Body image can be an important aspect of self-concept that strongly affect sexuality. After many years of working with adults who have experienced past traumas, I have learned that there is never really a possible wrap to up to the trauma work and then move on to dealing with relationships. It is more productive to determine how everything is related and then to address all aspects of the trauma’s legacy, including its effect on creating healthy intimacy. The first tool in raising your awareness is to open your heart and tame the distracted part of yourself. Many people may long for freedom, often valuing it more than the relationship and they will not find a significant degree until they have unchained their sexuality from the nonsexual task to which they have assigned it, however unknowingly. What we do sexually reflects what we are doing in the rest of our lives. Some people use their sexuality to both act out and distance themselves from their unresolved childhood wounding. However, the eroticizing of our unresolved wounds insufficiently meets needs.  #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

  Arbitrary definitions of sexuality that impose external standards of success and failure reduce the opportunities for individual and couples to determine what is satisfactory based on their own feelings. In addition, a transitory sexual problem such as an inability to achieve an orgasm or erection due to fatigue or just not being in the mood can produce such concern and anxiety that the problem develops into a pattern. Also, not all young men are as sexual some may think. Some young men are reserved because they have not matured or they are concerned about their penis size and so they are not ready to engage in sexual acts. One’s own performance anxiety, a partner’s response, or the combination of the two can turn a transitory difficulty into a serious problem. If a partner withdraws emotionally and physically blames him—or herself, or feels insecure about the relationship as a result of the other’s reduced response, the problem may be worse the next time due to anxiety about it recurring. Individuals or couples may also avoid sexual activity to protect themselves from either embarrassment or a sense of failure for not meeting arbitrary standards. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

The employment of the mouth as a sexual organ is considered as a perversion if the lips (tongue) of the one are brought into contact with the genitals of the other, but not when the mucous membrane of the lips of both touch each other. In the latter exception we find the connection with the normal. One who abhors the former as perversion, though since antiquity these has been common practices among humankind, yields to a distinct feeling of loathing which restrains one from adopting such sexual aims. The limit of such loathing is frequently purely conventional; one who kisses fervently the lips of a pretty girl will perhaps be able to use her tooth-brush only with a sense of loathing, though there is no reason to assume that his own oral cavity for which he entertains no loathing is cleaner than that of the girl. Our attention is here called to the factor of loathing which stands in the way of the libidinous overestimation of the sexual aim, but which may in turn be vanquished by the libido. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

In loathing we may observe one of the forces which have brought about the restrictions of the sexual aim. As a rule, these forces halt at the genitals; there is, however, no doubt that even the genitals of the other sex may themselves be an object of loathing. Such behavior is characteristic of all hysterics, especially women. The force of the sexual instinct prefers to occupy itself with the overcoming of this loathing. Beyond the cultural setting and the influences it has on the feelings and expression, the sexual difficulties may also stem from other physical, emotional, or psychological factors. Each of us is a unique, complex blend of biological, cultural, and emotional elements. Our sexuality is an expression of all of these aspects of ourselves, which begin forming in childhood and continue to develop throughout our lives. Human reactions to life experiences are highly variable, so that two individuals may respond in totally different ways to the same situation.  We are still keeping the sex in the shadows to a significant degree, no matter how bright the lights are. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

It is even more obvious than in the former cause, that it is loathing which stamps as a perversion the use of the anus as a sexual aim. However, it should not be interpreted as espousing a cause when I observe that the basis of this loathing—namely, that this part of the body serves for the excretion and some into contact with the loathsome excrement—is not more plausible than the basis which hysterical men and women have for the disgust which they entertain for the male genital because it serves for urination. The sexual role of the mucous membrane of the anus is by no means limited to intercourse between men; the preference for it is not at all a characteristic of inverted feeling. On the contrary, it seems that pedicatio in men owes its role to its analogy with the act in women, whereas among inverts it is mutual masturbation which is the most common sexual aim. Sexual infringement on other parts of the body, in all its variations, offers nothing new; it adds nothing to our knowledge of the sexual instinct which thereby only announces its intention to dominate the sexual object in every way. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

Besides the sexual overvaluation, a second and generally unknown factor may be mentioned among the anatomical transgressions. Certain parts of the body, like the mucous membrane of the mouth and anus, which repeatedly appear in such practices, lay claim, as it were, to be considered and treated as genitals. Fetishism—we are especially impressed by those cases in which the normal sexual object is substituted for another, which, though related to it, is totally unfit for the normal sexual aim. The substitute for the sexual object is generally a part of the body, but little adapted for sexual purposes, such as the foot or hair or some inanimate object (fragments of clothing, underwear), which has some demonstrable relation to the sexual person, preferably to the sexuality of the same. This substitute is not unjustly compared with the fetish in which the savage sees the embodiment of his or her god. A certain degree of such fetishism is, therefore, regularly found in the normal, especially during those stages of wooing when the normal sexual aim seems inaccessible or when its realization is unduly deferred. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

The case become pathological only when the striving for the fetich fixes itself beyond such determinations and takes the place of the normal sexual aim; or again, when the fetich disengages itself from the person concerned and itself becomes a sexual object. These are the general determinants for the transition of mere variations of the sexual instinct to pathological aberrations. The persistent influence of a sexual impression mostly received in early childhood often shows itself in the selection of a fetich. Such a connection is especially seen in cases showing a simple fetichistic conditioning of the sexual object. The significance of early sexual impressions will be met again in other places.  In other cases, it is mostly a symbolic mental association, which is unconscious to the person concerned, which leads to the substitution of the object by a fetich. The paths of these connection cannot always be definitely demonstrated. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

The foot is a very primitive sexual symbol already found in myths. The shoe or the slipper is accordingly a symbol for the female genitals. Fur is used as a fetich probably on account of its association with the hairiness of the mons veneris. Such symbolism seems often to depend on sexual experiences in childhood. All the outer and inner determinations which impede or hold at a distance the attainment of the normal sexual aim, such as impotence, costliness of the sexual object, and dangers of the sexual act, will conceivably strengthen the inclination to linger at the preparatory acts, and to form them into new sexual aims to take the place of the normal. On closer investigation, it is always seen that indications of what seems the most peculiar of these new aims have already existed in the normal sexual act. However, the desire for looking becomes a perversion when it is exclusively limited to the genitals; when it comes connected with overcoming of loathing (voyeurs and onlookers at the functions of excretion); and when instead of preparing for the normal sexual aim, it suppresses it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8