IV. THEORY
Fractured Identity as a Control Condition:
On the Social Function of Sexual Taboos
B. Bendig, Social Worker, Langenfeld
I. Introduction
How is it that sexuality, though very much a focus of interest,is, nevertheless, kept so "secret," laden with so manyprohibitions? How did it come to pass that, with sexuality, pleasure and pain, desire and defenses, are so densely intertwined? How is it that, despite an enormous amount ofmaterial being published about sexual abuse and it being widelydiscussed, virtually nothing is said about what, precisely, ismeant by it? It is a novelty in the scientificliterature that a subject is described and "scientifically"investigated without actually having been defined withso-called sexual abuse, this is par for the course.
In notional terms – and this is so for myself just as it is foreveryone else – a definition of so-called sexual abuse is, inmost cases, not even attempted. Instead, one's own fantasy mutates into a tacitlyaccepted substitute for the missingdefinition. At the same time, the spectrum of fantasies is astonishing: They range from harmless playfulness within acontext of overwhelmingly welcomed caresses, on up to rape, alllopped in together within the amorphous concept of sexual abuse.
In this confused and confusing situation, liberal pedagogynaively counsels a casual approach to child sexuality which,according to the controlling criminal law, is clearly punishable,is regarded as "sexual abuse," and is, in fact, punished rigidly.
And this is exactly how it is dealt with in a letter to parents from the Evangelistic Day Programs for Children, Inc.: "Itreally can happen that a father, sharing a bathtub with hisdaughter, can become erect, or, that he can get an erection whenhis son examines his penis with interest." (Issue 29, June 1994)This letter to parents is entitled "Loving, cuddling, playing doctor." This corresponds to a career of criminality.To be more precise, what is relevant to punishability is not thelife-world and nature of the child, or even the purposes of aliberal pedagogy, but rather, simply the physiological fact of asexual act or erection.
How is it that the subject of sexual encroachmentselicits so much agitation while, at the same time, scarcelyanyone is interested in assaults in other spheres, to aneven remotely comparable degree? How did it come to pass that,not only sexual behavior, but also one's sexual essence, our natural physiological makeup, the sexual organs, are the object of all sorts of operations, including thecoarsest of mutilations, beginning with the circumcision of boys,for supposedly religious or hygienic reasons, on up to thePharaonic circumcision of girls in appalling, horrendouslypainful, and lifethreatening rituals which, even today, arestill perpetrated in a millionfold ways. No outcry for that, andyet, at the same time, the world media gets all worked up over analleged affair between Michael Jackson and a l3-year-old voyeur.
What Is the Reason for the Mania Surrounding Sexuality?
The lust for power determines the life-circumstances in thisworld. To Karlheinz Deschner this means that, although we wouldnot describe world history as a history of criminality, thelatter would, indeed, be its accomplice. Fundamentally,as to the history of humanity, it is sufficient to know that itconsists of enviousness, rapaciousness, and murder, of anever-ending succession of subjugation and exploitation,differing only in terms of its various permutations, but not inits fundamentals.
This lust for power is transmitted from adults to children.
Once we become aware of this, we have a shot at not passing this lust for power from adults to children, or at least,softening it. But there is also the danger of promoting thislust for power quite consciously, via corresponding educationalconcepts.
When we change our attitude towards children in this respect, wechange society. The very existence of a violent society (asa violent society) is threatened by the renunciation ofpower; therefore, from its perspective, anyone who wants torepudiate power is a danger to the prevailing power conditions.
Today, many promote the repudiation of power; however, this doesnot automatically mean that all of those who promote therepudiation of power actually wish to bring that about. What is often meant by the repudiation of power is merely that every other person should repudiate it, and submit themselves towhat one personally holds to be right and true.
We should look at what people do in order to realize their trueintentions. "By their fruits are they known," as Matthew putsit. Consequently, it is by their fruits that we shall bepermitted to know them, not by their – purported – intentions.
Fractured Identity as a Control Condition
All power of people over people originally springs from aninfringement of their identity. This infringement is effected inextremely simple ways.
