Even if on first meeting two people find they are attracted to each other, it is essential before pursuing the relationship further that they sort out their ideas of what the purpose of the

hoped-for relationship is. In other words, they should have realistic and mutually acceptable goals or they will end up wasting each other’s time and even exploiting one another. Obviously, if either is thinking seriously of marriage as the end point, he or she will be looking for different things from someone who wants a short-term partner with whom to go to a social event or have sex.

So when a couple meet and start getting to know each other they have to make some rather quick and basic assessments of what each other’s goals are. There are problems here because girls are occasionally misled by men – or even mislead themselves – into believing that the men want a long-term relationship and that they are in love when really all they want is sex (though not necessarily intercourse). A survey of what makes men and women unwilling to have intercourse at this stage of a relationship found that men said that fear of pregnancy and the inability to persuade the girl were top of their list, whereas women said that they did not have intercourse because they were not in love, because they would feel guilty afterwards, or because it was against their principles. The fear of AIDS is tending to be an inhibiting factor in some people.

There is a lot of misunderstanding between the sexes. Men think women refuse to have sexual intercourse because of fear of pregnancy and for fear of losing their reputation rather than through shame or because they are not in love. The problem obviously lies in trying to assess such a delicate situation before embarking on the chase at all, and most of us try to do this along the lines described in this chapter.

Perhaps the last thing we should look at in the sexual attraction a girl has for a boy at this stage is the concept of love. Many youngsters, especially girls, find themselves ‘in love’ quite early in a new relationship. The most obvious thing about people who are in love is that they are blind to the faults of the loved-one even though these are pointed out by caring friends and relatives.

The infatuation stage of being in love is important in the context of sexual attraction because it can seriously impair one’s ability to make reasoned decisions. There is no doubt in our minds, from clinical experience, that many girls of this age who feel sexually aroused by a man unconsciously generate feelings of love so as to ‘permit’ themselves to go further sexually. Boys may also protest love because they hope it will obtain sexual favours. The sad thing is that such episodes debase the true concept of love between a man and a woman and make it even more difficult for people to recognise love when they see it in a potentially permanent relationship. On the other hand, if valuable lessons have been learned, all experience is useful.

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Our body’s natural smells are an essential part of our attraction system, yet our culture has become obsessed with cleanliness and we seem to be intent on destroying or masking them. Certainly it makes sense and is pleasant to keep oneself clean but it is-not necessary to overdo the deodorant or the perfume, because our own personal odours can have very powerful sexual properties.

As well as our obvious body odours there are other more subtle ‘odours’ called pheromones. These are chemicals produced by the body of an animal which have an effect on the behaviour of its fellows, as a form of communication. They are ’smells’ which are not consciously recognised by the brain but nevertheless affect the behaviour of others. Pheromones have been widely described in various animal species and research has confirmed, not surprisingly, that humans have them too. A substance called androstenone occurs in male sweat and urine and has an attractant effect on women. Similar substances in women are the vaginal pheromones or copulins which attract men. These are produced in increased amounts around the time of ovulation and arouse men most then.

There are other fascinating pheromone phenomena. For example, women living together (in women’s halls of residence, nurses’ homes and convents, for example) tend to menstruate at the same time. Even though their menstrual cycles are different when they enter the community they tend to synchronise in time. One researcher spread male pheromones on the pillows of nuns’ beds and found that those nuns’ periods were disrupted from the ‘norm’ of the other nuns. This has now been called the ’strange male effect’. It has been found that telephones sprayed with male pheromones are used more by women than adjacent ones that are not sprayed; and that theatre seats sprayed with male pheromones attract women. Even children can detect the sexual odour of adults and around the age of three sometimes have a distaste for the smell of the same-sex parent.

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The first sign of puberty, occurring somewhere between the ages of ten and fourteen, is in the scrotum, which enlarges and becomes reddened. At around the same time there is an increase in the size of the testes. This latter change is under the immediate control of a pituitary hormone called the follicle-stimulating hormone (in women the same pituitary hormones control the menstrual cycle). The secondary sexual characteristics that then develop, such as the increase in the size of the penis, beard and body-hair growth, the voice breaking, muscle development and so on are brought about by the testosterone produced by the enlarging and functioning testes.

