title: Anger, sexuality, and the growth of the ego.
abstract: This paper examines the long-term issues of sexual dysfunction in terms of normal psychosexual development. Human sexual development and ego growth take simultaneous origin within the symbiotic relationship of the child and its first nurturant caretaker, usually the mother. Infantile sexuality, the pleasure of the total body, is equivalent to love and dependent upon sameness and continuity, tending toward fusion. Adult sexuality depends for its emotional impetus upon separateness and difference between lovers. Once established, adult sexual relationships drift inexorably toward the symbiotic unity implicit in loving. Genital sexuality may be sacrificed in the preference for more global satisfactions reminiscent of the infantile sexual experience. Essential to the adult sexual relationship then is the capacity to bear and express conflict and anger as a means of breaking the symbiotic tie; a continuous restructuring of ego boundaries is necessary for the maintenance of a functioning sexual relationship of long duration.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008149:Love; D012723:Sex