In the Western, civilized world, it happens through a division ofthe individual into publicly observed bodily zones on the onehand, and concealed bodily zones on the other. This occurs,e.g., via everyday actions of caring: Every area is caressed, except for one (anal-genital); every area is shown, except forone. It is in these ways that unity is broken.
The child no longer senses his unity as springing from his ownself outward; rather, he requires – similar to a brokenbroomstick – an external corset, in order to feel secure and whole.
The corset is the norm. The individual apparently suppresses hiswholeness, whereby he subjugates himself to the norm, andconsequently accepts the corset. Wholeness is only apparent,because it is not one's own wholeness, but rather, unity with the representatives of the norm; these accept the child. If the normis abandoned, wholeness is lost. If wholeness (security) islost, this gives rise to anxiety. The solution to anxiety liesin an acceptance of the norm. The norm is graduallyinternalized, and moreover, experienced as being something ofone's own.
This is the simple mechanism by which people’s power over othersis initially established and obtained, from the banal on up, orelse, not at all.
In other cultures, this same goal of identity fracture isachieved, for example, through food, location, clothing, or act taboos, or, some combination of these. Consequently, what matters is not how identity gets fractured, but rather, that it is fractured.
The focus of this text is Western cultures' customary fracture ofsexual identity.
For Purposes of Clarification: Identity Becomes Fractured Under Three Conditions
First Condition: The Fracture of Oneness
All life springs from sexuality; and although it does indeed havegenital and other corporal forms of expression, it is not limited to the former.
Sexuality permeates the entirety of human beings' feelings,thoughts, and actions; it is the source of their lives, theirwill to live, and their zest for life; it is their greateststrength, dying off only when life itself is extinguished. Thatis why it is so well-suited to exploitation throughout the wholelife-course.
At the same time, the sexual organs are also excretory organs;therefore they require frequent attention on the part of carepersons. From day one, the infant experiences a connectionbetween a pleasurable stimulus – which occurs via the stimulation of the genitalia and the vigilant posture of thecareperson: everything is caressed, only, this is not;everything is displayed, only, that is not.
This vigilance against genital and anal pleasure is reinforcedby a learned disgust of excrement (this stinks, it's dirty). Although the production of excretions is indeed welcomedby the loving careperson, this is not done in ways that make thechild feel accepted and recognized for having produced the excretions, but rather, in entirely different ways, namely,that he or she must be liberated from something superfluousanddirty, which is always arising anew within him or herself.
The pleasure-stimulating touching and visual inspection of thegenital and anal regions is impeded by diapers and otherclothing, thereby creating taboo zones.
But taboo zones can also be created without diapers; namely, viasocial assessments, which the child then becomes aware of andinternalizes. And so it comes about that even in SouthernEuropean countries, where small children often run around withoutany pants or underwear on, these very same taboos develop, just as they do for those who do wear diapers.
Because of frequent urination and defecation, carepersons' interactions with taboo zones are just as frequent; consequently, vigilance against these taboo zones is also seen frequently, which becomes a formative experience for the child. .
Advertising psychology has studied such coupling events veryprecisely, and has methodically made them useful for any numberof aims. The frequency with which this connection is perceivedis a decisive factor for the degree of its imprinting. (Inadvertising, the perception of a connection is referred to as a"switch" that goes on in the brain: "Aha, when I eat chocolate,I'm happy, big, and strong.") The unconscious "aha" connection-experience is far more effective than the conscious one, becausethere is no critique. That is, critical awareness is unable toask what is really true, and – via this questioning alone – disturb the unconscious (read: uncritical) acceptance of themessage.
Since sexual pleasure (the lust for life) is coupled with thesimultaneous sensation of vigilance and revulsion, man is nowprepared to accept the conditions under which he casts offdefensiveness and disgust, and is allowed to freely experiencepleasure (for example, under condition of marriage).
