I CAN REMEMBER WHEN SEX WAS SAFE

AND FLYING WASN’T

I went to ‘Sweet-16’ parties in the 1940’s — became pretty good with the ‘rhumba’, the ‘foxtrot’, even the ‘samba’. Although shy, I definitely liked girls — liked them a lot — and started ‘dating’ in the 50's! Marilyn Monroe was going strong. It must have been hard work, she being the favorite fantasy of so many of us young guys!

The famous shot of her you see above actually involves a very potent illusion that few except us old educated geezers know about: The force lifting her skirt up was not a gust of warm air coming from the subway grate below, as her publicity people would have you believe. No, us savvy old guys know it was definitely the collective ardor and desire coming from the mystical fumes of millions of horny young studs around the country, in technical Freudian terms — the national libido barrel!

I took my first flying lessons in an Aeronca single-engine, fabric-covered body, 2-seater airplane with tandem seating (one behind the other), each with a straight control stick in the center, attached to the floor. I was studying for my Ph.D. in psychology at the U. of Maryland then. I had a Fellowship at the Aviation Psychology Lab, and one of the perks, besides helping to pay for my studies, was access to the Aeronca, which was kept at a small private airport nearby. The mission of the Lab was to do research on human factors in flying safety, like the design of instrument faces in the cockpit to minimize reading errors, for example.

I liked my student flying days, I was catching on but wasn’t yet ready to do it solo — without the instructor along. It was a good thing too! One day, I was given to understand that when flying by visual rules (without radar guidance), a pilot must — at all times — have a potential landing area identified on the ground nearby, in case of emergency, like your only engine failing!

The instructor, that day, had me practicing stalls — where one ‘leans out’ the fuel mixture by adding more air to mix with the fuel. This makes the engine ‘cough’ and momentarily lose some power. We kept doing that. Suddenly the engine quit altogether on me!! Panic! I hadn’t been taught anything like this before. Happily, the instructor was there, behind me, to take the controls while I got quite anxious.

We landed on a nearby race track — happily unused at the time — with some bouncing around and sweat on my brow, but safe and unhurt. I had apparently leaned out the fuel mixture too fast or too much, but flying somehow lost its allure for me that day!

After that experience, I limited my ‘piloting’ to sorties in the Flight Simulator we had at the Lab — attached to the floor with very strong bolts. But, enough about my age. I hope — if you’re still reading this — that I’ve convinced you that I’m a genuine antique with adequate authority to talk about my main subject: What’s Life All About — Sex or the Search for Meaning? Two Views: FREUD vs. FRANKL.

Both were MD psychiatrists from Vienna, Austria. interested in the nature of man, how human personality develops, and how to treat patients with emotional problems. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was the older and the more well-known father of ‘Psychoanalysis’ — the controversial theory about human development and the practice of new treatments of patients with emotional problems.

For Freud, our personality develops in a cause-and-effect manner, largely the result of childhood experiences, many of which have been long ‘forgotten’ by the conscious mind. If some of these experiences have been hurtful, abusive, or neglectful, emotional problems often appear in later life. Treating such a patient consists of probing his/her subconscious mind by: Free Association (‘Tell me whatever comes into your mind’), and Dream Analysis to dig up and examine these ‘forgotten’ negative experiences. At one stage, Freud also used Hypnotism in his therapy.

Here, human personality is seen to consist of 3 major parts: the ‘Id’, ‘Ego’, and ‘Superego’ . The id is the most basic of the 3 in which reside all of our unconscious needs, drives, and desires — for: survival, food, affection, sex, safety, pleasure, and avoidance of pain. It wants what it wants when it wants it, without consideration of reality constraints or other persons, or rules of proper behavior.

The second part of the personality, the Ego, attempts to control the basic drives of the Id (for example, ‘I want to make love with my date, now!’) by considering outside reality and other people (for example, ‘You can’t because her sister came along to chaperone us’). Immediate gratification of desires is frowned upon if surrounding, outside factors would make it impossible or difficult, or illegal, or embarrassing. But it’s often a battle between Id and Ego!