Largely under the influence of testosterone, erections increase in frequency, as do sexual fantasies and eventually at around the age of twelve to fourteen, most boys start to masturbate. The starting point is often hearing about masturbation from slightly older boys or seeing someone else masturbating. Most normal boys promptly turn into ardent practitioners. For many boys, the start of their interest in masturbation occurs slightly before ejaculation is possible and their orgasms are of the so-called ‘dry run’ variety. Friendships with other boys usually intensify and mutual genital display, comparison and masturbation are fairly common. This reduces the sense of guilt boys feel, because they know other boys are doing it as well. Although this developmental phase is frequently ‘homosexual’ in this way, it is completely normal and should not really be thought of as homosexual at all.

Although a few boys may be seduced by older girls or women at this stage, most are unable to handle heterosexual advances even from girls of about their own age.

Old erotic interests in his mother (from the Oedipal stage of development) re-emerge and the process of finally growing away from her begins, so eventually freeing the boy to love and to make love to a woman outside the family. His father and ‘extensions’ of his father in other admired men are usually idealised and used as models. They usually inspire his day-dreams of achievement. In some cases old rivalries and fears of his father may surface again, sometimes leading to depression and, rarely, to suicide.

The reawakening of his attraction to his mother is the starting point of the boy’s interest in heterosexuality. Although his outward attitudes may not show it, his notions about girls begin to change sharply. Girls become increasingly desirable and of fascinating interest. This can lead to blushing and social unease when he is in contact with them. He very often uses ‘girlie’ magazines, however guiltily, to stimulate his sexual fantasies. Discussions about, and definitions of, pornography are endless but a practical way of looking at the subject is to distinguish it from erotica on the basis that pornography promotes incorrect sexual learning. Obviously adolescents, and particularly early-adolescent boys who are in a stage of rapid sexual learning, need to be shielded from pornography. Whether ‘girlie’ magazines are erotica or pornography is debatable. If they teach boys that only girls who have bodies like those of the models are desirable then they promote incorrect sexual learning. But in that they encourage an admiration for the female body and an interest in heterosexuality, they are undoubtedly helpful.

On average, boys begin to understand the mechanics of intercourse two or three years later than do girls and are frequently well advanced into early adolescence before they get a grasp of the subject. As a result, their sexual fantasies are vague and voyeuristic.

Early adolescence is the time of dirty jokes. Although these may be entertaining, they inspire performance fears because they usually involve accounts of a huge penis or prodigious sexual feats. Misinformation about women, their functions and their fatal powers is also rife.

In all this, the standards and attitudes of a boy’s group of friends — for which the psychological jargon term is ‘peer group’ — exert a powerful influence on his own sexuality. In the main this is superficial because his basic standards were set years before by his parents. Matters as unimportant as hairstyle and style of dress are common causes of conflict with parents but all that is happening is that the boy is conforming to the requirements of his peer group. Most boys are not overtly rebellious, unlike many girls, probably because they are given more freedom anyway. In many families a form of amused and mutual tolerance becomes established between a mother and her son from early adolescence onwards, and she exerts influence by persuasion rather than by any direct attempt to impose her authority.

Early adolescence is the stage at which teenagers start to take the initiative in forming relationships with others outside the family. If they have not got the social skills necessary to form friendships they become increasingly isolated. Where such skills are lacking, they can be taught. Usually, with boys, the friendships are with members of their own sex. Boys of this age have more friends than do girls and confide in them less but worry more about their ability to make friends. They tend to be more concerned with competitive striving and with establishing themselves in the eyes of other boys, whereas girls are more concerned about their relationships and looks. For adolescents of both sexes people in the peer group function as testers, models and mirrors outside the family.

Genital anomalies, delayed puberty, delays in one aspect of development (such as the voice breaking) or a display of feminine interest or traits can lead to teasing from the peer group, which is not unfriendly if the boy is likable but can result in self-imposed isolation if he reacts badly.

Many early-adolescent boys are concerned about nocturnal emissions (wet dreams) and also about breast development. The first nocturnal emission usually occurs between the ages of thirteen and fifteen and in some families the subject is totally ignored. A few boys not only display no concern about it but also leave evidence of masturbation for their mothers to find. Such boys are thought by experts to have difficulty in breaking away from their mothers.

The breasts (or often just one) enlarge in around a third of all boys during early adolescence and this can produce embarrassment if it is conscious. The vast majority regress spontaneously.

Early adolescence, then, is the stage at which girls and boys learn to accept their body changes and emerging sexuality as the start of their progress from childhood to adulthood. Although it is a time of considerable change for both sexes, boys, in general, face a less complicated situation than do girls. In general, early adolescence is not a particularly stressful time for boys but it can disorganise and distress a girl.

