Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig

  Along the same lines, and with reference to primary repression, Otto Rank considers the long development, which runs from paternal domination to a powerful system of state run by men, to be a prolongation of the same primary repression, whose purpose is the increasingly pronounced exclusion of women. In addition, Dennis Altman, in his Homosexual Oppression and Liberation, addressing himself specifically to sexual repression, relates it to a need, at the very origin of humanity, to produce a large quantity of children for economic ends and for purposes of defense.

  With regard to the same subject, in Sex in History the British anthropologist Rattray Taylor points out that, beginning with the fourth century B.C., there occurs in the classical world an increase in sexual repression and a growth of the feeling of guilt, factors which facilitated a triumph of the Hebraic attitude, sexually more repressive, over the Greek one. According to the Greeks, the sexual nature of every human being combined elements which were as much homosexual as heterosexual.

  Again Altman in the above-cited work expresses the view that Western societies specialize in sexual repression, legitimized as it is by the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Such repression expresses itself in three interrelated forms: by associating sex with (1) sin, and its consequent sense of guilt; (2) institution of the family and procreation of children as its only justification; (3) rejection of all forms of sexual behavior outside of the genital and the heterosexual. Further on he adds that traditional “libertarians”—in terms of sexual repression—fight to change the first two forms but neglect the third. An example of the same would be Wilhelm Reich, in his book The Function of the Orgasm, where he affirms that sexual liberation is rooted in the perfect orgasm, which can only be achieved by means of heterosexual genital copulation among individuals of the same generation. And it is under the influence of Reich that other investigators would develop their mistrust of homosexuality and of contraceptives, since these would interfere with the attainment of perfect orgasms, and as a result would be detrimental to total sexual “freedom.”

  Concerning sexual liberation, Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization points out that the same implies more than mere absence of oppression; liberation requires a new morality and a revision of the notion of “human nature” itself. And later he adds that every real theory of sexual liberation must take into account the essentially polymorphous needs of human beings. According to Marcuse, in defiance of a society that employs sexuality as a means toward a useful end, perversions uphold sexuality as an end in itself; as a result, they lie outside the orbit of the ironclad principle of “performance,” which is to say, one of the basic repressive principles fundamental to the organization of capitalism, and thus they question, without proposing to do so, the very foundations of the latter.

  Commenting on this manner of reasoning by Marcuse, Altman adds that at the point when homosexuality becomes exclusive and establishes its own economic norms, dispensing with its critical attitude toward the conventional forms of heterosexuals in order to attempt, instead, to copy the same, it too becomes a form of repression, as powerful a one as exclusive heterosexuality. And further on, commenting upon another radical Freudian, Norman O. Brown, as well as upon Marcuse, Altman infers that, in the last analysis, what we conceive of as “human nature” is no more than what has become the result of centuries of repression, an argument which implies, and in this respect Marcuse and Brown agree, the essential mutability of human nature.

  Chapter 9

  * As a variation on the concept of repression, Freud introduces the term “sublimation,” understanding by that the mental operation through which problematic libidinal impulses are provided with an outlet. Such outlets for sublimation would include any activity—art, sports, manual labor—that permits use of the sexual energy considered to be excessive by the canons of our society. Freud draws a fundamental distinction between repression and sublimation by suggesting that the latter may be salutary, insofar as it is indispensable to the maintenance of a civilized community.

  This position has been attacked by Norman O. Brown, author of Life Against Death, which on the contrary favors a return to the state of “poly-morphous perversion” discovered by Freud in infants, and thus implies the total elimination of repression. One of the reasons adduced by Freud in his defense of partial repression was the necessity to subjugate the destructive impulses of man, but Brown, as well as Marcuse, refutes this argument by maintaining that aggressive impulses do not exist as such, so long as the impulses of the libido—which are preexistent—find a mode of realization, that is to say, a means of satisfaction.

  The criticism directed at Brown, in turn, is based upon the supposition that a humanity without bounds of restraint, that is to say, without repression, could never organize itself into any permanent activity. It is here that Marcuse interjects his concept of “surplus repression,” designating by such a term that part of sexual repression created to maintain the power of the dominant class, in spite of not proving to be indispensable to the maintenance of an organized society attending to the human necessities of all its constituents. Therefore, the principal advance that Marcuse presupposes in opposition to Freud would consist of the latter’s toleration for a certain type of repression in order to preserve contemporary society, whereas Marcuse deems it fundamental to change society, on the basis of an evolution that takes into account our original sexual impulses.

  Such could be considered the basis of the accusation which representatives of the new tendencies have leveled against orthodox Freudian psychoanalysts, to the effect that the latter had sought—with an impunity that became undermined toward the end of the sixties—that their patients assume all personal conflict in order to facilitate their adaptation to the repressive society in which they found themselves, rather than to acknowledge the necessity for change in that society.

