Spirituality and sexuality: The healthy connection

This article offers an appraisal of the relationship between the spiritual and sexual dimensions of our health. It is argued that the essential ingredient of connectedness is at the core of each of these two dimensions. A framework of seven dimensions of health is presented as a paradigm for discussing this relationship. Finally, the personal and professional implications of expanding and promoting the spiritual and sexual aspects of our health, and the striking connection between them, are discussed.     

The otherness of sexuality: excess

The present essay, the second of a series of three, aims at developing an experience-near account of sexuality by rehabilitating the idea of excess and its place in sexual experience. It is suggested that various types of excess, such as excess of excitation (Freud), the excess of the other (Laplanche), excess beyond symbolization and the excess of the forbidden object of desire (Leviticus; Lacan) work synergistically to constitute the compelling power of sexuality. In addition to these notions, further notions of excess touch on its transformative potential. Such notions address excess that shatters psychic structures and that is actively sought so as to enable new ones to evolve (Bersani). Work is quoted that regards excess as a way of dealing with our lonely, discontinuous being by using the "excessive" cosmic energy circulating through us to achieve continuity against death (Bataille). Two contemporary analytic thinkers are engaged who deal with the object-relational and intersubjective vicissitudes of excess.     

Tapping into the Potential of Academic Diaspora for Homeland Development: the Case of Nigeria

Academic Diaspora populations are an important resource that can be harnessed by home governments for national growth and development. Nigeria’s academic Diasporas provide an opportunity for Nigeria’s tertiary institutions to connect to the global knowledge community and for the government to utilize their skills and resources toward national innovation and growth. This paper examines the contributions of Nigeria’s academic Diaspora populations by analyzing their various modes of engagement in Nigeria’s development. The paper uses a review of relevant literature and responses from a questionnaire survey of 45 Nigerian international academics. Using the theoretical lens of the Diaspora Option Theory, the paper observes that the academic Diaspora has made significant contributions to Nigeria’s development but that the benefits of these contributions can be enhanced through proper government engagement and coordination.     

The familial menage-a-trois: Mother-daughter sexuality and father-daughter incest

It is proposed that poorly integrated sexual feelings between mother and daughter are frequent early precursors of later incestuous interactions between father and daughter. Father-daughter molestation may be seen as an enactment of erotic urges and fantasies between mother and daughter that find origin in pre-Oedipal, mother-child qualities of relatedness. The familial menage-a-trois is an intrapsychic and interpersonal compromise for mother and daughter between a more deeply disturbed and a more fully severed internal and external bond; it allows both partners enough distance from their dissociated feelings to feel safe, enough proximity to feel vicariously connected, and enough libidinization to maintain an alliance with the exciting object.     

Lean sexuality: On cultural transformations of sexuality and gender in recent decades

The seemingly uniform cultural phenomenon of sexuality is subject to a constant process of disassembly and reassembly involving the allocation of new desires, the introduction of new knowledge and the harvesting of new consummations. Western cultures have witnessed a tremendous cultural and social transformation of sexuality in the years since the sexual revolution. Apart from a few public debates and scandals, the process has moved along gradually and quietly. Yet its real and symbolic effects are probably much more consequential than those generated by the sexual revolution of the sixties. The author refers to the broad-based recoding and reassessment of the sexual sphere during the eighties and nineties as the “neosexual revolution”. The outcome of this revolution may be described as “lean sexuality” and “self-sex”. Translated from the German by John S. Southard. This essay is dedicated to Reimut Reiche.     

Psychotherapy for lesbians: The influence of therapist sexuality

This study explored the influence of therapist sexuality upon lesbian experiences of therapy, and particularly the influence of marginal and dominant discourses within the process. It is argued that explorations of discourses of sexuality should be a necessary feature of a psychotherapist's training. A postmodern feminist methodology — Bungay and Keddy's adaptation of Reinharz's experiential analysis — was used in the study. This method involved triangulation of interview, literature analysis and reflective diary methods, with analysis drawing upon a discourse analytic perspective. Two sites of contradiction were explored, indicating the possible emergence of resistant lesbian discourses against the dominant patriarchal, heterosexist and homophobic discourses. The study illustrates the discursive and contextual nature of psychotherapy with lesbians.     

