SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER III:
SEXUAL IMPRINTING AT CRITICAL PERIODS IN PSYCHO-SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
We discover ourselves possessed by involuntary
sexual responses
—sexual interests, sexual arousal, & sexual orgasms—
that we did not choose for ourselves.
These responses were imprinted into our brains during our first 20
years.
But there does not seem to be any uniform period
in which such sexual imprinting takes place in each life.
Puberty seems the most likely time when we get our sexual fantasies,
but some evidence suggests that there are other critical periods
that might be just as important in some lives.
Perhaps the human mind has a ‘sex-file’—the
‘place’ of sexual imprinting.
We human beings seem to be born with empty sex-files.
This means that our young minds have a deep interest in all things
sexual,
but we do not have any specific instructions about how to have sex, etc.
And at first we do not know which things are sexual and which are not.
So we might find strange objects, images, or events in our sex-files.
At ‘puberty’ in animals, the genetic
instructions in their DNA
switches on the hormones that control their sexual behavior.
When they get to this stage in their automatic development,
they ‘naturally know’ everything they need to know about sex.
They can have sex with other members of their species
without having observed any sexual behavior at all.
But human puberty does not bring any built-in
sex-instructions.
Teen-agers just become intensely interested in everything sexual.
The specific sexual responses they will have as adults
have not yet been imprinted—at least not in some of them.
Pornography seems to be a common means of
imprinting sexual fantasies.
When the human mind becomes especially open for input,
many different things can be imprinted in it.
For some human beings, there might have been
earlier periods
in their psycho-sexual development
when something caused them to be particularly open for sexual input.
Some children seem to be imprinted even before they learn to speak.
When such early sexual imprinting takes place, it must be non-verbal.
But the insertion of items into the sex-files of children who can speak
often takes the form of abstract symbols, such as words, images,
& familiar objects that become parts of their imprinted sexual
fantasies.
Somehow our minds are compelled to organize
the random things
inserted into our sex-files into coherent sex-scripts
—connected stories or fantasies that remain for the rest of our lives.
24 IMPRINTED SEXUAL
FANTASIES: A NEW KEY FOR
SEXOLOGY by JAMES PARK
Created
3-16-2008; Revised