  In One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse asserts that, originally, sexual instinct had no temporal and spatial limitations of subject and object, since sexuality is by nature “polymorphous perverse.” Going even further, Marcuse gives as an example of “surplus repression” not only our total concentration on genital copulation but also such phenomena as olfactory and gustatory repression in sexual life.

  For his part, Dennis Altman, commenting favorably in his own aforementioned book on these assertions by Marcuse, adds that liberation must not only be aimed at eliminating sexual constraint, but also at providing the practical possibility of realizing those desires. Moreover he maintains that only recently have we become aware of how much of what we considered normal and instinctive, especially with respect to family structuring and sexual relations, is actually learned, and as a result how much of what up to now has been considered natural would have to be unlearned, including competitive and aggressive attitudes outside of the sexual realm. And along the same lines, Kate Millett, the theoretician of women’s liberation, says in her book Sexual Politics that the purpose of sexual revolution ought to be a freedom without hypocrisy, untainted by the exploitive economic bases of traditional sexual alliances, meaning matrimony.

  Furthermore, Marcuse favors not only a free flow of the libido, but also a transformation of the same: in other words, the passage from a sexuality circumscribed by genital supremacy to an eroticization of the whole personality. He refers therefore to an expansion more than an explosion of the libido, an expansion that would extend to other areas of human endeavor, private and social, such as work, for example. He adds that the entire weight of civil morality was brought to bear against the use of the body as mere instrument of pleasure, inasmuch as that reification was considered taboo and relegated to the contemptible privilege of prostitutes and perverts.

  Differing from this position, J. C. Unwin, author of Sex and Culture, after studying the marital customs of eighty uncivilized societies, seems to support the very generalized assumption that sexual freedom leads to social decadence, since, according to orthodox psychoanalysis, if an individual does not perish from his neurosis, the im
posed sexual constraints can help to channel such energies toward socially useful ends. Unwin has concluded from his exhaustive study that the establishment of the first foundations of an organized society, its subsequent development and appropriation of neighboring terrain—in other words, the historical characteristics of every vigorous society—are evident only from the moment when sexual repression has been instated. While those societies in which freedom of sexual relations is tolerated—whether prenuptial, extraconjugal or homosexual—remain in an almost animal state of underdevelopment. But at the same time, Unwin says that societies which are strictly monogamous and strongly repressive do not manage to last very long, and if they do in part, it is by means of the moral and material subjugation of women. Therefore, Unwin claims that, between the suicidal anguish that the minimizing of sexual necessities provokes and the opposite extreme of social disorder attributed to sexual incontinence, a reasonable medium ought to be found which might provide the solution to such a critical problem—that is to say, an elimination of the “surplus repression” about which Marcuse speaks.

  Chapter 10

  * In a survey quoted by the sociologist J. L. Simmons, in his book Deviants, it was established that homosexuals are subject to a considerably stronger rejection on the part of people than are alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, ex-convicts and former mental patients.

  J. C. Flugel, in his Man, Morals and Society, claims with respect to those who during infancy have strongly identified themselves with paternal or maternal figures of a particularly stern disposition, that as they grow up they will embrace conservative causes and will be fascinated by authoritarian regimes. The more authoritarian the leader, the more confidence he will awaken in them, and they will also feel very patriotic and loyal when fighting in support of traditions and class distinctions, as well as in favor of rigidly disciplinary educational systems and religious institutions, while at the same time wholly condemning sexual abnormalities of any type. On the other hand, those who in infancy somehow reject—on an unconscious, emotional or rational level—such rules of parental conduct will favor radical causes, repudiate distinctions of class and treat understandingly those who exhibit any unconventional inclinations: homosexuals, for example.

  For his part, Freud, in “Letter to an American Mother,” says that homosexuality, while certainly not an advantage, ought not to be considered a reason for shame, since it is neither a vice nor degrading, but simply a variation in sexual functions produced by a certain arrest in sexual development. In effect, Freud judges that the overcoming of the “polymorphous perverse” stage of childhood—in which bisexual impulses are present—due to socio-cultural pressures, is actually a sign of maturity.

  Several contemporary schools of psychoanalysis would disagree with that judgment; they would instead see in the repression of the “polymorphous perverse” one of the principal reasons behind the malformation of personality, especially in terms of the hypertrophy of aggressiveness. As for homosexuality itself, Marcuse points out that the social function of the homosexual is analogous to that of the critical philosopher, since his very presence is a constant reminder of the repressed elements of society.

