from scripture. Is at least that this somehow sexuality was assumed to be a part of the process of human nature. The Old Testament tells us over and over again that God looked on his creation and said Lo it's good. We were reminded that he said to his people be fruitful and multiply but also said subdue the earth and have dominion over it. This somehow to simply be the victim of nature was not of a man's destiny. Fact I was interested to note in preparing this ID in the book of Deuteronomy. It's spelled out very clearly that a young couple who marry you should let the man have a year's exemption from military service so that he can enjoy his sexual life. It might be an idea for us to give the general Hershey as we overhaul the draft law today and help some of us to make the most of the situation. We look at the New Testament the famous statement of Jesus that. The lustful look is equated with adultery. I think really taking in its broad

context doesn't suggest that this Jew named Jesus who wanted dried up people but rather that he was trying to point to the fact that there what really matters is the inner motivation. Like in psychotherapy we seldom get stuck on the behavior we want to look at the attitude that prompts the behavior. For most of us have not a performance problem. We have an attitude problem and we know full well that in the complexity of our humanity one can do the wrong thing for the right reason just as well as we can do the right thing for the wrong reason. So the simplistic view leaves a lot to be desired. We took it on through history you know what would happen to the thing with Augusten after 40 rockets years he decided that all this should go away. Which tells us that sex at least has progression. That if we want to come out voting for the monogamous way we ought to begin by saying it's something to work toward not a prerequisite of beginning. Otherwise we'd just be totally hypocritical. When we try to sum up the whole

thing I think we come from the official standpoint which may not be the way it's operational. It's the conviction that today I don't want to bore you with history that the official Catholic position is it still caught on the fact that the primary purpose of sex is for procreation. You read the recent arguments watch the creative forces of change revolution and from wherever you stand you know the battle is on in the Roman Church. There's a great deal of merit in reminding us that one purpose in sex intercourse is procreation. That the position taken reflects a rather deterministic position of three centuries ago suggests that it's not going to make it. By the same token to deal with it respectfully I think is our task. We look at the Protestant standpoint that Take-Two don't have the Hebrew one and I really wish I knew it better than I do. We at least see that some things emerge upon which is as much

consensus as one can ever get from Protestants. For there are really quite a laissez faire lot and the Methodists never quite want to admit that the Baptists got something good going and vice versa. But then it's able I think to pluck out three or four broad base premises that the official church position holds. For example that man because he's a whole total being that is that he is mind and body and that he is flesh and spirit and that he is past and future and that is time and timeless and that he is fantasy in fact the richness of the opposites have no limit to their amplification that if we see a human being is more than his functions. But as a creature with all the richness that is implied in Process Theology the sex is good if it fulfills his total being that if sexual experience or activity or I'd add fantasy further fragments of disassociates and threatens with meaninglessness or guilt or

anxiety that does no good. Then somehow I want to take a look at that person's sexuality. That essentially if it helps that that longing toward wholeness then one begins to get cast into a perspective that's potentially ethical. It's an interesting things here for any of you who may be in philosophy can't find the philosophers on many campuses anymore. And whichever way back in ancient history people like Spinoza and Kirkegaard argued quite hard for the fact that there was more to it than mind and body. We had a postulate the concept of a self. Or of a soul. And that really psyche and Soma held together by some overarching principle that emerged with consciousness and that somehow it was that self and its vital function that made the final judgement on whether sex in any of its levels of manifestation serve the total good of the person. We for example are not able to say my sexual needs require something but we rather hope to be saying is I desire to

relate sexually with so-and-so. I think we also come to some agreement that a man's total self has its very existence in the community of other selves and that the aim of human relationships including sexual ones it is to foster self-respect on the one hand and mutual rights on the other. That without self-respect and mutual rights. One then uses the other for personal gratification and this may indeed be the way it is in animal copulation. But it's out of the way it needs to be arrived even at ought to be. In human experience I think we also come to some general agreement that the developmental aim of sex in human life is toward a progressive integration and I emphasize developmental and progressive for it seems to me one's only hypocritical to say that. The kind that goals at 40 should be the ones at 20 or 12. Somewhere one has to taste

