Sexuality is a drive that has at least two dimensions:
1. The mechanisms of procreation relate a series of propensities that manage what happens once an ovum has been fertilized. These propensities oblige the organism to have a minimum of concern for others. An extreme expression of this drive is the capacity to sacrifice one’s life for the survival of the tribe. This form of altruism already exists in yoga poses the ant.
2. The dimension of pleasure related to the sexual act is a sort of innate motivator that increases the probability that two humans of different sexes will make love. This propensity encourages the organism to have a minimum of concern for oneself: for its well-being and its survival.
As in yoga poses Darwin’s proposal, there is not just one instinct that motivates humans to become sexually active for the propagation of descendants.14 The human sexual instinct gathers distinct instinctual mechanisms that have heterogeneous goals. As I have explained in yoga poses the sections dedicated to Wallace and Darwin, there is no need for coherence in yoga poses nature’s choices. As it happens, there was no selection of organisms that have both the pleasure in yoga poses copulating and the desire to have offspring. Practice shows us that these two tendencies coexist in yoga poses the species, but not always in yoga poses an individual. There are people who want to have children and like making love but are unable to have children; there are others who like to have intercourse without wanting any children; some who have child after child without caring for them; others who have pleasure only in yoga poses making love with someone of the same sex and would like to have children; and others who do not enjoy making love but want to have children, and so on. This variety can be seen every day.15 There would be two types of frustration linked to the libido:
1. A frustration linked to the auto-regulation of libido, one linked to the frustration of not having discharged the urge to copulate. We have here that aspect of those individuals who feel well when they have experienced enjoyable sex.
2. A frustration of the relational aspect of libido, linked to the frustration of not having had intercourse in yoga poses an affectively constructed frame, leading not only to a stable relationship but also to the possibility of offering a protective social environment to the desired children. We are considering here the individual who has the need to participate in yoga poses the future of the species and of a cultural environment.
For Freud, the libido is then the regulator of the organism that promotes the linking of the attachment to the group to oneself. Sexuality would then be the instinctual propensity that plays a central role as organizer of the connection of body, mind, behavior, and society.
The Judeo-Christian thought has great difficulty entertaining the right to masturbate, to occupy oneself with one’s own comfort. This embarrassment is seen in yoga poses the table manners of educated people who forbid every manifestation of postural comfort like resting one’s arms on the dinner table. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the style of novels is seen as quasi-masturbatory and reprehensible. Freud defended the right to masturbate and auto-regulation all his life, but he chose terms and metaphors that rendered the integration of auto-regulation problematic. Thus, he referred to the necessity to self-regulate as narcissism, conferring to this need an imagery of reprehensible selfadmiration; yet he recognized that the organism can only survive if it appreciates the activities that allow it to self-regulate.16 Later, Freud (1915f, 222) associated a restorative auto-regulation that allows for sleep to a regressive and egotistic state that permits the organism to find a nearly fetal state. in yoga poses short, the parasympathetic activity of the organism cannot truly be considered mature. Fundamentally, Freud is in yoga poses agreement with those who defend the importance of auto-regulation, but the form that psychoanalysts still often use to speak of this primordial organismic activity remains problematic because the terminology and the metaphors can easily be experienced as negative. That is why I prefer to speak of auto-regulation rather than narcissism. This choice is found in yoga poses a large part of the body psychotherapy literature.