  With reference to the repression of “polymorphous perversity” in the West, Dennis Altman states in his work, cited above, that the principal components of such repression are on the one hand the elimination of the erotic from all human activity that is not definitely sexual, and on the other hand the negation of the inherent bisexuality of all human beings: society assumes, without pausing to reflect at all, that heterosexuality equals sexual normality. Altman observes that the repression of bisexuality is effected by the forced implantation of seemingly prestigious historico-cultural concepts of “masculinity” and “feminity” which manage to suffocate our unconscious impulses and mask themselves in the consciousness as the only appropriate forms of conduct, at the same time that they succeed in upholding, down through the ages, the supremacy of the male—in other words, clearly delineated sexual roles which are learned during childhood. Moreover, Altman adds, the sense of being male or female is established, above all, by means of the other: men feel that their masculinity depends upon a capacity to conquer women, and women feel that fulfillment can only come about through being coupled with a man. On the other hand, Altman and the whole Marcusian school condemn the “strong man” stereotype which is presented to males as the most desirable model for emulation, since the said stereotype tacitly implies an affirmation of masculinity through violence, which explains the constant presence of the aggressiveness syndrome in the world. Finally, Altman underscores the lack of any form of identity for the bisexual in contemporary society, and the pressures that he suffers from both sides, given that bisexuality threatens equally the exclusively homosexual forms of bourgeois life as well as heterosexual forms, and this characteristic would explain the reason why avowed bisexuality is so uncommon. And as for the convenient but—until a few years ago—merely potential parallelism between the struggle for class liberation and the one for sexual liberation, Altman emphasizes that in spite of Lenin’s concern for sexual liberty in the USSR, his rejection of anti-homosexual legislation for example, such legislation was reintroduced in 1934 by Stalin, and as a result, the prejudice against homosexuality—as a type of “bourgeois degeneration”—held fast in a number of Communist parties of the world.

  It is in different terms that Theodore Roszak comments upon the sexual liberation movement in his work entitled The Making of a Counter Culture. There, he expresses the concept that the kind of woman who is most in need of liberation, and desperately so, is the “woman” which every man keeps locked inside the dungeons of his own psyche. Roszak points out that this and no other is the form of repression that needs to be eliminated next, and the same with respect to the man bottled up inside of every woman. Furthermore, Roszak has no doubt that all of the above would represent the most cataclysmic reinterpretation of sexual life in the history of humanity, inasmuch as it would involve a restructuring of all that concerns sexual roles and concepts of sexual normality that are currently in force.

  Chapter 11

  * The qualification “polymorphous perverse” which Freud applies to the infantile libido—referring to the indiscriminate pleasure derived by the child from his own body or the body of others—has also been accepted by more recent scholars, like Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse. The difference between them and Freud, as already indicated, lies in the fact that Freud considered it proper that the libido is sublimated and channeled into an exclusively heterosexual direction, definitely a genital one, while more recent thinkers approve and even favor a return to polymorphous perversity and to an eroticization that goes beyond the merely genital.

  In any case, affirms Fenichel, Western civilization imposes on the girl or boy the models of their own mother or father, respectively, as the only possible sexual identities. The probability for a homosexual orientation, according to Fenichel, is all the greater the more the child identifies with the progenitor of the opposite sex, instead of what would generally occur. The girl who does not find the model offered by her mother to be satisfactory, and the boy who does not find the model offered by the father to be satisfactory, would as a consequence be prone to homosexuality.

  It is appropriate here to note a recent work of the Danish doctor Anneli Taube, Sexuality and Revolution, where it is suggested that the rejection which a highly sensitive boy experiences toward an oppessive father—as symbol of the violently authoritarian, masculine attitude—is a conscious one. The boy, at the moment when he decides not to adhere to the world proposed by such a father—use of weapons, violently competitive sports, disdain for sensitivity as a feminine attribute, etc.—is actually exercising a free and even revolutionary choice inasmuch as he is rejecting the role of the stronger, the exploitative one. Of course, such a boy could not suspect, on the other hand, that Western civilization, apart from the world of the father, will not present him with any alternative model for cond
uct, in those first dangerously decisive years—above all from three to five—other than his mother. And the world of the mother—tenderness, tolerance, and even the arts—will turn out to be much more attractive to him, especially because of the absence of aggressivity: but the world of the mother, and here is where his intuition would fail him, is also the world of submission, since the mother is coupled with an authoritarian male, who only conceives of conjugal union as a subordination of the woman to the man. In the case of the girl, on the other hand, who decides not to adhere to the world of the mother, her attitude is due to the fact that she rejects the role of being submissive, because she intuits it as humiliating and unnatural, without realizing that once that role has been excluded, Western civilization presents her with no other role than that of oppressor. But the act of rebellion by such a girl or boy would be a sign of undeniable strength and dignity.

  On the other hand, Doctor Taube asks why such occurrences are not more common, given that the Western couple, in general, exemplifies such exploitation. Here she suggests two factors which act as checks: the first would be present whenever in a home the wife—because of lack of education, intelligence, etc.—is actually inferior to the husband, which would make the authority of the latter seem more justifiable; the second factor would depend upon a slow development of the intelligence and sensitivity of the boy or girl, which would not permit them to grasp the situation. Implicit in this observation is the probability that if, on the other hand, the father is extremely primitive and the mother quite refined but nonetheless submissive, the extremely sensitive and precociously intelligent boy almost inevitably will reject the paternal model. And likewise, the girl will reject the maternal model as arbitrary.