If changes in homosexual sex-scripts involve
religious conversion,
the changed people might have been transformed on a merely verbal level,
even tho they believe the change comes from a power beyond themselves.
Such people often use moral terminology in thinking about their change:
Their former life-style (following homosexual sex-scripts) was evil.
And now they have abandoned those evil ways “by the power of the Lord”.
A more likely explanation is that these people
have been able
to change their sexual behavior with the help of religious programs.
But their underlying sex-scripts probably remain the same.
We human beings always do have the power to behave differently,
altho we often find it hard to change ingrained patterns of behavior.
But it seems unlikely that these religiously-transformed people
have really changed their imprinted sexual fantasies.
If their imprinting has been changed by will-power,
sexology will have to study such transformations more deeply.
People who use the addiction model to
understand their sex-scripts
might be able to pull themselves away from the unwanted behavior,
with the help of others who have been thru a similar process
—and perhaps by surrendering to a “higher power”.
But when they relapse, they might discover
that their underlying sexual orientation was not changed.
Most efforts to change sexual responses
imprinted at an early age
seem to indicate that sex-scripts are permanent.
Sexual behavior can be changed, but the sexual imprinting remains.
This could show itself in dreams, which still feature the old
sex-scripts.
And occasionally the people who thought they were ‘cured’
relapse into the old, condemned behavior.
To whatever degree these religious and
psychological methods work,
those who use them might say that changing their behavior by will-power
is better than following sex-scripts that create unwanted behavior.
Even if fundamental change is impossible,
understanding how sex-scripts can lead to unwanted behavior
might help people avoid the situations that often trigger such behavior.
104 IMPRINTED SEXUAL
FANTASIES: A NEW KEY FOR
SEXOLOGY by JAMES PARK
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Sexual
Fantasies: A New Key for Sexology by James Park.
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