I'm bumping this to the head of the queue on general principle. This is from the first year of the blog (August 29, 2010). I'd completely forgotten about this. Nice to be reminded. Here's my first post on the book.
I’ve been now reading through The Science of Orgasm from the beginning, but lightly. It’s densely packed with information; real understanding would come slowly. Further, it’s information of different kinds, some technical, some not. And the technical information, well, for example, there’s a good deal about neurotransmitters and hormones, which are at the outer limit of my understanding the and nervous system and bodily regulation and activity. They don’t go into them too deeply, because they can’t. To get deeper, they’d start plunging into molecular biology and biochemistry, and that stuff gets very technical very quickly.
So that’s one thing.
Here’s another: I first started thinking about sexuality I was strongly influenced by a diffuse body of thinking that saw Western culture as suffering from sexual repression. What to do about that? Why let it all hang out. But that didn’t work out like it was supposed to.
Why do I mention this? Because there’s a fair amount of survey information in the book, mostly about attitudes and experiences of adults in Western societies, and I’d think most of these surveys were conducted in the USA or perhaps Western Europe; that’s not entirely clear. And there’s a part of me that seems to be saying: But what’s sex like in a state of nature? And as soon as I say that I have to say: but there is no state of nature, just different cultural experiences.
Thus sexuality is a good test case for what’s known as evolutionary psychology these days. On the one hand, there can be no doubt that sexual behavioral is biologically necessary. On the other hand, there’s the orgasm, the biology and psychology of which are as yet obscure and perhaps beyond the reductive wing of EP.
With that, let’s return to the passage I quoted in the addendum to my first post. It’s from page 12:
However, there is a big difference between the physical act of ejaculation and the feeling of orgasm. While seminal emission and ejaculation are essential to pregnancy, the feeling of orgasm is not. There is no inherent imperative that the feeling of orgasm must be linked to ejaculation. Indeed, ejaculation of viable, pregnancy-producing sperm can occur in men with spinal cord injury who do not experience the feeling of orgasm.
So, at this early point in the book the authors have distinguished between ejaculation and orgasmic feeling. In chapter 19, “Atypical Orgasms,” they come very close to thinking of sexual orgasm as a family of experiences within a larger class of experiences sometimes known as peak experiences, the term Abraham Maslow gave to them:
Peak experiences are described by Maslow as especially joyous and exciting moments in life, involving sudden feelings of intense happiness and well-being, wonder and awe, and possibly also involving an awareness of transcendental unity or knowledge of higher truth (as though perceiving the world from an altered, and often vastly profound and awe-inspiring perspective). They usually come on suddenly and are often inspired by deep meditation, intense feelings of love, exposure to great art or music, or the overwhelming beauty of nature.
Before going there, however, let’s return to more mundane matters for a moment. It would be nice to have a behavioral reference point for female sexual behavior that is as specific as ejaculation is for male sexual behavior. As far as I can tell, there isn’t one, which is why, I suspect, that female sexual experience has seemed more problematic than male. Because men ejaculation, we can say, ‘yeah, it’s happened,’ whenever a man ejaculates. Without that marker, it’s harder for a woman to know whether or not it’s happened. If by ‘it’ we mean orgasm, and male orgasm isn’t equivalent to ejaculation, then perhaps it is as elusive, or not, for men as for women. Which is where I began over thirty years ago.
It turns out that the physiology of that marker is elusive. In Chapter 3, “Bodily Changes at Orgasm,” we learn (p. 24):
In a review published in 2005, Levin stated that “remarkably, a detailed, non-disputed physio-anatomical description of the mechanism of human ejaculation has still to be produced.” Two main questions have evidently not been resolved. How exactly are the spurts of semen produced? And, is the pleasurable sensation of orgasm a consequence of the sensory activity produced by the ejaculation mechanics, or is it primarily a brain phenomenon that is additively and pleasantly enhanced by the sensory activity generated by the expulsive flow of semen at ejaculation?
On the first question, I’d think that one day we’ll have an answer. The second question, involving pleasure as it does, is rather more interesting. Given my own belief that pleasure is a function of overall activity in the nervous system I think their second alternative is more likely correct.
And, by the time Chapter 11, “The Effects of Medication,” rolls around, Komisaruk, Beyer-Flores, and Whipple are singing the holistic song (p. 123):
Kinsey and his colleagues stated in 1953 that sexual arousal and orgasm involve the entire nervous system and thus all parts of the body. Although this statement may seem exaggerated, recent studies of brain activity by functional magnetic resonance imaging . . . and positron emission tomography . . . indicate that in both men and women, a large number of brain structures are activated, others inactivated, during orgasm. This reveals the complexity of the neural circuits participating in orgasm and the many neurotransmitters and neuromodulators that could be involved.
Now we’re ready to look at atypical orgasms, by which the authors mean “orgasms that occur under atypical conditions, apparently independent of genital stimulation (which generates ‘typical orgasms’)” (p. 199). They consider orgasmic feelings while dreaming, orgasmic feelings in people with spinal cord injuries, and orgasmic feelings as the result of electrical and chemical stimulation of the brain and electrical stimulation of the spine. And then there’s epilepsy (p. 214):
Much of what is known about how the brain produces orgasms is based on studies of epileptic seizures. There are numerous reports of men and women who describe orgasmic feelings just before the onset of an epileptic seizure. This experience has been termed an “orgasmic aura.”
After discussing several cases we get to this key paragraph (p. 216):
The reports that epileptic seizures can generate orgasmlike feelings suggest a basic commonality between the two phenomena. Epileptic seizures are characterized by abnormal synchronous activation of large numbers of neurons, followed by their synchronous inactivation, then shortly by the synchronous reactivation. It is likely that the rhythmical and voluntary movement-generated timing of genital stimulation that ultimately generates orgasm also produces synchronous activation of large numbers of brain neurons, although in a more precisely regulated pattern. . . . Thus, the mass neuronal activation that characterizes an epileptic seizure bears a resemblance to the mass neuronal activation that characterizes orgasm. It is perhaps this similarity that can generate the orgasmlike feeling during epileptic seizures.
Makes sense to me. But then, I didn’t need to be convinced. Discussion of epileptic seizures is common in the literature on altered states of consciousness, as is the similarity between sexual orgasm, epileptic auras, and altered states.
I’m not quite done with this topic, nor the book, but I don’t quite know where I’m going to go next. For now, let me end this post with a statement from my post on sexual metaphysics:
While ecstasy and transcendence are available anytime, anywhere, while doing anything — so sayeth the Zen masters ZAP! — they’re most likely to sneak up on us during sex. If so, then, one would like to know why.
That WHY? is as much a question about the nervous system in general, and its curious relationship to the mind, as it is about sex.
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