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Sexual Schizophrenia

by Pia de Solenni 

Sex can be a strange thing. Not infrequently, it is taken out of context. Just before our wedding, my husband and I were shopping for a bed. After having sex thrown at us with everything from advertisements for breakfast food to toothpaste to cars, we were amused that the mattress industry didn’t mention sex at all. We read all sorts of promos about the comfort of the bed for sleeping, reading, even watching TV. Nothing about sex.

On the one hand, some may be grateful that sex isn’t used to sell everything. Fair enough. On the other hand, we were perplexed why it wasn’t used to sell something that could naturally be discussed in the context of sex. It was then that I started to use the word schizophrenia, for lack of a better description, to discuss our culture’s attitude towards sex. The word doesn’t hold up to its strictly clinical meaning, but it does evoke the concept that there’s something skewed and disconnected with the way that the world views sex. As a culture, we often ignore the instincts or ideas that could guide us to a better understanding of sex and sexuality.

On an episode of her daily show last month, Oprah hosted a discussion about women and pornography. The show’s producers acknowledged the sensitivity (inappropriateness?) of the topic for its daytime slot by constantly repeating that the show was discussing a topic that might not be suitable for children. Ironically, some of the adults on the show themselves were uncomfortable with the topic. A producer that had been sent to film an interview with porn actors had to exit herself from the room once the actors got to work. Turns out that however much some try to legitimize the sex industry, people are still uncomfortable. I take it as a sign that maybe the sex industry isn’t the right place for sex.

The show went on to interview a female store owner who sells erotica for women. She explained in effect that women need to feel good even though they’re watching porn. Her very statement belied that there just might be something wrong with taking sex out of context as pornography does.

Even über porn star Jenna Jameson displayed her own discomfort. Teary-eyed, she confided, “I don’t worry about what people think; I worry about what my sons think.”

Perhaps the tears are to be expected, given the venue, but I found it interesting that despite the show’s apparent effort to present pornography as mainstream and acceptable, several of the key personalities were visibly uncomfortable with it. To my mind it demonstrated once again the sexual schizophrenia in our culture.

I was reminded of this upon reading a recent article in The New York Times Magazine about the efforts of some medical professionals to address the problem of low libido in women. The research focuses largely on physical responses, not unlike the Kinsey approach. There is some discussion of the psychological, but in a limited approach. The author describes his interview with psychologist Lori Brotto: “Speaking about all this, Brotto smiled in bewilderment — and in something close to awe at the inscrutability of the human mind, the organ that is the locus of desire.”

Let me take this a step further. While the mind is given some little consideration, the soul is given none. Sex books tend to focus on the physical. But this is like looking at a one-dimensional version of the human person who is much more than simply a body.

In one of his Wednesday audiences Pope John Paul II explained, “The body in fact, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God and thus to be a sign of it.”

While I’m not a sexologist, my training as a theologian suggests that maybe the study and discussion of sex needs to go beyond a discussion of the physical. If you want erotica, then focus simply on the physical. That will work … for a while. But if we want love, then we must include in our conversation something about what is sacred and divine – what is in fact human.

This work was notably launched by Karol Wojtyla in his book Love and Responsibility. Later, as John Paul II, he developed it into the theology of the body. The communication of this work had been admirably undertaken by many theologians, authors and psychologists in recent years.

I often find cause for optimism in odd places, so when I see things like the Oprah episode or New York Times interview, I am somewhat hopeful. We learn a lot by trying and not quite succeeding, but the trials can perfect us. The fact that people are having conversations about sex and sexual desire while at the same time exhibiting discomfort or dissatisfaction with a largely physical explanation of it suggests to me that there’s the potential to introduce something more.

Of course, it will take more than discomfort or unease to move the culture from the point where researchers can’t find a group of young men who have never viewed pornography to a culture that  recognizes that sex exists at its best when it expresses the continual self giving love of a married woman and man – when it mirrors in some way the continual self giving of God himself. These are high aspirations, no doubt. But if we haven’t got a dream, a goal, an ideal, how will we ever aim for something better? Our contemporary culture has given us the perfect starting place.

Pia de Solenni writes from Seattle, WA. She can be reached via FaceBook and Twitter. (Her website is getting a prolonged makeover and is currently offline.)

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)