Most female sexual problems are due to the way society understands sex,
argues Shere Hite. Drugs are not the answer...NS. Shere's response to 'pink
viagra,' doesn't seem to be online yet,so take this...A New Emotional Landscape
Some say ‘human nature’ is a fixed phenomenon, that a new
psychological-emotional landscape cannot be possible. They point to the
Athenian playwright Sophocles or to Shakespeare, saying that their plays
prove ‘Human nature has always been the same; all cultures are the same,
humans love, hate, are jealous, greedy and fear each other..’
Yet isn’t this merely lazy justification of the status quo? Think of the
antique (pre-sixth century) Greek myths and how hard it is for us to
understand some of the myths’ stories in their original form. The
archaeologist Marija Gimbutas has proposed a world-view for ‘pre-history’
that is quite different from the standard version
‘real-history-starts-with-the-Greeks, Sumerians-and-Egyptians’ – a history
that extends 20,000 years further into the past, with a complex,
sophisticated and lively artistic tradition – and, in all probability, a
different emotional landscape.
A new emotional landscape is possible, even if one has never existed before.
Myth Psychology
When you are born, you are offered a variety of mythologies with which to
write the scenario of your life. Which you pick depends on various
psychological factors built into your individual situation and family (see
Freud et al.)
My work is trying to redesign the entire package of available choices or
mythologies on offer – not to re-write psychology (though it is, in part).
Is a completely different set of scenarios possible?
The four Hite Reports and this series of articles try to question and
redesign, re-imagine (on the basis of measuring the counterpoint between
what people say they experience and what society says they should be
experiencing, how they should interpret their experiences), the repertoire
of lives we can have: are there new ways to interpret our experiences and
emotions?
Inside most of us, an intense battle is raging between ‘traditional values’
and new beliefs. These beliefs as yet have unclear shapes and names, so
here we will try to name some of them, turn a few sources on light on these
new landscapes.
Underwater Frescoes of the Mind
Can we make a new psychological-emotional landscape?
People often prefer to claim that they have no myths; that myths are for
more ‘stupid’ or ‘primitive’ people. Yet underlying the social system
studied by sociologists, and the emotions studied by psychologists, lie
myths of creation, myths of family, and myths of heroic behaviour. These
archetypes, currently unacknowledged or called ‘instinct’, form the
backdrop of our psyches and beliefs.
At present, the myths are undergoing change; a new psychological landscape
is struggling to come into existence. In order for this to happen, and to
take a part in defining the new landscape, it is important to understand
these myths.
Slowly, my work has been endeavouring to discover the identity of some of
these underwater ‘unconscious’ frescoes in our minds – the backdrop to our
psyches and emotions.
Based on my research, I believe that a completely different
emotional-psychological landscape is now trying to emerge. Part of our
psychology has been resistant to change because a hidden layer in the
psyche, an identity behind our psychologies (often mistakenly called
‘human-nature’), has not been analysed – which is what my work is trying to
do. This hidden layer is composed of all the myths and stories that create
the human emotional landscape as we know it. This is the terrain we meet
when we are born, that we learn to take as our own.
Naming this terrain will allow a new landscape to emerge.
Just as the early Greeks and Romans saw themselves differently from the
later Christians, we now see ourselves differently yet again.
FROM...
http://www.hite-research.com/