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During the latency stage of sexual development, a child’s early interest in his or her parents widens out to other adults such as teachers, and interest in the mysteries of sex enlarges into interest in other mysteries and learning generally. Although Freud and others thought that little by way of psychosexual development occurred at this stage few modern experts would agree. Things might slow down a little but the child certainly does not shut down on sex.

Curiosity about sex may lead to the use of dictionaries, other available books and newspapers to learn about sexual matters. In this way general curiosity and learning can be promoted. Investigations of the genitals of friends of the opposite sex, which may have started as early as three or so, may continue until seven or eight. Children who have seen their parents having intercourse may pretend to do it with others, girls sometimes undertaking the male role, but it has no sexual significance in adult terms. Sex play between brothers and sisters up to and including the latency stage of psychosexual development (which ends at puberty) is innocuous, as is any other heterosexual play, but if continued it can fix the children on each other in such a way that their subsequent ability to relate effectively to members of the opposite sex is impaired.

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To many people in our culture any concept of childhood sexuality seems totally unwholesome and many find it impossible to think of children as sexual beings at all. This is because most people think of sexuality as being inextricably linked to genitality. This is not true of adult sexuality and is even less so when it comes to children.

Babies and children are sexual creatures and it is only in a sex-repressed culture such as ours that credence would be given to any alternative suggestion. In the vast majority of cultures in the world children witness adult sexuality as part of their everyday life experience. Things are different here where children are required to be ‘innocent’ and are seen as empty slates on which anything can be written, so that they are in need of protection. Of course children do need protecting, but to protect them against sex — one of our basic appetites and means of

expression — is strange, to say the least.

If it could be proved that, by allowing children to gain a knowledge of sexuality naturally as they grow up, we would be harming or damaging them in any way, we would of course, be against it — but there is no such proof. On the contrary, work done by Margaret Mead and others suggests that in societies in which children are not repressed sexually, as happens in the West, the children show no preoccupation with sex and grow up far better balanced sexually than ours do. In such cultures, perversions and deviations are rare and the sexes get on well together as adults.

The problems when discussing baby and childhood sexuality come about because for

adults — as we have said – sexuality is often wrongly equated with genitality. There is evidence that the two are not so closely linked in babies and young children, who get just as much enjoyable and intense physical pleasure from other pursuits and experiences, as we adults do from intercourse and other genital behaviour.

At the risk of putting readers off it is probably useful to consider what Freud said about sexuality at this stage, if only because his theories have not been greatly improved on in nearly a century. Freud suggested that a child goes through several well-defined stages of sexual or, more correctly, psychosexual development from the cradle to sexual maturity in the teens. The first stage is the oral one in which most pleasure is centred around the baby’s mouth; the second is the anal one in which pleasure mostly comes from excreting (urinating and opening the bowels); the third stage is the phallic one during which the child discovers his penis or her clitoris as the best source of pleasure; the fourth is a period of latency during which psychosexual development more or less marks time; and lastly, with puberty, the child becomes genital and obtains the majority of his or her sexual and sensual pleasures from genital sensations.

Most children progress from one stage to the next at a fairly predictable pace but can, because of problems in upbringing, stop at a particular stage; go awry, or go back a stage or two after having successfully negotiated one stage. It is clearly seen in clinical practice that adults can move around the scale from a major preoccupation with the adult (genital) stage. At any one stage in a person’s life one of these phases is dominant in his or her sexuality but regression is possible to any of the previous stages. We shall look at all of these stages in more detail as the chapter progresses.

These stages in psychosexual development are under the control of the genetic ‘blueprint’ as are intellectual, physical, emotional and personality development. But genes are not the whole story because external circumstances affect the outcome too. The physical ‘blueprint’, for example, may specify a 6 foot individual but poor nutrition or a bad emotional environment may hamper this so that only 5 feet 8 inches is finally achieved. Similarly, the responses from parents and others to each stage of psychosexual development influence whether the stage progresses ‘normally’, becomes fixed or even makes the child regress to an earlier stage. The pattern of the blueprint is basically the same in both sexes but there is a considerable difference in the way our culture treats the emergent sex drive of girls compared with that of boys.

Although Freud was by no means the first person to discuss infant sexuality he was blamed for opening up the subject by people who preferred to talk of the innocence of childhood. Such people believe in the sinfulness of adults, that sex is sin, and therefore that children should be protected from it.

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