Anand asked:

I am doing my research over the positive aspect of sex: a hidden sin.

So I just want to know about sexual power over mind. Why this sex is so powerful that when a man
knows that unsafe sex can led to death but still can't avoid it, because when sex comes into mind
then any other thinking activity stops. Why is it so?

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Wow, what a question. Offhand, everything you say above looks incorrect. First, sex is not a sin.
Second, "sexual power" is one of those phrases that has been beaten to death. Just what, exactly,
does it mean? Third, yes, unsafe sex can lead to death; so can driving a car, crossing the street,
going swimming, and any number of other activities. So should we stop all those, also? Sex being
"unsafe" is not a black-and-white issue, just as most other human activities are not. Fourth, just whom
are you talking about when you say that when "sex comes to mind, all other thinking activity stops"?
Not me, I hope, because I'd feel both insulted and amused at your naivete. Look at it this way: when
one is a young child, and one smiles, what does that smile mean, and how much control does, say, a
4-5 year old have over it? It means pleasure or happiness, and there is very little control. As one
ages, smiles become, if one wishes, controlled and imbued with many possible meanings. This is the
result of education and experience. Well, it's the same with sex (and anything else). The more
education and experience, the more control and the more subtlety in feeling and expression. To have
the experience you describe above with sex, as an adult, indicates an appalling lack of education and
experience with it, in my opinion.

I don't even know where to start to correct your misconceptions. Try the library; libraries have
enormous resources of facts. Try a course in sexuality at a public university. The misconceptions
above are some of the primary reasons for problems with sexuality in human cultures, in my opinion.
If you doubt what I'm saying, just look at the statistics: the few cultures with good sex education (the
Scandinavian countries, mostly), have the lowest rates of disease (STDs) and unwanted pregnancies
in the world. The more sex education, the less unwanted pregnancies, disease, and, for that matter,
emotional problems with sexuality. Look it up; all sorts of studies have been done on this.

Steven Ravett Brown

If you are doing research into this you have to read Freud. A Freudian account of the power of the
sexual would be that the sexual instinct is an originary and primal instinct and as a child comes to
develop a sense of self, an ego, and at the same time a relation to reality, the primal instinct towards
sexuality is split off from the ego and it's relation to reality. So when a person wants to have unsafe
sex, they are really driven by their originary sexual instinct, and not thinking of reality and the
consequences. This is still to to be driven by the mind, but by the unconscious rather than the
conscious mind. The conscious mind is concerned with reality. The unconscious is rather driven by
primal instincts. The coming into being of the rational thinking social person has a repressive function
on primal instincts, but the sexual drive, for Freud, is extremely strong since it has its root in our very
nature, in the way we were as children before the social force took hold. This difference between the
unconscious primal instinct and the conscious relation of thought and reality, given the strength of the
sexual instinct, explains why thinking stops when sex comes to mind.

The sexual function is cross-species. But in male, there is perhaps a desire to demonstrate potency
and giving and in the female there is desire for submission and receiving (simplifying and generalising
here) and safe sex interferes with this. Potency cannot ultimately be shown, and submission is not
complete.

But given all this, I would say that, basically, the desire for what you describe as "unsafe sex" comes
down to the desire for true intimacy without barrier. And in terms of thought rather than desire,
sometimes people have it - in their conscious mind - that certain risks are worth taking for the sake of
physical intimacy.

Rachel Browne

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