that experience and suffer it. No it's defeat and it's success and then regroup. If he's ever to be true to something that grows out of his nature. We have lots of data that tell us that no one can for long be true to what someone else wants him to be anyhow. Sooner or later all that exists outside that falls by the wayside. I think we do see though for example a biologically sex reduces tension. This is the level that some begin at and never go beyond. I think we have lots of evidence that tells it psychologically sexual experience lets us find unsuspected aspects of US selfhood. When she says in effect being with you has introduced me to a whole new dimension to myself that I never dreamt existed. This indeed is the language of the soul of the poetry of ultimate truth. And she's saying that in a way you've given to me a gift which in war is more than a functional discharge you see if your spirit to mate. That's a simple way we ought not to get so enamored with it that what she's really saying is that

through you as it were held a mirror held up that outlines for me to be sure sometimes in shadowy form aspects of my self that very much need to be realized if all that I am is to multiply and to grow and to be rich. And he may waste all that well say the same thing using his own language. I think we also know that socially in sexual experience we discover depth in another. And by implication the potential depth of all human beings. In clinical work it's very simple for us to begin to see where potential schizo phrenic patterns are when someone talks about how his sexual experience has isolated him further and further. For indeed knowing that we have sisters and brothers where we have other human beings is not I think unrelated to our capacity for sexual experience. I think we find also there's a fourth thing though that is really ethically we find in sexuality the real hard core of the dilemma between fulfillment and

responsibility. And for me anyhow theologically in sexual experience there's always the potential of the ultimate mystery whose meaning is only partly revealed. We say this in normal words but to me they have an amplification that's endless. Often the couple says it seems as if we were transported beyond anything that could be imagined. We seem to be transported beyond this not to go to heaven where the streets are paved with gold is to go beyond the limits of our humanity is to somehow realize that time and space are tyrants than the deepest experiences do not determine all that's profound. He sought to get us out of that awful stimulus rip bonds bond and out of causality which is a trap. It's not saying why did it happen it's rather saying What's its purpose. That somehow begins to let the flow. It makes for the richness of the human take place. Well I think as I've said separating sex from the rest of the self is no more tenable than it would be to isolate

one's larynx and speak of one's vocal chords. I wanted to talk with a friend. And yet in this new kind of Puritanism this is often the way that I hear it talked about and put evil to good therefore I think are not to be found in the body as such or what one does with it but in rather how the self relates itself to the bodily function. Well can we go on and say I have a second section. I'd like to skip some of the written material and let you again read it if you want to later and say let's take a few observations about sexuality that I haven't read in the other papers that are controversial that I think an analyst with a theological training ponders. I note for example how the sexual impulse is impossible to confine to the person possessing the urge. It always seeks the partner. Let's we've got a neurosis or emerging kind of psychosis or compulsive kind of masturbation problem on our hands

that seems to be something in the very structure of sexuality itself that points toward a partner or toward a two way kind of communication. This suggests all sorts of things. You see it suggests active as well as passive response. You don't just take it. If you just take it you again are reduced to the thing level. To receive actively is indeed one of the great attributes of the of the human being or creature. This implies that that one is always challenged to transcend nature. To take what's natural and make it if you will supernatural speaking symbolically now is indeed to be the task of becoming more totally human. So I see something in the very nature of human sexuality as I listen to it as I observe it as I read the literature but most of all as I look at the laboratory myself. I don't want to

stand outside. I want to look from within with all the subjective limits that produces. I see something in the nature of sexuality that prohibits me from merely letting go and having my fling irrespective of what's on the other side. For my sexuality without a partner it reduces my selfhood So the theme of human communication is inevitable and inescapable aspect. The most exciting physical act. I think also this a second thing about sexuality the sexual knowledge for me is qualitatively different from knowledge about sex. She does a very special kind of knowledge that goes with sexual knowledge. You see you know in the Old Testament it said that Adam knew which implies that he had sexual knowledge about her at least sexual knowledge is existential it's accessible from the inside. It's not so much the description of bodily function in

organs which may be important but it's rather that you had the capacity to carry your own suffering to know your own anxiety about success or failure to be on the measurements of the partner. That's something about what takes place in the sexual experience. You conceptualize it and made it your own that you carry it with you. When someone goes from sensation to sensation sexual knowledge escapes it. Even though certain kinds of experiences he's had molded to my sad looking young friend last night I suspect has lots of stickers on his airplane cover. But those kinds of victories are in the long run not victories. They really point to the spinning of this wheels or to turn an event into an experience is the mandate I think of wholeness. Interesting to note also if I might the aggressive minute that somehow we've done with death.

