Sex and Therapy (spoken to Philosophy Portal group members)

(The following was delivered to Philosophy Portal group members before 3+ hours of group discussion to end “The Month of Libido”)

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Sex is substance to the psyche. I will not try to be too abstract here, but I must start with that. Sex is a core component to what makes up human experience and the mind, but the mind is something larger. Sex appears in conscious thought, and it becomes elevated to the logic of society, and the totality of human relationships. It becomes apparent in art, it is given depth by the quality and depth of our lives. 

Talking about sex directly can be interesting, it happens in many different places. It can be the incel, it can be the feminist, it can be the sports team bro, all have theories which directly address sex. Sex being directly addressed, the act, can be a difficult task within a social setting. What kind of kulture [Freudian writing “kulture” with a k is widely used to emphasize the psychoanalytic processing within society] holds sex? Here we have an intellectual one. Crowley had an intellectual one that also moved into sex within the kulture itself, this sort of sex cult dynamic which I am not a fan of. To each their own.

This brings us to therapy. Which is to say, the practice of paying honor to that last idea which seems like a throwaway on some accounts, “to each their own.” Therapy, to its death, chants, “to each their own.” This individualist idea will not be thrown away by the stubborn therapist, so every critique of origin which is in the social, or in the creation and development of language, all has to go back to each, which is to say to each individual’s own.

You pay a therapist to put themselves aside. How many of you have therapists? How many of you use philosophy as therapy? 

That’s okay, so do I! I also did therapy, I do it for a living, but I do the therapist’s job. This is only one version of the mind, the mental health mind. It is a modern production, I like it, but only once it has been purified ofl neoliberal authoritarian tendencies to crush the spirit. This can be summed up in the therapist who is in line with the dominant ideology trying to convince the patient to become the positive vision of mental health that they have, which is themselves. The narcissist Therapist. Strangely the opposite of the egoist therapist who knows to make himself the negative of the client’s psyche. 

The psyche, which sex is the substance of, is a positive material description of the totality of the individual’s life, from birth to death, within the context of that individual’s own mind. Self-Interest, Absolute Self-Interest, is a negative description of the same object, which is the psyche. The therapist is also a negative of the psyche of their patient, which is why a therapist must get to know the neighborhood, the other negative of the psyche, self-interest.

A therapist ultimately interjects on behalf of the other for the other’s sake, and adjusts the other. The psyche with its drives is waiting to explode through, once its code is cracked. Sex, death, ambition, all substance within the psyche, just waiting for the starts to align. The therapist aligns stars with their patient, and arfe themselves patient for the patient. 

You talk to a therapist not just about sex itself, but of relation histories, and relations to sex. Not having sex. Not being the right time for monogamy. NAvigating polyamory. Whatever my psyche says, which is to say, a monogamous marriage is right for me, I must be the negative of a psyche, and align stars for values which are not my own. They are my patient’s. So when I hear values that are not my own and help with them, I must myself be patient.

This is a double entendre, I adjust my psyche into a form which is ultimately for the other. I do this because I would want it done for me if I would need it, not simply because I am paid. This is my form of empathy, good practice. Becoming the negative, knowing the self-interest of the other, this is empathy. There are other forms of empathy, but this is the most important one in my practice as a therapist. 

I hear people repeat relationships with people from their childhood, sex being the substantial part of a romantic relationship, alongside a symptom from childhood. A person whose father was a specific type of non-violent criminal keeps finding themselves in relationships with these types of criminals, only found out after the fact. They are trying to fix or gain control over the figure who had control over them. A young university student keeps repeating the one thing he says wrong years prior to a rush. He is trying to relive the possibility of Actualizing his early fantasy, even if the felt experience is negative, he is trying to imagine himself perfect, he is geared towards narcissism even while he tears himself down. He can not accept the social, what is outside of himself. 

Castration is available in the therapy itself, in a Freudian sense, this conceptual and linguistic repetition. Sex itself is not, unless you have a very bad therapist, or Carl Jung (maybe). California if someone reveals they have had sex with their therapist, you are ethically required to hand them a pamphlet that says, “professional therapy never includes sex.” This is a very funny title to me, and speaks maybe to a general anti-Freudianism, which is to say the foreclosure of talking about sex in therapy.

Sex is a substance of the psyche, so we must talk about sex. It gets elevated to different forms and transformed into different emotions. It turns into sadness, it turns into joy, it turns into focus, it turns into ADHD, disociation. Then there is trauma. Those who are traumatized by sexual experiences. I am of the belief that repeating the experience is good, but the understanding of the experience is the most important part. Seeing how trauma relates to other emotions, and seeing the understanding of the trauma and working through it as the key to mental health. Which is to say the psyche. When routes of pleasure are rerouted to become traumatic, therapy intervenes to move things around conceptually. The negative of the psyche can dirempt, split into two, traumatic associations with sexuality itself, and the concepts and signifiers associated with sexuality. 

Once the patient and the therapist discuss concepts, ideas, and ethics together, sexuality itself, aggression itself, both can flow in ways which become more acceptable to both the therapist and the patient. The Therapist is like a family member, they are not a sexual object (although this is the first thing television makes the therapist), and yet you speak intimately with them. The therapist is like an avante-garde minimalist idea as well, I imagine them as a deep house, berlin techno DJ, working with essences, not being part of the patient’s life itself, but somehow mixing things together. The therapist is a medical professional. Working with the patient for their mental health. Mental health is of course, one of Buddha’s many lives, it is one of the psyche’s many names, the life, the total life, Absolute Self-Interest, from birth until death, and so on. Sex is a key part, so pay attention to how it rises and transforms.