The simultaneous sensation of pleasure and defense againstpleasure, which arises from the identity fracture, must thereforeagain be decoupled, in order to be able to explore pleasurewithout a guilty conscience (and thus without defensiveness).
Success in this decoupling requires those schizophrenic human beings who do achieve it to – depending on what the norm stipulates – either find it horrible and fight against it, or,essentially enjoy it.
It is clear that this undertaking can never be fully achieved,but rather, remains brittle: In vigilance, one finds secretpleasure; and in pleasure, secret vigilance.
Making the sexual taboo runs counter to defensiveness, which isbased on the demonization of the sexual. This demonizationconsists of the notion that everything sexual is only able to beperceived in association with fear. Since this tabooization doesnot lead to a clarification of the causes of fear ("one does nottalk about such things"), this fear remains subconscious, and thetabooization – based on ostensibly rational and objectivegrounds – is consciously accepted as right and proper because,through this, unconscious fear is – seemingly – done away with.
In this context – the condemnation of something which, ofcourse, one is not allowed to actually examine – it remains permanently vague.
And so it has come to pass that every sexual denunciation, evenwithout having to be even remotely specific (intimations aresufficient), wreaks its destructive effects. Therefore, one'sown fear of being personally sexually defamed is – via a disavowal of sexual connotations relative to one's self – fendedoff. And thus arises a literally self-sustaining system of taboo-maintenance.
Many people postpone the hoped-for fulfillment of their secretsexual desires, from childhood on up, until later, constantlyputting it off until some future time: Lenient pedagogy respondsto the sexual desires of children and youth with re-channeling; strict pedagogy, with prohibitions and punishment.Sexuality is not a field of learning in which experiences arepermitted to be freely chosen, as they would be in other fieldsof learning. Every other field of learning can, should,and even must be developed through play. A veritable flood ofplay ideas and toys has been unleashed to promote learning; only, not in the sexual sphere. Here the norm is not self-determination, but rather, others' determinations. As aresult this state of affairs leads, in many biographies, to life-long postponement, with no transition from "not yet" to "not anymore."
Consequently, as far as the attainment of power is concerned,what matters is not how identity gets fractured, butthat it does get fractured. Also, what matters is not which norms get erected, but rather, that norms areerected. That is to say, in different cultures, this oftenhappens in completely different ways. However the result, afracture of wholeness, remains the same. It is universally truethat the more restrictive a society is, the more restrictive areits sexual norms. To put it another way: The degree of itscurbs on sexual liberty, which is to say: on its sexuallegislation and practice.This means that the degree of sexual-political evolution is – just like with a seismographic instrument – a readable, reliableindicator of the prevailing direction of overall politicaldevelopment.
The reason why sexuality is so well-suited to the attainment ofpower is because every person is, from the very beginning, asexual being, and the intellect, which might otherwise have beenable to prevent the identity fracture, is only developedlong after the fracture; therefore, the intellect alsodoes not reach back to the source of the damage, which means thatthis damage remains outside of one's consciousness. At most, it can be seen – if at all – on an abstract level much later on.
2nd Condition: Lack of Awareness
Therefore, aside from the fracture of identity, this exceedinglysimple system has a second functional condition: lack ofawareness.
Because of it, the illusion continues to exist that fear resultsfrom a deviation from the norm, instead of the fracture ofidentity. The actual cause of anxiety, the identity fracture,remains beyond conscious awareness.
The genius of the system is, of course, its very simplicity,since hardly anyone – absent something more – would wish tobelieve that the reason for so very, very many of humanity'sproblems should be so exceedingly banal.
When attention is shifted away from the obvious, because it seemstoo banal, reasons are sought out in places where they do notactually exist – and of course, are not found. And so, we still have an enormous market in psychiatry, psychotherapy,and life-coaching; that is, to the extent that it is sustained bysexual questions and problems, without, of course, solving any ofthem.
In psychotherapy, these inter-relationships are all too familiar.Its aim, therefore, is the dismantling of defenses, inhibitions,and blockades, inasmuch as they prevent patients from lovinglyaccepting themselves.
