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“The perfect counterpart to masochism is sadism,” wrote Austro-German sexologist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing in his 1886 text Psychopathia Sexualis. “While in the former there is a desire to suffer and be subjected to violence, in the latter the wish is to inflict pain and use of violence.” When Krafft-Ebing wrote of sexual perversions in [...]
In a world that dwells on its differences over its similarities, virilization offers a thought provoking and perplexing backlash to humanity’s attempts to focus on the menial differences. History is replete with cultures and societies finding new and inventive ways to create schisms between one another as a means to affirm their own uniqueness in [...]
The offenses of sex offenders are represented by a heterogeneous population. Serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmers represent an extreme form of sex offenders by committing acts of necrophilia, cannibalism, torture, and murder for the purpose of sexual gratification. Other forms of illegal offenses and sex crime in sex offenders can include sexual abuse, downloading [...]
During the 1960s, America experienced a dramatic shift in traditional values related to psychological views on sexuality. With profound societal change occurring with the Civil rights movement and the baby boom generation, the first modern era of open sexuality in America challenged established sexual norms. The height of the sexual revolution was accompanied by massive [...]
Vladimir Illyich Lenin, the father of the Communist Revolution in Russia, argued that in order for humanity to rise from its lethargy and vile class-based exploitation, our aesthetic and sexual pleasures that made us lack the ruthlessness needed to destroy the bourgeois order would need to be sacrificed. Revolutionary vigilance required that we reshape our [...]
Concerning his secular legacy, the founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk once wrote: “I am not leaving a spiritual legacy of dogmas, unchangeable petrified directives. If those people who wish to follow me after I am gone take the reason and science as their guides they will be my true spiritual heirs.” A [...]
The conservative attitudes of the Filipino people towards sexuality are rooted in many factors, from its colonial history, its religious institutions, and its unstable governments. As in many other places across the world, many sexual taboos in the Philippines are rapidly melting due to increasing accessibility of mass media and the new ideas that it [...]
Japan’s declining birth rate is among the biggest concerns for modern Japanese. Expected to lose 21% of its population by 2050, the economic, political, and social implications of this population collapse is potentially massive for Japan. Why is the population of the country with the second largest economy in the world suffering? Among the reasons [...]
The story of Italian society reconciling its history and values with psychosexual dysfunctions that are antithetical to its honorable reputation is most fascinating. In 1970, Academy Award winning director Bernardo Bertolucci directed The Conformist. The film deals with Marcello Clerici, an Italian whose homosexuality creates a pathological obsession to be vindicated by overzealously supporting the [...]
When the Islamic Revolution in 1979 overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and established an Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Khomeini, it represented a profound political and social transformation in Iranian society, particularly towards sexuality. The Revolution sought to counter the influences of secularization that became institutionalized under the Shah’s government. After all, most Iranians are [...]
“Sex is as important as eating or drinking,” wrote French novelist Marquis de Sade, “and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.” In comparing American women to French, Thomas Jefferson observed that while Americans had “the good sense to value domestic happiness [...]
Whether it occurs as a strategy of military or in an isolated incident, rape is an effective weapon not only physically, but psychologically. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide that cost between 800,000 to 1 million lives over the course of 100 days, rape became a widespread and systematic modus operandi. Indeed, a 1996 report published [...]
Female’s transition through three definitive periods in their life: the pre-reproductive period of prepubescence, the reproductive age, and finally the end of fertility. Whereas the transition from child to woman is characterized by puberty, the end of fertility in midlife is ushered in by. Menopause signifies the permanent cessation of menstruation or reproductive fertility that [...]
Circumcision poses an interesting dilemma concerning its psychosexual effects and possibly trauma it inflicts. Increasingly there is a prevalent mentality in society that because humans now have the technology and capability to alter their physical appearance, that they should be allowed to do so on the basis that it boosts their self-value. Sometimes the reasons [...]
Abortion has long been and remains a source of considerable controversy, particularly in regards to the mental health and psychological effects of the procedure. The value system that favors or condemns abortion is rooted in so many layers, such as the individual’s interpretation of morality, ethics, legality, and science. Some equate abortion to cold blooded [...]
Traditional Christians welcome the first day of Lent with modest practices, such as attending mass. Not the Brazilians. The Brazilian Carnaval is a five day extravaganza of nonstop music and sexual decadence that ends the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The celebration itself is believed to have roots in the pagan festival of Saturnalia which, in [...]
Although Africa represents 12% of the worldís population, over 60% of the AIDS-infected population resides on the continent. The African continent is represented by an eclectic group of cultures, customs, politics, economics, and societies. Yet, common stresses between African countries, such as famine, lack of educational infrastructure, wars, and lack of accessibility to health care [...]
Hysterectomy is as Isaac Newton once famously prescribed that ìEvery action has an equal and opposite reaction.î Similarly, when surgery tinkers with the human body with the goal of physical improvement, rarely is the physiological change viewed in terms of how it will alter the psychological or psychosexual. The impact hysterectomy surgery has on psychosexuality [...]
Pregnancy is a period of mixed emotions for women. On one hand, it is the most wonderful experience in terms of the significance of a person being literally created from your care. However, many of the joyful elements of pregnancy may be overshadowed by its psychological and psychosexual toll. Fluctuating hormonal levels that accompany pregnancy [...]
Anytime one thinks they can apply a universal truth to humanity, it is bound to be contradicted. For example, pain and suffering is believed to be negative because they are not pleasurable. Enter the psychosexual disorder known as masochism. Sexual masochism has long captured the imaginations of psychologists and the curious. Sexual masochism is the [...]
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