The Mind and Heart in Human Sexual Behavior: Owning and Sharing Our Personal Truths - Hardcover

Bell, Alan P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765701359 ISBN 13: 9780765701350

Publisher: Jason Aronson Publishers, 1998

Synopsis

"The sexual domain is not defined by what happens between two bodies, by the dimensions of the bed, or the texture of the bedsheets", says Alan P.Bell, former Senior Psychologist at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research. "Rather, it is marked by hidden assumptions as to what should be taking place, by hidden evaluations, by echoes from the past". Contending that we do a callous injustice to the sexual moments of our lives when we take what we do at face value and fail to examine what is going on in our hearts and minds, Dr. Bell invites us to broaden our view of sexual experience toward resolving our sexual impasses. Whereas conventional self-help books, like conventional sex-therapists, define sexual problems chiefly in sexual terms and propose primarily sexual remedies or glib suggestions, Dr. Bell takes us down our own "ideational trails" in search of the sources of our core convictions about ourselves, our partners and our partnerships. Frank excerpts from interviews with people in the sexual doldrums or worse and also at the opposite end of the spectrum illustrate chapters devoted to cognitions (motivations, conditioning), the sexual exchange itself (from initiation through afterplay), and attendant transactions (fantasy, masturbation); longer clinical vignettes are interspersed throughout. Finally, Dr. Bell challenges readers to own and share their personal psychological and sexual truths by means of guided self-examination activities.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Alfred Kinsey opened the door to the American bedroom some fifty years ago when he started counting orgasms and published his monumental taxonomy of sexual behaviors. Thinking differently, digging deeper, Alan Bell, former Senior Research Psychologist at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, explores the meanings of sexual events, from cognitions (motivations, conditioning) and transactions (fantasy, masturbation) to the sexual exchange itself - initiation through afterplay.

About the Author

Alan Bell is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Counseling Psychology at Indiana University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jason Aronson Publishers
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0765701359
• ISBN 13: 9780765701350
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 388