The third and last-to-appear personality part, the Superego, is concerned with moral limits on the expression of the Id’s wishes. It comes from: parental example, friends’ influence, teachers, and religious influences, if any.

For Freud, a human’s growth flows from the Id, propelled by the Pleasure Principle. The progression for the child is described by the various organs pricipally involved. It begins at the Oral stage (birth to 1.5 years) during which pleasure is found in sucking and sticking a thumb or other objects into the mouth. It then progresses to the Anal stage (1.5–3 yrs). ‘Accumulators’, who fill their pads with objects from floor to ceiling, can be described as ‘Anal Retentives’, whose toilet training as a child may have been problematic and therefore he/she got ‘fixated’ at this stage.

Boys, especially, thereafter (3–6 yrs) arrive at a Phallic stage wherein they may experience their first erection and may develop sexual desires for their mother. These sentiments normally are left behind by about age 6.

Children then progress to a Latent period (6 yrs-puberty) where they mostly play only with other kids of their own gender. After puberty, if no fixation at any previous stage has occurred, the adolescent then enters the Genital stage when, for boys, the pleasure principle become centered upon girls of their age, and vice versa (but excluding: sisters/brothers and close cousins; the ego and superego generally frown on incest.)

The basic drive to seek pleasure/love/sex/life lies in the Id and is mediated through the Libido (an instinctual primal energy giving rise to desires and the behaviors necessary to satisfy them.) For Freud, this Genital stage lasts for life.

Some criticized Freud’s theory as ‘hocus pocus’, but Freud, in some of his writing, said he expected ‘that in the future, scientists would find physical references for his concepts’. And indeed, that has happened — at least for the ‘pleasure principle’. Lab studies have clearly established that research rats, for example, who have had tiny electrodes implanted in certain areas of their brain, will perfom tasks repeatedly with the only reward being very low-level electrical stimulation of those particular areas. Similar results with human patients have largely supported such findings. So much for that group of Freud’s skeptics.

But others criticized Freud because psychoanalysis generally took a long time to complete (sometimes, years!) and therefor cost too much.

Yet, there were others, among them, his former student, Viktor Frankl, who saw Freud as over-emphasizing sexuality in his theory and focussing too much on the ‘basement’ of human aspirations. Frankl (1905–1997) developed his theory for treating emotionally disturbed patients which he called ‘Logotherapy’. He focussed more on logic and meaning of life than the ‘subconscious’. His treatment methods took a lot less time, on the average, than Psychoanalysis. It flowed from his influential book, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, which was based partially on his experiences as a prisoner and survivor of the Nazis in Auschwitz.

Three of his quotes are:

‘Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.’

‘Man should not ask what the meaning of his/her life is, but rather must recognize that it is he/she who is being asked that question — by life.’ (The implicit answer must logically be that healthy persons must, most of all, live a responsible life.)

‘I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast’. (When he was in the USA)

My own view is that both Freud and Frankl have different pieces of a larger truth (like the proverbial blind men touching different parts of the elephant to discover the animal’s true nature, and finding themselves unable to agree.) Freud, with his emphasis on human sexuality, seems IMO more on target and appropriate from childhood to ‘retirement age’ — when (for most men, and some women) indeed the ‘libido barrel’ has ample supply.

But, when the body begins to deteriorate and one joins the ‘Seniors’ sexuality, though providing good memories, becomes less frequent and then — like the libido in the ‘barrel’ largely disapears — no matter what the Viagra dose.

As one begins to think about one’s own death, other considerations (like, ‘What have I accomplished in my life?’) become more important for many men. For that period of life, Frankl, and his emphasis on ‘Meaning’ and logic seems more useful.

So, to finish up, although the development of drugs like Viagra and Cialis have indeed helped older men to extend their sex lives, I do not agree with Freud’s position that the genital stage lasts from puberty to death. Although grandpa can get erections later in life than before, there is NO drug that maintains the Libido (ie the desire for sex) for life. At a certain age (varying from individual to individual), the locus of motivation shifts for seniors — from sex to the search for the meaning of his/her life.