Temporal Regularity of Tapping by the Left and Right Hands in Timed and Untimed Finger Tapping

The temporal characteristics of repetitive finger tapping by the left and right hands were examined in two experiments. In the first experiment, interresponse intervals (IRIs) were recorded while right-handed male subjects tapped in synchrony with an auditory timing pulse (the synchronization phase) and then attempted to maintain the same tapping rate without the timing pulses (the continuation phase). The left and right hands performed separately, at four different rates (interpulse intervals of 250, 500, 750, and 1500 ms). There was no asymmetry of the asynchronies of the timing pulses and the associated responses in the synchronization phase or of the IRIs in either phase, but there was an asymmetry in the temporal dispersion of the responses in both phases. In the second experiment, right-handed males tapped separately with each hand at three different speeds: as quickly as possible, at a fast but steady rate, and at a slow rhythmical rate. The speed asymmetry present when tapping as quickly as possible (with the preferred hand tapping more quickly) was reduced when tapping at the fast steady rate and was absent when tapping at the slow rhythmical rate. The temporal dispersion of the IRIs produced by the nonpreferred hand was greater than the temporal dispersion of those produced by the preferred hand in all speed conditions. These results show smaller temporal dispersion of tapping by the preferred hand in right-handed males under different conditions, including submaximal speeds at which both hands respond at the same rate. This suggests that the motor system controlling the preferred hand in right-handers has more precise timing of response output than that controlling the nonpreferred hand.     

Alcohol and human sexuality: review and integration

Summarizes physiological findings and reviews the psychological experimental literature investigating the relationship between alcohol and human sexuality. Specifically, the authors attempt to reconcile the apparent contradictions found in the effects of alcohol on male and female sexual responding. The review concludes (a) that alcohol disinhibits psychological sexual arousal and suppresses physiological responding, the former effect being stronger at lower doses of alcohol and the latter effect at higher doses; (b) that although suppression is strictly pharmacological in nature, disinhibition appears to be both pharmacological (the result of cognitive impairment) and psychological (the result of socially learned expectancies); and (c) that expectancies and cognitive impairment can disinhibit separately or jointly.     

Freud and the problem of sexuality

This paper traces the development of Freud's views on sexuality and its relation to society from his early to his later writings. He shows that, although Freud provided important arguments for sexual reform, he also provided equally compelling arguments about its dangers and limits.     

Recommendations of the task force on privacy,human sexuality,and sex education for developmentally disabled persons

This article consists of a report submitted to the Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental Health in 1981 from the members of a citizens task force convened for the purpose of recommending policy to the Department in matters concerning privacy and human sexuality. The Chairman of the Committee was given responsibility for producing the information and resources necessary for the members to debate the issue with some intelligence, of facilitating the process and the deliberations, and of writing the final recommendations and report contained in this article. The need for policy in the areas of privacy and human sexuality for persons living in our state institutions serving the handicapped is a continuing and critical one. Resolution of the issues requires informed, courageous decision making by those who are responsible for the welfare of persons with mental or developmental deficiencies. The policy suggested in this article may serve as a step forward for those decision makers.     

The three-factor model of Internet addiction: The development of the Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire

Despite the fact that more and more clinical case studies and research reports have been published on the increasing problem of Internet addiction, no generally accepted standardized tool is available to measure problematic Internet use or Internet addiction. The aim of our study was to create such a questionnaire. On the basis of earlier studies and our previous experience withYoung's (1998a) Internet Addiction Test, initially, we created a 30-item questionnaire, which was assessed together with other questions regarding participants' Internet use. Data were collected online from 1,037 persons (54.1% of them male; mean age, 23.3 years; SD, 9.1). As a result of reliability analysis and factor analysis, we reduced the number of items to 18 and created the Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire (PIUQ) containing three subscales: obsession, neglect, and control disorder. Cronbach's alpha of the PIUQ is .87 (Cronbach's alpha of the subscales is .85, .74, and .76, respectively). The test-retest correlation of the PIUQ is .90. The PIUQ proved to be a reliable measurement for assessing the extent of problems caused by the "misuse" of the Internet; however, further analysis is needed.