Conclusion
Most of us have progressed beyond the notion that sex is only permissible for procreation. We accept it as being pleasurable in its own right. Books inform us on how to obtain more pleasure from our sexual activities, yet most people are beset with taboos, laws, and restrictions which have their roots in what Freud called 'the tyranny of the genital organization'.
The transition from infantile sexuality, to genital arousal as a focus, is in part biologically determined as the bodies of both male and female become ready to participate in the process of procreation. This is the phallic stage in which man's main sexual interest is in coitus. But when genital organization supplants infantile sexuality through repression and sublimation, becoming the exclusive focal point for all sexual release, it becomes a tyranny which keeps us from realizing the full potential of our sexuality. This is the bind in which modern Western man is caught, the results of which are far-reaching and devastating.
The tyranny of genital organization accounts for the taboo against physical touching of any kind, for touch implies intent to gratify genital desires. Therefore, most people don't touch each other unless there is sexual intent, either overt or covert. When there is a desire to touch just for the sake of touch, we suppress it for fear that it will be interpreted as sexual.
When we do touch for the purpose of sexual arousal, our touching is directed toward genital fulfillment. The marriage manuals call this foreplay.
Even people who do not fear the naked body, such as nudists, are also genitally oriented. Nudists who prohibit any bodily contact do so on the assumption that tactile stimulation leads automatically to genital arousal and intercourse. Nudists do, however, delight in the pleasurable sensations of water, wind and sun on their bodies. Swingers, whose nakedness invites sexual touching for the purpose of genital arousal and release, obviously are attempting to release themselves from the repression of sexual desires.
This tyranny of genital organization has caused us to lose our capacity for total bodily pleasure of infantile sexuality. We are split between our urges and the restraints of our culture. The genital function has been placed in opposition to the more generalized sexual function, and we have become somewhat de-sexualized and de-humanized. We are alienated from our bodies, which leads to alienation from nature and from other members of the human race.
For most people, their love life is separate from their sex life.
They have been taught to feel guilty about things which pleasure them most. They are to exalt their minds and debase their bodies, deny themselves the expression of their feelings. A child knows no distinction between his higher and lower functions. The life of the mind and spirit and the life of the body are one.
We need to re-unite our bodies with our minds and to live in erotic exuberance if we are to overcome our self-alienation. We can't return to childhood, but the development of our sexuality from inimagine through puberty need not become a tyranny of genital organization.
There is a way out.
If we can but act on our instincts, we may come to realize that the very essence of our being is erotic, and that, in the broadest sense, ALL activities of our body are sexual.
The life instinct, which is the sexual instinct, demands activity of a kind that, in contrast to our current mode of activity, can only be called play. Play is not only a realistic necessity, but also an economic possibility. We must escape the repression of pleasure and create a new reality, an erotic reality based on the abolition of repression and the resurrection of the body.
This may not be easy. We will begin by consciously disciplining and separating each of our five senses from automatic genital arousal, then learn to recognize our body signals and urges for what they really are, learn to act on them.
The fun will begin when we discover a whole new world of sensations. Breathing each other's breath, titillating explorations of tongues and lips, long caresses, all will produce a knowing intimacy far richer than many have before achieved.
Finally, we must rid ourselves of the guilt of sexual pleasure. Let there be no shame, no sense of guilt in the sex act, whatever you choose to make it.