In this new puritanism I think the same kind of thing we've done with sex. We've got it separated off from the total legacy of the human being. So we have the cosmetic of death and the ridiculous expense and the sweet by and by high priced lot and all of those things which sort of deny this. Remember Bruce Marshall who's outdated now he wrote back in the 30s. He is a marvelous passage about death. Seen it from the Spanish Civil War Time is down of the street the municipal hearse flashed by on one of its many daily journeys to the cemetery from the high windows the naked corpse lined in the other little coffin looked like a doll in a cardboard box. There were no mourners and No priests no hope no despair no mystery. Everything was simple and clear. Life meant something only because it meant nothing. If you have say if you reduce a person to his functions then the threat of meaninglessness always raises its head. But I think there are

some other things that make mention two or three. There are some fundamental differences in sexuality as we observe it operationally in a male and a female that that I think always have buried on ethical decision making. Certainly the woman reveals herself in sexuality more than does a man at least in the early years. If a man still holds himself back later then a young fool does become an old fool. And that's the tragedy of many a man that with the passage of time he still function sexually the way he began. And if she only sees herself later as the receiver and the mother and the protector and the active or passive responder then she's cheated herself and a young wench ends up becoming an old witch. They get with the play on words. Well I think we also know that the seduction of a girl psychologically means something totally different than what

happens to a man we don't speak of a seduction of a man. At least we don't back where I come from you have that problem with the aggressive females out here on this campus. Oh. The kicker guard that one time said that it would matter nothing to him to betray the whole world. With that he would shrink from betraying a pure maiden. But this would mean that one was violating the self that made it all beyond physiology. Say there's something about what comes from the feminine capacity that ought to be a model for the man even as his aggressiveness and discharge should be for her at least in the beginning stages for dessert and there are differences here that produce some of the problems of the double standard. And they buried deep in the nature of human nature and a very stubborn to change. I think also for example that the woman is violence oriented monogamously and her generalization is false I've met lots of women in the

council room that tell me they're not. Oriented monogamously. Stop that nonsense. Certainly a man is not by nature monogamous he's by nature polygamous. The loss of data that we could use to substantiate that and I amplify this in the paper. For our purposes here I simply try to say that the problem of the double standard which is more than sexual and you know this better than your parents do. And I was reminded forcibly this morning that the young people didn't think that sex was the only thing in the world. We talked about double standards we meant such things as vocation. I mean a woman's destiny is a person ought not to be synonymous with their vocation as a mother and wife. Certainly we don't think a man's destiny as a man is tied up with his role as father and husband. We think he has a task and in the whole summit in the state this is a long overdue updating to take place. Certainly it's wrong for a man to have money and a woman only to have it when he gives a tour. It's amazing how many husbands don't

set up separate bank accounts where she controls it spends it or hoards it or gives it away but that it's hers. We missed the significance of that kind of independence of the double standard bit. But in the sexual realm I think as such. You see the trouble is that a man is only a man if he thinks of himself in relation to a woman. No prophet of being a man if I don't know the opposite sex is on able to perceive it. Now if the nature of the woman. Is Over a period of time violated and reduced as I perceive it to be by promiscuity. Then you see my manhood has to be considered in relation to her womanhood. And if the nature of her womanhood demands something other than what is natural for me then I have to begin to see my manliness. Not as a young buck. Or as an old horse

but rather as a human being who seeks to relate significantly to another human being so that finally and I think this is a process move. I don't find many guys who begin their sexual life being monogamous nor do I want to mock it if some here have always had that kind of a problem. But I think the growth toward a serious consideration of a lifetime of responsibility to another for me comes not out of prudishness or what I learned in Sunday school or in Puritan Boston or I grew up comes out of the nature or the nature of a man and the nature of a woman. Well I think some other things I know that I'd like to comment on. These are very simple things but they're out of the clinical experience where we live it and see it rather than where we read it and sort of publish it. It's obvious when you read this and heard this with another lecture is it that much of the time it's

not the behavior but the attitude behind the behavior that causes the problem. Lots of so-called sexual problems you know are brought to us because they're problems of identity of affection. Everybody needs affection and tenderness. Lots of people can decide when it's appropriate to have a sexual experience. But if affection and tenderness have been denied for the long growing up years and particularly I think in relation to girls if fathers have been out of it. And then are so stupid when she breaks down to say Haven't I always given you everything you wanted meaning clothing allowances and budgets and options on schools. We see that the young adult who so much wants to recapture what she knows she missed begins to think that this might come by momentary closeness that it produces a fundamental alienation from her own growing edge. I must report wish that I couldn't sometimes but that's the way we observe it. We know other things that come under the guise of sexuality are in there and you can't be too simple.

