Word: stoller
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...made the case for this side of sexual inspiration (as carefully distinguished from practice) more bluntly than Los Angeles Psychoanalyst Robert J. Stoller. In his new book, Sexual Excitement (Pantheon; $11.95), he says: "It is hostility-the desire, overt or hidden, to harm another person-that generates and enhances sexual excitement. The absence of hostility leads to indifference and boredom...
...Stoller is the author of four other scholarly books on sex, including the highly praised study Perversion (1975). He has become convinced by his researches -including a detailed case history of a woman drawn from his analytic practice -that conventional sexual behavior is based on the same drives found in extreme form in sexual perverts. In fact, Stoller says, "we try to make the outlandish folk function as scapegoats for the rest of us, but anyone-not just analysts-who collects erotic thoughts knows that many citizens, avowedly heterosexual, conspicuously normal... are also rilled with hatred and wishes...
...natural function, to be sure, says Stoller, but it is dominated by painful undercurrents from the past. Sex fantasies are not idle daydreams but carefully coded scripts by which the inner mind seeks to work out lingering problems from childhood. These scripts help determine whom the adult will be attracted to, how the sexual partner will be dealt with, and even what sexual positions are likely to be preferred. "Sexual excitement depends on a scenario," says Stoller. "The person to be aroused is the 'writer,' who has been at work on the story line since childhood." The writer...
...role, says Stoller, requires a victim. In real life the partner is supposed to play the part so that the hurt child can become a victorious adult in his sexual fantasies. It is a kind of theater in which the adult again and again conquers childhood fears. Says Stoller: "Triumph, rage, revenge, fear, anxiety, risk are all condensed into one complex buzz called 'sexual excitement.' " In Stoller's view, that buzz has an even harsher component: sadomasochism, the deriving of pleasure from inflicting or experiencing pain. As he puts it, "My hunch is that the desire...
...Though Stoller insists that only a few rare individuals may achieve excitement without any traces of hostility, he is not entirely pessimistic: many contented people, he allows, have clearly been able to outweigh hostility with affection and a capacity for closeness...