HOW
I WROTE MY FIRST BOOK ON SEX
The writing began in 1994,
while I was recovering from my second surgery for colon cancer.
Imprinted Sexual Fantasies
was published in 2008,
which shows that I am a cancer survivor
and that it takes a very long time for me to write a book.
I had originally thought that it could be a book to
co-author with John Money.
But he politely declined to join in this project
by means of a letter from a subordinate.
And now he is dead.
But his ideas can thrive in his many books
and perhaps even in my interpretation of some of his original insights.
The basic background for writing
Imprinted Sexual Fantasies:
A New Key for Sexology
was my much earlier book on love:
New Ways of Loving:
How Authenticity Transforms
Relationships.
Here is
the history of that book:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/NWL-H.html
I was revising the chapter in my book on love that
deals with sex.
It had originally been called:
"Love and Sex: Several Ways to Get Screwed Up and a Few to Celebrate".
But this chapter experienced the most complete change from earlier
editions.
As things developed, I had much more to say
than would fit into a chapter in my book on love.
So I went ahead to write a short version
of what has now become my first book on sex.
The new title of that 24-page chapter in New Ways of Loving is:
"Loving Beyond Sex: Transcending Our Imprinted Sex-Scripts".
And this chapter has most of the same sub-divisions
as now found in Imprinted
Sexual Fantasies.
(The
Roman numerals are even the same
for the 24-page chapter and the 176-page book.)
Seen in this historical context, my writing on sex
was first a minor
chapter in a major new work on loving relationships.
These 24 pages on sex is less than 10% of my book on love.
To me that seems about the right proportions.
Other writers think that sex is even more important than love.
Thus the first printed version of the sex-script
hypothesis
appeared in the 4th edition of my book on love, in the year 2000.
Imprinted
Sexual Fantasies grew and grew over the years.
And today it is 176 pages long.
This is 7 times as long as the chapter in New Ways of Loving.
MOTIVATION
The assumption in the mind of most readers
when they pick up a book on sex
is that the author must have had some personal reasons for
writing it.
And they will probably spend some time speculating
about what personal quirks might be hidden in the text.
For example, what are the sexual fantasies of the author?
I do tell about my own sexual fantasies in a few
places in
Imprinted Sexual Fantasies.
But it was not a book written as a form of personal therapy
or in order to explain to myself anything about my own sexuality.
This is a book based much more on reading than anything else.
Several books by John Money are reviewed in the Bibliography.
And the fact that historically it grew out of my
book on love
shows that I did not have any special personal reasons for writing
about sex.
Sex is just one of the dimensions of loving relationships.
It would have been foolish to write a book about love
without dealing with the sexual dimensions.
Also the readers of these words should take some
consolation
from the fact that I had a dozen other books in print
before this one was ready to offer to the world.
So a number of other issues have higher priority for me than sex.
If someone were to add up all of the pages of my published books,
my writing about sex would probably be about 10% of the total pages.
Thus there is no basis for any hypothesis that I am
obsessed with sex.
Related themes of motivation appear here:
Skeptical
Questions for Anyone Who Offers a Class on Sex
BENEFIT TO THE READERS
I have never written anything for publication
that was basically about myself.
There will be no autobiography, for example.
When people write only one book during their lives,
they are very tempted to think that their own life-story
is the most meaningful thing to offer the world.
I do not share that belief.
I have written all of my books with the benefit of the readers in mind.
I do not think that there is much in my personal life
that would be or interest or benefit to others.
But I have discovered some things about sex
that I believe will be a great benefit to all readers.
It will help them to probe their
own sexual experiences
without getting hung-up on anything
about the sexual experiences of the author.
Because Imprinted
Sexual Fantasies
deals with such a wide range of sexual fantasies,
there is no way that any one person
could have all of this inside himself or herself.
In a sense, this is one of my more scholarly books.
I have some original insights,
but they would have gone nowhere without
the much greater work of John Money.
(I note in passing, that John Money does not tell us
about his own sexuality in any of his books.
He, also, looks at this field of study scientifically.)
When you read this book,
think about YOU not about ME.
Do YOU find imprinted
sexual fantasies in your brain?
How did they get there?
And what impact have they had on YOUR relationships?
Created
3-15-2008; Revised 7-16-2008; 9-25-2008; 3-21-2009; 5-8-2009; 11-4-2012