We know for example that the power of sexuality is not always tied up to pleasure. It's tied up to that longing for union that is to be made whole. We know also that it's hard for some to separate sexual attraction from personal love and how deeply one loves another one sexual attraction is I'm able to see it goes on through a lifetime and that the deeper the love sometimes the more heightened is the sexual attraction to other people. The sexual attraction and personal love don't cancel each other out. We know also that you. The ability to hold a sexual fantasy and not always have to act on it is what leads to true freedom. Psychologically if every desire and fantasy demands action then one is possessed by his instincts and to put his instincts in the service of his self it is magnificent to be their prisoner. It seems to me is to be

forever held. At one level of existence. Well we also know that anxiety and the fear that one is not going to become somebody until he proves himself. We get behind lots of sexuality. We see lots of young business men in the clinic in New York where we see 500 people a week which gives me a fair sense of the cross-section of what goes on. Who are so. Constantly talking about their their potency that I'm suspicious clinically somewhere they're afraid of being put. And not only in their physical capacity but it whatever it means to be man and to be masculine. Well there are lots of other things we we know that aggressiveness and hostility is much involved in sexual experience. That thin line is you know between the pain that produces delight delight in the pain that produces separation and masochism must be a better word. But that's the Kisan is not

far away. In love play we also know that sexual activity activates the demonic side there is a kind of noble tragedy in fine sexual experience. I don't think we're so inundated with this living happily ever after a bit to know the depth as well as the hype. We sometimes avoid this. Again I think makes it hollow and sometimes in significant Yulian psychotherapy we call this the shadow factor. Now we know that while the shadow often appears as something destructive and powerful it also harbors the roots of warmth and creativity and relatedness a wicked man with a subtle slight twist of his response becomes a warm sensitive then. The woman who is the witch. All of a sudden becomes the delightful creature for which she'll slay the

dragon and go through the forest. What I'm saying is that any sexual experience one has to deal with the moral question the inner darkness or if you will in my language the the shadow and knowing one's own shadow or evil and taking responsibility for it rather than projecting it outward. Not only saves one from the seduction of the innocent which incidentally contaminates a man his whole life through even though doesn't affect him like it does the woman who is his victim because every alternative produces a consequence. And so often in life we want the alternative and try to avoid the consequence. My observation is that it doesn't work. We also know some other things when we talk about sexual experience. From where I sit that is one of the deep longings of every. Then it is to find the feminine principle in the feminine principle is the principle of relatedness of warmth of giving birth to caring

for of going to the guard of noise about the earth in the masculine principle which every woman longs for WANTS TO GO TO THE MOON Not to the guard. It is a principle of discrimination and criticism of power. While the feminine principle is the one of love. Now we sometimes call out the enemy and the animists that it takes for there's a man in every woman and a woman in every man. Often in the beginning and sometimes tragically throughout life one only sees these principles at work in external people. But you see no woman externally can become. A substitute for my developing my own inner feminine capacity. There's nothing to do with Athan it it's always like that when there's something to do with the floods of my own and really no matter how good a provider or father I may be when the woman says to the child speak to your father she says more

about her relationship to that man than about the child. But you see he can only carry that projection for so long. Sooner or later if he's got to be total and for all that she has to discover her own capacity for discrimination discrimination for forcible decision making for going from opinionated miss to sound decision making and we don't how is marriage we often marry someone who carries this inferior side of us around to develop side. One of the great joys of marriage if you stayed it long enough is that you may come to the place where you no longer carry your mate's Inferi aside that you love them enough. So they develop it in themselves and then the whole mix gets shaken up again and it's as if you were beginning all over again. One of the delightful things that only continuity did lead us into you know how this appears with the situation when the man wanted to kiss the woman and she said Do you love me. And he says How on earth do I know until I've kissed you.

