Inner Children Emerge

Pathogenic Beliefs and Sex
LJR - May 7, 2009

American culture relegates sexual fantasies to wayward and wicked categories labeled as naughty, pornographic, or even too obscene to articulate, yet sexual fantasies- when revealed and investigated- can often help men and women understand themselves on a deeper level.

Dr. Michael J. Bader’s book, Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies, proposes that sexual fantasies are not simply about sex. By analyzing the sexual fantasies of his patients in psychoanalysis, Bader explores the significance of the sex fantasy and the sex act and their connections to managing insecurities and fears that arise for couples in intimate relationships.

We are all flawed and fearful children at heart- and at certain uncomfortable moments- inner boys and girls decide to throw colorful tantrums. These tantrums are even more likely to occur when we have sex.

Naked and vulnerable, we are exposed.

By showing compassion to ourselves and others in regard to understanding human sexual fantasies, we acknowledge our childhood baggage, baggage that often inhibits us from experiencing sexual pleasure.

Here are some excerpts from Bader’s book that shed light on a subject that has been kept in the dark for too long.

People use all the resources at their disposal to defend themselves against and transcend painful childhood beliefs.

Sexual fantasies illuminate and explain non-sexual problems that we are having.

…to the extent that earlier parental relationships contained elements of worry, guilt and shame (which most of our childhoods did), those feelings will enter our love life even more than they would most other aspects of our lives.

Nowhere are adults more dependent than in the relationship they have with their partners, and at no other time was this dependency as strong as it was in childhood. Therefore, the normal emotional dependency in long-term relationships inevitably contains echoes of these earlier attachments. There is an old joke that says when two people have sex, there are six people in the bed: the two lovers and the parents of each of them… intimate sexual relationships necessarily open the psychic doors to the repetition of our own original parent-child relationship.

Sexual compatibility is determined by the extent to which our pathogenic beliefs negate or reinforce those of our partner- and vice versa. And it is in intimate sexual relationships that our pathogenic beliefs about ourselves and others have the most direct opportunity to be confirmed or disproved… Our sexual partners, therefore, have to perform the same function as sexual fantasies, namely, to establish the conditions of safety necessary to allow sexual excitement to emerge.

Bader’s definition of love/chemistry/sexual compatibility is not at all poetic or idealistic.

With his new definition in mind, the lyrics to a famous Beatles’ song change slightly.

“All you need is love” becomes: “All you really need is someone to negate your pathogenic beliefs.”

A revision to Shakespeare’s lines in the comedy “Love's Labour's Lost” would look something like this.

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

And when Love speaks, the voice of inner children
Makes earth secure with fears put to rest.

Bader goes on to say that:

Human beings cannot tolerate helplessness for very long. They [either] shut down, fight back, or find some way to pretend it doesn’t exist.

The reason people resist change is not because they’re deriving gratification from being sick, but because they’re trying to ensure their own psychological safety.

According to Bader’s professional experience with his patients, satisfying sexual experiences involve establishing a sense of psychological safety in the bedroom for everyone involved. Reinforcing a partner’s negative, painful, pathogenic beliefs does not lead to first-class sex; it only leads to more shame, guilt and unhappiness.

This book led me to ask myself the honest question: What do I need from a partner to feel psychological safe?

Sorting out and exploring our sexual fantasies is a wholesome step in the process of identifying what we need in order to establish safe and intimate relationships both inside and outside the bedroom.

Sexual fantasies are not all about sex.

Bader, Michael. Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies. St. Martin’s Press, 2002.