In order to combat the causes of identity fracture across theboard, one of course must become politically engaged, building, through the education of the general public, a critical awareness. While psychotherapy is effective on an individual level – as it were, in silence, walled off by therapists'duty of confidentiality as well as patients' shame – on the societal level, it produces only an individual easing of itseffects. So long as psychotherapy is not articulatedpolitically, the result is that the patient views his problem ina vacuum, something which only he himself or perhaps a couple ofothers have, but not as something which afflicts each and everymember of society. The mere alleviation of suffering is, fromthe perspective of the maintenance of power, an absolutely desirable result, because it makes the suffering more endurablewithout actually placing it into question. In order to combatthe causes of identity fracture and its social devastation,psychotherapy must be active politically, while educating thegeneral public so that it can build up a universally criticalconsciousness. But of course, power would never take beingeliminated, or even brought into question, lying down; rather, itdemands what it needs, and only tolerates that which does notthreaten it, while attempting to exterminate anything else.Therefore, out of self-protection, psychotherapy confines itselfto its social stabilization function, thereby ensuring itslivelihood.
The Norm's Function
Because the norm is determined by external powers, and is treatedas being equivalent to it, virtually any norm one might care tomention can be changed via power. Thus therepresentatives of power, namely, society's functionaries, arealways synonymous with the norm, whichever one it may bepromulgating. Anyone who uses force to enforce norms has power.The norm is, of course, the corset offering the broken individual – just like the corset on a broken broom handle – support andsecurity.
Thus originates a willing dependence on power, on authority.Authority is defined by power, not by ability. The externalnorm, which one needs only as a consequence of theidentity fracture, is perceived as protection, and experiencedpositively, because one's anxiety in the face of the loss ofwholeness (security) is noticeably alleviated; therefore, theexternal norm appears to be accepted. However, flying beneaththe wings of the external norm can only conceal anxiety,not actually take it away, because the fracture itself is ofcourse still there, and the norm merely represents its corset.The anxiety remains, and the mechanism – like a grandfatherclock'sweighted pendulum – keeps on going, the mechanismwhich is subject to itself as well as other external norms.
Laying bare this mechanism could impair its function, as thefunctioning individual develops the ability to heal his ownfractured identity, establish his own, self-determined norms, andinteract with his offspring in such a way that what is broughtabout is no longer the fracture of identity, but rather, itspreservation. However, anyone who throws light upon this rattlesthe very foundations of power. One sets oneself against sexual taboo.
It remains effective through thought-prohibitions, regulations onbehavior, and limitations on speech, which, as it were, greasethe internalized, oppressive wheels of alienation. Thoughts aresubservient to speech. It is difficult to think of somethingwhich cannot be spoken of. Thoughts produce concepts, andassemble them. When these conceptual formations are constrained,thoughts can only be put together within theseconstraints.
In the area of sexuality, verbal constraints take the form ofmedical or criminological language. New cultural language isauthorized only to the extent that it remains indirect, e.g., inlyrics, or is limited to intimations, e.g., in jokes. Inaddition to that there exists, within narrow limits, a toleratedlexicon of vulgarity. The lexicon of vulgarity is onlypermissible if one simultaneously rejects it (behind a held-uphand, only for certain reasons, only within certain circles).
This conflicted relationship with verbal norms also revealsitself in behavior: All research into sexual behavior isburdened by the fact that it stands in stark contrast to theproclaimed sexual norm. The conflicted (schizophrenic)relationship comes about in two ways: on the one hand, theacceptance of taboo (and the power relationships associated withthat), and on the other, the relief-function of the corresponding pressure re1ease, just like what happens with a pressure cooker: The hermetically sealed cover is the taboo, the burner,life itself. Without the relief-valve of tolerance, the potwould explode. Consequently, with this relief-valve oftolerance, the pressure which had been produced as a consequenceof the sexual taboo is regulated. This type of tolerance, whichhas nothing to do with acceptance, has been accuratelycharacterized by Herbert Marcuse as 'repressive tolerance.'