Editor's Introduction: Sex

More than religion, money, travel, and murder, sex fascinates us. We discover it during childhood but encounter it much later. We know less and imagine more. Our curiosities lead us to enlist our parents as the prime dramatis personae in this intrapsychic theater of sex and yet it is these very scenarios that we must repudiate in order to achieve satisfactory sexual functioning as adults. The biologically laid down hard-wired capacities for orgasmic pleasure now fully awaken as conventional morality is set aside and a powerful desire is felt to merge the concavities and convexities of one's body with the reciprocal contours of one's partner. Gradually, however, mystery and transgression that were integral to the erotic desire at its origins diminish. This is more so in the setting of sustained dyadic relationships, especially marriage. Compensation then is offered in the form of attachment, safety, deepening empathy, mutuality, and companionship. Sex, at this stage, becomes one among many aims, pleasures, and motivating forces in life.

This journey is, however, not simple. Roadblocks exist at every step of the way. These range from the early “psychical consequences of anatomical differences between sexes” (Freud, 1925) and the later societally induced gender conundrum to the fusion of “affectionate” and “sensual” currents (Freud, 1912) in the sexual realm as well as the achievement of genital primacy, a somewhat illusory concept in itself. As if this was not enough, there are the challenges of synthesizing pregenital and genital excitements, homosexual and heterosexual objects choices and the various permutations of affect, fantasy, and actual behavior in the realm of sexuality. Matters are complex indeed.

No wonder then the matter of sex has been approached from wide-ranging perspectives. From the perspective of instruction aimed at enhancing pleasure, the compendia range from the Kama Sutra to The Joy of Sex. From the perspective of prurient interest, the list range