The Immortal God & The Prison Made Of Guilt & Shame

Our ol' buddy Dr. Freud was ridiculed for seeing 'sex' in damn near everything. The joke that 'sometimes a cigar is just a cigar Dr. Freud' sums up the position of many who saw a little sexual extremism in Freud's version of psychoanalysis--like he was a fundamentalist of a different stripe.

Unfortunately, all joking aside, there are some problems inherent in too readily dismissing the pervasive nature of human sexuality in our everyday dealings. First, such an off-handed dismissal can serve to make us blind to those hidden factors that seep their wat into even the most mundane of settings. Second, that dismissal can serve to deprive ourselves of the vital energy and passion that can be sublimated into our creative acts and efforts in this-world. The result, then is that a failure to inquire into our fundamental sexuality will serve to make us blind and passion-less, ignorant and vacuous. In short, like a zombie.

Freud saw libido as being consonant with a fundamental energy that could be seen as being synonymous with the notion of an elan vital, a Kundalini, an Eros. If we can grant a little lee-way to the discourse surrounding human sexuality--such as I hope is taking place here--then perhaps we can see how both an ignorance pertaining to human sexuality makes us the subjects destined to be acted on by forces that we don't understand (because we refuse to look, let alone consider) as well as the energy-deprived subjects of a life that is felt to be draining and sluggish; precisely because the majourity of Eros/Kundalini/libido lies trapped in a tight ball at the base of the spine.

For many white folks--guys especially--there can be felt a tightness in the area beneath the belly. Not a lot of movement in a white guy's hips does there tend to be. It was initially noticed by Wilhelm Reich in his discovery of the formation of 'character armour' that served just as much to keep energy locked in as to keep a cruel and invasive world shut out. And that is the side of the story that has been little heard from in psychoanalytic circles--how armouring and defense are not just about keeping 'others' out as much as they are also about keeping 'Eros' locked up inside. Like I mentioned before, it is possible to see how it may be that the God of Love is imprisoned in the human body (some more than others).

Imprisoned in such a way that Eros is buried under piles of guilt and shame and denial. We don't want to be sexual. We wish we weren't sexual. We pretend we aren't sexual.

And yet... and yet there is that which we can't eliminate in spite of our guilt, shame, and denial. We simply can't kill the God. Eros is an immortal after all: a fire that we can't put out.