HOW LEARNING DIFFERS FROM
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPRINTING

    The following pages come from Chapter III of
Imprinted Sexual Fantasies: A New Key for Sexology
by James Park.
Here is the complete table of contents:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/SS.html



        1. The Differences between Learning and Imprinting.

     Biological imprinting is best known in ducklings and chicks,
which become imprinted to follow their mothers minutes after hatching.
And if there is no mother present when they come out of their shells,
some other large moving mass becomes the object of imprinting,
which is sometimes a human being or another animal such as a dog.

     But imprinting has not been widely recognized in humans.
We are much more familiar with the dynamics of learning.
We human beings have a capacity to learn thru-out our lives.
And the process of schooling is intended to teach the information
we all need in order to live successfully in the adult world.
But consider this contrast:
Even tho many hours are devoted to teaching arithmetic,
most adolescents are much more interested in sex.
In short, their brains are ready for every little bit of sexual input,
but they seem to have no ‘area’ of the brain for math imprinting.

Chapter III          SEXUAL IMPRINTING AT CRITICAL PERIODS          by JAMES PARK               27

     Learning is slow and impermanent.
It depends on repetition and reinforcement.
And most of the facts we learn will be forgotten unless we use them.

     The reverse is true of imprinting:  Imprinting is sudden and permanent.
It seems that we can receive sexual imprinting from a single event.
And even if we might later wish to ‘lose’ that piece of imprinting,
we find that it remains a part of our sexual responses thru-out our lives.

     Let’s review the forms of biological imprinting discussed earlier:
Because of the way our brains develop,
we become right-handed or left-handed from a very early age.
This handedness probably arises
because one of our brain’s hemispheres becomes dominant.
And for most of us, being right-handed or left-handed is permanent.

     Visual imprinting also occurs shortly after birth:
If the baby’s eyes operate properly,
its brain will quickly acquire the ability to process visual input.
This imprinted visual capacity becomes a permanent part of its brain.

     Native language is also imprinted in the first few months.
Our ‘language-file’ is extremely receptive up to two years of age.
Never again will we acquire verbal input as quickly and permanently.

     Probably as a part of being imprinted with our native language,
we are imprinted with the belief that we are either girls or boys.
Later we learn the facts and implications of being one sex or the other.
But these elaborations of sexual identity stand on the unshakable conviction,
imprinted during the first 18 months, that I am either a she or a he.

     A fifth kind of imprinting is the subject of this book:
the imprinting of our sex-scripts during our first few years of life.
This kind of imprinting is more controversial than the other four,
since there is no definite period during which it must take place.
Sexual imprinting seems to take place later in personal development
than handedness, vision, language, & male/female self-designation.
However, there are indications that some sexual imprinting can occur
even before verbal ability has developed very far.
Much more research will be needed on pre-verbal sexual imprinting.

     Learning is the main alternative to the hypothesis of imprinting.
Learned responses and behaviors can be unlearned.                    
For instance, people who have learned to drive on the right side of the road
can learn to drive on the left in countries where that is the law.
And children who have learned to suck their thumbs or bite their nails
can unlearn these habits, perhaps with a little help from others.

28        IMPRINTED SEXUAL FANTASIES:        A NEW KEY FOR SEXOLOGY         by JAMES PARK

     But imprinted feelings, responses, & fantasies cannot be unlearned.
We can control the behavior that emerges in response to our imprinting,
but as far as we know, there is no way to erase imprinting.
Learned behaviors can be superimposed over imprinted responses.
For instance, we can learn to use either hand with great skill.
But it will be more difficult for the less dominant side to learn.

     If sexual responses were learned (rather than imprinted),
then we would naturally assume that they could be unlearned.
But if our sexual fantasies and responses are built into us
at a deeper level—imprinted in our sex-files—
then our attempts to change these imprinted responses
will not work as easily as efforts to change simple learned behavior.

     Confusion arises in the area of sex because our brains contain
both learned sexual behavior and sexual imprinting.
For instance, complex behaviors like dating and marriage are learned.
But such learned patterns of relating
have been superimposed on our imprinted heterosexual sex-scripts.
For most of us, this creates no problems.
But if we have been imprinted with homosexual sex-scripts,
then the patterns of heterosexual dating and marriage will be difficult.

     Likewise, the complex patterns of homosexual behavior
that have developed within various gay communities or sub-cultures
are mostly learned patterns, which have been superimposed
on top of imprinted homosexual fantasies.


Created August 23, 2007 ; Revised 3-13-2008; 4-6-2008
Return to the table of contents for
Imprinted Sexual Fantasies: A New Key for Sexology.

Go to the beginning of this website
James Leonard Park—Free Library