Such is the difference between the masculine and the feminine principle. There's one other thing that strikes me in the consulting room and that is that in any talk about sexual experience where I'm involved we quickly somehow always get to the parents. Not only to the Mrs. Robinson wherever they exist. But the parrot image is a very powerful and often sexual experience is either an attempt to deny or to cling to the parental image. So of us are persuaded that behind the flesh and blood parents are of course the archetype of the great mother and the Great Father and psychological. What's already. That's the toughest battle one has to fight for the man to get free from the Great Mother had nothing to do with slamming the gate on his Earth something to do with his ability to sucker himself to heal his own to provide his

own creativity and for the woman it's not walking out on Father or repudiating him by marrying a boy he can't stand. Ultimately begin to relate to power because power and love belong together. Well we also find it one other thing and that is that there's always behind erotic involvement some real desire for possessiveness. It's amazing how we hear this over and over again. The unconscious wishes to become one's exclusive property. We know how in marriage and I think the critics of the institution are quite right that in marriage one of the awful things has been the assumption that she's my property and the warning against adultery in the Old Testament was violated don't tamper with my property. But this goes both ways. The woman wants the man is her

exclusive property and vice versa. And really at the best one should only be one's own property. Whatever you take for granted to put it in other languages than that which holds us together is gone out the window. But I think this works both ways. The guy cannot ask for promiscuity and freedom for himself. Read the riot act. When she talks about the knights and then that she met at the cocktail party. The exclusiveness tied up with the Rada says it is really one of the potentially disintegrating attributes that's in sexuality. Well the only four letter words not in very much and I've said from a soul is a construct. The capacity of the self and it always lets us do at least four things. When one finds his soul and I think the metaphor is worthy of not rejecting too quickly you want to find the woman with all the lies. And it be a great idea to

look at the great soul and go and talk quietly to it in the spring or the autumn. And they have a soulful experience as the writers of some of our new music tell us a sort of beyond pleasure and pain. For example soul helps us turn events into experiences. You see you keep repeating the same old event only until it becomes an experience. And the fruitless pursuit of one more conquest after another. Or going out for one more good time after another in the depleted because somehow one doesn't turn the event into an experience that he can save or keep one fundamental experience that lasts a long time. Whether time I could tell you to go after the people that unbelievable long separations of hardships and some of us in the war. The difference between people who only knew events and who turned events

into experience are the radical differences in the human potential. Well this also makes meaning possible. That said it's really not how many times did you do it but what does it mean to you. It's a lot of why you this way but what's the purpose of this behavior that we now engaged in and did not dare to raise the question the purpose is not there to be human. So also communicates in love whatever the slipperiness of that word is and I don't like it either but it doesn't apply relatedness and it doesn't fly that I care enough about you not to use you to gratify my personal desire. And it doesn't fly. Revealing it not concealing no tricks no stunts no intrigue that goes well for very long. And so always applies a religious dimension in the sense of mystery out of the sense of dogs and churches in the sense that the current CEO which is what the outcome of the Middle Ages talked about it the union of the opposites does shake the mountains does bring forth

new streams and does grow up into flowers and does put its silver dreams across the night sky. That kind of mystery the reason the temple prostitute and prostitution religion have hung together in spite of our attempt to separate them is in the finest moments of the sexual experience. There are remarkable parallels to what takes place at the deep this moments of the spiritual encounter. Again I wish someday you'd have a section on the mythology of the Virgin the prostitute the see the Virgin symbolically and in mythology the very important creature. When a man finds the inner woman so we no longer need lots of play girls outside. This is always a contrast sexual union to the Virgin in the best sense had nothing to do with being married or rather had something to do with that which went beyond the law. It would on the physical and the continuance of the Virgin in the blessid mother. One of our great churches.

From a psychological standpoint to me is fundamental. The desire to debate its theological ramifications even as the prostitute in dreams and fantasies clinically it is always a tremendously exciting figure to appear. Now if the man interprets the fine herbal abuse or some such person he's always doomed to failure because the prostitute. In fact they succumb to promiscuity and therefore has denied herself food. So is he if it happens to be a male prostitute. But what we can't bear to look for in the flesh we dare not avoid in the spirit. Well in conclusion let add the four minutes that are left. Those of us with a here I don't know where you are out in the other room are so quiet I'm afraid there's like something to wiggle their toes or their fingers. When you say something about marriage a good word for it if possible.

