In seeking to understand our psycho-sexual
development,
we are not forced to choose between nature and nurture.
Clearly many elements of human sexuality are given by our genes.
These include all of the physiological aspects of sex
such as the structures and functions of our genitals.
In addition, many aspects of our sexuality are given by culture.
These include the rules about mate-selection and family structures.
But the most interesting sexual dynamics probably arise in a third way:
At critical periods in our youth,
our minds are imprinted with complex sets of sexual fantasies.
To clarify the meaning of sexual imprinting,
let us examine some less controversial forms of mental imprinting.
Handedness might be an easy example of
imprinting in our brains.
When we were still in our mothers’ wombs,
we probably were not either right- or left-handed.
But soon after we emerged into the world of air-breathing creatures,
one hemisphere of our fast-developing brains became dominant;
and that made us right- or left-handed for the rest of our lives.
Some brain scientists conjecture that consciousness emerges first
in one hemisphere of our brains; and that determines our handedness.
Lucky for us, we had two nearly equal hemispheres in our brains at
birth.
If one hemisphere develops poorly, the other can take over.
About 90% of us are right-handed (our left hemispheres dominant).
We had no choice in the matter of this imprinting.
We have no memory of becoming right-handed or left-handed.
And we will probably keep the same handedness until we die.
Another form of imprinting that takes place
shortly after birth
is the activation of our visual cortex.
When we first open our eyes, we can't make sense of the world.
It is all a scramble of jumbled stimuli.
But immediately, the parts of our brains that receive and interpret
the visual input begin to be imprinted.
This imprinting must take place in the first few months of life,
during the critical period for the development of our ability to see.
Babies born blind miss this critical period, even if ‘sight’ is later
restored.
Babies who can see from birth have the visual part of their brains
automatically imprinted during this critical period of
brain-development.
Once the critical period for visual imprinting is past,
the ability of the brain to process visual information has been set.
4 IMPRINTED SEXUAL
FANTASIES: A NEW KEY FOR
SEXOLOGY by JAMES PARK
However, the acquisition of native language
might be the best analog for sexual imprinting.
If we think about the process of acquiring our first language,
we realize that it did not happen thru a process of education
(which will be needed for learning a second language).
If we had normal hearing from birth,
our ‘mother tongue’ was imprinted into our brains automatically.
Before we turned two years old, we already knew thousands of words
and the often-complex grammar for using them.
And for much of this period, we were not even able to walk.
But our young brains were extraordinarily open for the imprinting of
language
—whichever language we heard at that critical period of development.
Learning a second language is a more difficult
procedure.
We remember the educational process of learning later languages,
but we remember nothing about the imprinting of our native tongue.
Such imprinting of native language can take place
only during a critical period in our mental development.
The acquisition of language will never be as easy and automatic again.
Male/female self-designation (“I am a boy.” /
“I am a girl.”)
is another example of imprinting that takes place at a very early age.
When we reach back as far as we can remember,
we know that we have always been either a girl or a boy.
This male/female self-designation was imprinted by the adults around us.
The first thing that was announced about us was our sex.
From the day we were born, others talked about us
using pronouns that reflected our sex: she/he, her/him, hers/his.
And thus from the time before we had any conscious memories,
we knew that we were either girls or boys.
This identity was imprinted on our brains before we could speak.
Years before we learned the genital differences between girls and boys,
we knew that we were definitely either one sex or the other.
And only later did we learn the behavior appropriate for our sex
—as defined by the particular culture in which we were raised.
Learning how to behave as girls or boys was clearly enculturation,
but our basic sense of being either girls or boys was imprinted.
If a child somehow missed being imprinted as
one sex or the other,
or if the imprinting was incorrect, this might create serious problems
later in life.
We basically know when our handedness,
our ability to process visual input, our native language,
& our male/female self-designation were imprinted.
But the critical period for the imprinting of sex-scripts is not as
clear.
Chapter I INTRODUCING
THE SEX-SCRIPT
HYPOTHESIS by
JAMES
PARK
5
Casual observation suggests that sex-scripts get into our minds
at some time before age 20—just to pick a round number.
And puberty might be the most critical period of sexual imprinting.
When our bodies were becoming sexually mature,
our brains might have been especially open for sexual input.
And there might even have been particular times within these years
when our ‘sex-files’ were extraordinarily eager for new material.
But much evidence suggests other critical
periods
of psycho-sexual development, when sexual imprinting takes place.
For instance, when a child is traumatized about sex at a very early age,
this trauma might become a permanent part of that child’s sex-script.
Or there might be random times when the ‘sex-file’ is especially open
—when miscellaneous, accidental material gets inserted permanently.
It seems that our ‘sex-files’ are filled and
closed by age 20.
This means that our sexual imprinting has been completed.
And if the sex-script hypothesis is correct, the contents of our
sex-files
will remain basically the same for the rest of our lives.
Certainly after age 20 we continue to learn
more about sex.
And every new sexual encounter can add to our understanding of sex,
but these new learnings do not displace our imprinted sex-scripts.
Reading this book might be one example of learning about sex,
but any new understanding will not change our given sexual imprinting.
If the sex-script hypothesis is substantially
correct,
then our sex-scripts—like other neurological imprinting—are permanent.
Our first language will never be lost by our
brains,
even if we stop using it early in life.
These symbols have been permanently imprinted deep in our minds.
If we forget parts of a language we learned later in life,
we continue to understand our imprinted native language.
Likewise, it is very rare for us to change our
handedness.
Once we have become clearly either right-handed or left-handed,
it is nearly impossible to switch to the other hemisphere.
The rare exceptions are individuals who suffer brain-damage on one side.
Sometimes the other hemisphere can take over the lost functions.
Similarly, once our brains have been imprinted
with the belief
that we are either girls or boys, there is no going back.
The experience of transsexuals—perhaps people who were imprinted
with a female self-designation while they were physically male—
shows it is easier to change their bodies to match their self-concepts
than to change their imprinted male/female self-designation.
6 IMPRINTED SEXUAL
FANTASIES: A NEW KEY FOR
SEXOLOGY by JAMES
PARK
(Exactly how transsexuals were imprinted with the ‘wrong’
male/female self-designation needs much further investigation.
One speculation worth exploring is the possibility that the parents
(perhaps especially the mother) before the child was born
believed that the fetus was one sex; whereas it was actually the other.
The parents might have been so sure of their guess
that it took some time for them to adjust to the real sex of the child.
So perhaps they continued to pretend the child was the wished-for sex
“just for the present”, thinking it would never matter to the child,
since the baby was obviously too young to understand anything.)
If these comparisons are correct, that is,
if sex-scripts are imprinted into our brains in ways
similar
to visual imprinting, handedness, native language, & sex-identity,
this might help to explain why sex-scripts are so permanent.
Because our sex-scripts become operative when
we notice sex,
we usually assume our sexual behavior is formed at that same time.
But people with uncommon sex-scripts report they have ‘always’ had them.
People with homosexual sex-scripts, for instance,
cannot remember a time before they were homosexual.
The same is true of heterosexuals:
They cannot remember a time before they were heterosexual.
They feel that they have always been ‘straight’.
The three and a half pages above are from Chapter I
of Imprinted Sexual Fantasies
by James Park.
This link leads to the table of contents,
from which you can read the rest of this chapter.