Армен Мурадян - Male’s Health in the Objective of Stressology – Beyond the Usual

As Otto Kernberg wrote, it takes many years for a person to reach the phase of mature sexual love. Experiencing it occupies one of the leading places on the Olympus of human presence on the earth. All the more, to come to an understanding of the mental world of male, a researcher needs to live a long life without losing interest to constantly observe and study the question he is interested in.

Brief etymology of the main concepts: sex, sexuality, libido

One of the symbols of the 20 thcentury was a concept of stress, and the symbolism of the 21 stcentury includes the concept of sex. And it is likely not a coincidence. A stress-saturated human life of the 20 thcentury resulted in a sex-saturated human life of the 21 stcentury. Sex became the most available (irrespective of place, situation, time and money) way to discharge stress and derive pleasure. No wonder there appeared “sex with friends”, “sex – a pleasant pastime”, “sex – mutually agreed”, “safe sex”.

In the last century Berdyaev wrote: “Only our era allowed the exposure of sex life. And the man was laid out on the sections. This is Freud and psychoanalysis, this is the modern novel. This is the shamelessness of the modern era but also a great enrichment of knowledge about human”. Freud, so that to less shock the Puritan society of his time, used to tell that the accurate scientific study did not imply moral categories or an appeal to the idea of human integrity, because scientific study always led to a partial (model) representation of the object. The purpose of science is not to frighten or to console.

Today one can smile remembering the flow of profanity showered on television, and the Internet is the fount of readable, audible and visible “shamelessness”. Strong language is bravado of emancipation from morality and virtue. But this is at one terminal, at the other one – are the past centuries, in communion between man and woman. And between them is the largest cluster of people, who preserve a reasonable balance of word usage and action.

Sex. Translated from the French ( “sexe” ) and English ( “sex” ) it means no more than – “gender”. This word appeared in Latin ( “sexus” ), indicating human activity in order to obtain a set of mental and physiological reactions, feelings and actions related to the manifestation and satisfaction of a sexual desire or a desire to continue the race. The word “Sex” (Lat. “sexus” – “gender, male or female) comes from the word “seccare” , which means to “cut, split”, because according to the ancient myth, the gods divided the first people on the two halves, which must seek each other around the world. Oddly enough, but the word “sex” in the sense of “sexual intercourse” came into wide usage only recently. Sexual intercourse predetermines female sex organ (vagina) and that of male (penis) (“pistil and stamen”). Sex is an act, action aimed at discharge, deriving pleasure via sex and need to continue the race.

For the first time the term “sex” in the meaning of “coitus” (“sexual intercourse”) was recorded in 1929. Modern dictionaries decipher the word “sex” as “all that relates to the sphere of sexual relations”. Synonyms for sex are intimacy, sex, bed, sexuality, intercourse. In the British comedy series “The Black Adder 3” principal character Edmund once said to writer Samuel Johnson that people would peep into his famous dictionary of intimate lexicon solely in search for obscene words. True or not, but the interest in such words certainly exists, and there is no getting around it. Sexual intercourse is carried out through genitals – vagina and penis.

Vagina (Lat. “vagina” – “sheath”). The old meaning of the Russian word vagina is “sheath”.

Penis (Lat. “pendere” – “hang”). The origin of this word, denoting a male penis is not as straightforward as it might seem at a first glance. The fact that this part of the body is hanging is clear, but ancient Romans often used this word to call the tail of the animals, so it was an allegory. The Greeks were more straightforward – to indicate male sexual organ they used the unequivocal word “peos” , although there was also the word “phallus” (“the phallus”) in their language, which denoted intense penis. It is doubtful whether one in the army barracks could be satisfied with the “tail”. Many men, especially soldiers, willingly identified their dignity with the word “gladius” (Lat. – “sword»), especially against the background of the origin of the word vagina .

Sexuality. The language problem faced by Freud is that the word “die Sexualität” is ambiguous in its content and indicates both the quality of an object and function of the body itself. This duality is well perceived in the Russian language when comparing such expressions as “sexual girl” and “sexual dysfunction” (sounds a bit different in English – “sexy girl” and “sexual dysfunction”). Sexuality as the quality is demonstration of personal orientation on own capabilities and the desire to have sex (the phenomenon of “Macho”) by means of facial expression, pantomime (gestures), clothing, behavior, figure, anecdotes, humor. It is an inherent desire to manifest your inner libido, transforming it into an external manifestation of behavior. This is purely a personal orientation, which is made up of own fantasies, fashion requirements, imposed standards. In the modern world, the functions of sexuality and reproduction rarely coincide completely.

The function of sexuality is treated as a set of biological, psycho-physiological, mental, and emotional reactions, feelings and human actions related to the manifestation and satisfaction of sexual desire (G. B. Deriagin). Sexuality is an inherent need and function of the human body like the processes of respiration, digestion. Man is born with a certain physiological sexual potential, then sexuality is formed within the scope of individual life experience. On the whole human sexuality is determined by the integrated interaction of biological, mental and socio-cultural factors.

Libido (Lat. “libido” – “lust”) is a sexual desire. In more general terms, libido is manifestation of life, which includes strivings, desires, attractions, mental drive, usually associated with sexual instinct. It is the energy, but the special one, which can be transformed assuming any kind of human activity, which is not directly related to the sexual instinct. Freud borrowed the term “libido” from A. Moll (1898), who defined two components in it, which are the manifestation of the true sexuality: the desire to touch, inducing to the physical (hugging, kissing) and spiritual communication with an individual of the opposite sex, and the desire to relax encouraging to achieve changes in the genitals, associated with vasomotor and muscular processes, following ejaculation in men and orgasm in both sexes. In fact, originally there was a sign of equality between the libido and sexuality. Rooted understanding of sexuality and libido, as analogs of a function of genital organs was and remains dominant in the minds of both researchers and people, resulting in a constant substitution of one concept by the other. Freud himself did not escape this, and therefore became a target of criticism for his pansexuality, at a time when it was not about the sexual instinct but about the principle of pleasure. E. Fromm, in his monograph “Greatness and limitations of Freud’s theory”, wrote: “Freud did not come to the concept of “social character”, because on such a narrow basis as sex, such a concept could not develop”. However, in everyday life the term “libido” has preserved its original meaning, given by Freud – sexual passion and in the consciousness of modern man it has only one definition: sexuality.