Certainly a marriage can be either holy wedlock or what somebody called a holy deadlock. But it seems to me that in many respects marriage is more important than sex. We want to be pushed too far that there are certain occasions but within a structure. Sometimes love alone grows. There is a unique in this relationship that potentially. Marriage I think can produce. As we look at the future the exciting things all this we've left out. You've read it all the time. The pill the encounter groups the demand for AF active education as opposed to content in the fact that some parents are now coming around to think that to be a good person is more important to figure out what it is to be a good parent. That in some families the accent is gone from obedience to understanding the critiquing each other in the family with can doors now taking place in a multitude of very healthy units that never get to the

clinician and therefore become his desired data upon which he generalizes and gets all of us caught in the same trap. All this is very exciting and taking place but I think for example we do know that where we have covered it is a word as opposed to contract which always has an escape clause. Then the issue is not trust and betrayal but what you do with them when they take place and the whole idea behind the archaic statement for better or worse takes on the meaning and I'm persuaded that those who survived the experiments of the trial marriages finally settle for a covenant kind of relationship that really is magnificently beyond what I knew 20 years ago when we were dealing with this great respect for some of the results I see from data that often is confusing to the highly ambivalent. I think we know also that they really this is to be a public character in marriage. You know the way when the pope argued with Henry the Eighth at least I agree that Henry had no right to do something with

disregard for everybody else. What a Lincoln's folks got together they produced a boy who set the stage for history. Marriage in the future I think will say a great deal about the vocation of parenthood and probably in 20 years nobody will have children naturally at birth they'll be introduced chemicals into the body that will make it possible to reproduce and less of an aggressive self-conscious Act which demands a reversal of that which will be begun when the baby takes place. I think this means that baby making in lovemaking will then get together not by accident but really by conscious self determination. And as men find the building skyscrapers has limits and leads to questionable results and that the vocation of fatherhood leads to enriching personal possibilities. The vocation of parenthood will not be seen as bottles and diapers although they'll be around I think for better or

worse but it will be seen as that way of relating. This sets free the child that seeks to be born and every adult and somehow these I think will come close together. Well in conclusion it seems to me. That what I've been trying to say is that the greatest thing going for ethical decision making is the nature of human nature. I say human nature desperately wanting to be responsible unless it's been bruised distorted and denied what's rightfully its own place. They say that the soul requires that we become more than like our animal ancestors. It's a survey that in the whole sexual puritanism of the moment there exists a magnificent possibility of turn it into something that will enrich human life like it's never been rich before. The old mistress writing to the young wife to pick up one or more of her

paragraphs. Put it this way. Any attempt to wring from a situation and prove that it is or is becoming falsifies it is speaking of a sexual encounter. It ceases to be a relationship a meeting and it becomes any of a hundred other things. The man for reassurance of laziness stubbornness tyranny all kinds of things. No one is so serene and so detached as never to need some approbation but blackmailing it from love does violence to affection without really satisfying the other longing canneries never produced a shred of genuine response which is what the heart wisely Congress for the paltry soul fares of its ramshackle building will be blown away in the storm of living the bold nature shouts of the teeth of the gale. Glad to be hammered into shape and purpose that it may be this that it may discover what it's made of. The cautious hedge themselves about with customs and planes and pre fabricated divisions and appeal to experts to certify that what they do is

really living that life is a deeper process filled with the highly charged winds of paradox and truth and transfiguration willingness to tears and a sense of ending. Don't pretend you want love if what you truly want is safety. Like the kitten who stalks its mother's tail knowing it's really not a dragon's tail at all and at worst it will get cuffed and then washed and warm and fed. I've persuaded that most humans are not like the kid that chases the mother cat. And to that extent sex is the soul to be related. Thank you very much. Thank. You have been listening to Dr. Otis a Maxfield director of training for the American Foundation of religion and psychiatry in New York. Dr. Maxfield spoke on

Sex and the solo. This is Ben sexuality a search for perspective. The series of recorded lectures from an interdisciplinary colloquy on human sexuality held on the campus of Michigan State University. Editor for the series is Steve Jensen. This is a Michigan State University radio production. This is the national educational radio network.