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Pleasure Seeking |
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S&M: just part of the social order
Why should a man wish to beat and be beaten? If you want to
understand Max Mosley, look no further than animal behaviour
Terence Kealey
Times Online
April 14, 2008
How might a scientist explain Max Mosley? In his 1919 essay A Child Is Being
Beaten, Sigmund Freud described S&M as a universal human fantasy, but why
should a man wish to beat and be beaten?
The first thing to understand about sexual intercourse is that it is not -
His Holiness The Pope's pronouncements notwithstanding - primarily about
reproduction. It is about co-operation. Consider homosexuality. As Bruce
Bagemihl described in his book Biological Exuberance,
more than 450 species engage in homosexuality, and for many of those
species homosexuality is the predominant form of sexual expression.
More than 90 per cent of sexual encounters for male giraffes are
homosexual, for example, and male walruses are almost as gay. Bonobo
chimpanzees, moreover, will be relentless lesbians, while hedgehogs are into
girl-on-girl cunnulingulus. These animals derive mutual pleasure from their
same- sex alliances, which they translate into friendship. Consequently they
co-operate in hunting or childcare or other challenges. Thus we see that
reproduction is only one use Nature makes of the alliances that flow out of
the mutual pleasure of sex.
Nature's most important alliance, however, is the pecking order. Many
animals are social and Nature has had, therefore, to identify a method of
government. Nature could have settled on democracy, say, or laissez faire,
but instead animals are generally ruled by autocracy. As was noted a century
ago, hens peck each other - but not randomly. Some hens peck, others are
pecked. And that hierarchy is found in all social animals.
The hierarchy emerges in youth: each generation, as it leaves the protection
of the parents, fights for status. Soon certain individuals routinely win,
and others lose, and the losers accept the winners
as their bosses. A pecking order has thus been established. But
to maintain the pecking order, the losers need to
accept their subordinacy: they need to embrace a psychology of masochism,
actively lusting after the lash of Max's whip. Meanwhile, the winners,
charged with maintaining order, need to adopt a sadistic personality, they
need to enjoy punishing malefactors and free riders. Freud was not the first
to notice this: 2,000 years ago Publilius Syrus wrote that “tears gratify a
savage nature, they do not melt it”, while Ovid maintained that “pleasure is
sweetest when 'tis paid for by another's pain”. More recently, in a paper
published in Nature, Anna Dreber and her colleagues from Harvard University
confirmed by the classic psychologist's experiment of the “prisoners
dilemma” that the evolution of pleasure in punishment can best be explained
by the evolution of the hierarchy.
So if sex is a means by which we cement our
relationships, and if our relationships are innately hierarchical, then it
is not surprising that punishment is hardwired into intercourse. Max's
predelictions, though extreme, are not hard to understand.
Terence Kealey is the author of Sex, Science and Profits
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Faithful love birds? No, swans like to go
wandering
They are symbols of enduring love, immortalised in story,
song and poetry. Everyone knows that swans mate for life, staying faithfully
together until one dies. Or do they?
RICHARD SHEARS
Daily Mail
9 June 2006
The heart-warming image of the love birds has been shattered by veterinary
researchers who say they are nothing more than feathered philanderers. Males
in particular enjoy flitting from one nest to another for trysts with a
string of females.
The findings come from a study of a group of black swans which live on the
Albert Park lake in Melbourne, Australia.
And the initial results have shown that a clutch of newly-hatched cygnets
can have as many as three fathers.
Zoology lecturer Dr Raoul Mulder, who is leading the Melbourne University
research, said: "Swans, it seems, like humans, fall a bit short of that idea
of lifelong fidelity."
'Playboy males'
The playboy male swans have been found out after DNA tests were carried out
on a number of cygnets. It was found that one in six had a 'surprise'
father.
But what the researchers want to find out as they continue their 100,000
study is just when the male swans go out on the prowl - and why their
'spouses' do not seem to have found out.
The obvious answer to the last question, the researchers agree, is that the
spouses themselves are being unfaithful. Now, to establish just who is doing
what to whom and when, every one of the 150 swans on the lake is being
fitted with an 'e-tag' on the tail - a movement detector for the male and a
receptor for the female.
"When the birds copulate, the little back pack on the female will register
which male has approached," said Dr Mulder.
"We think both parties are guilty as charged," he added.
"But if they're doing it, it must be for some good evolutionary reason, such
as gaining superior genes for their offspring."
Promiscuous
While the Melbourne research centres on the black swans of the lake, the
scientists point out that the more common white swan - which is found in
English waters - is equally promiscuous. But the commonly held view of the
birds as inseparable pairs will take some shaking.
Even Shakespeare was inspired by what he believed to be the life-long
devotion of one swan to another. In As You Like It, he wrote: "And
wheresoever we went, like Juno's swans Still we went coupled and
inseparable."
History repeats, time and again, the bonding between a male swan his mate.
"The cob (male swan) will lay down his life for his family," one poetic
writer noted.
"If one of the pair dies, the other often lives out the rest of his or her
life alone. The love and loyalty of these beautiful birds has inspired
legends for centuries."
Even on-line dating services are cashing in on the accepted love and
devotion of the swan. A US-based matching company calls itself White Swan
Love and promises to bring "white swan girls" and "white swan men" together
in the same nest.
But based on what the Melbourne researchers are finding out, such
newly-matched couples might find it worth keeping a careful eye on one
another.
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Being a sex addict is in your genes
Some people simply can't help being 'sex addicts', according
to a new discovery by scientists.
Daily Mail
26 May 2006
They have found that people with a certain genetic make-up have a much
stronger sex drive than others.
The remarkable finding could go some way to explaining the behaviour of
self-confessed 'sex addicts' such as Michael Douglas.
It could also help provide reassurance for those who are perfectly happy
with their relatively low libido, but are made to think they are abnormal
because magazines, television and films suggest most people having sex all
the time.
The new research centres on a gene called D4, which is involved in the
brain's reaction to the pleasure chemical dopamine.
Tests on animals have suggested this gene may influence sex drive and
arousal.
A team from Hebrew University and Ben Gurion University of the Negev in
Israel tested the DNA of 148 male and female students to find variations in
the gene.
The students were also asked to complete a questionnaire to assess their sex
drive. It included questions such as whether they felt aroused when they saw
a steamy scene in a film, how often they made love and the frequency that
they thought about sex.
It emerged that generally men thought about sex more often than women,
however overall both genders experience similar levels of arousal. But when
the scientists looked at the different genetic make up of the students, an
interesting trend emerged.
People with one particular variation of the D4 gene - around 30 per cent of
those studied - had a stronger sex drive than the others.
Lead researcher Professor Richard Ebstein of Hebrew University said the
study is the first to identify a specific gene variation linked to sex
drive.
"Some people really do think more about sex and place a greater importance
on it than others and what our study suggests is that genes may make a
substantial contribution to these differences," he said.
He said the findings may also help explain why some people are sex addicts.
Prof Ebstein said past studies have shown the chemical produced by the D4
gene is linked to addictive behaviour such as gambling.
However he added that D4 would not entirely account for sex addiction, as
other genes and social factors may also play a part.
Hollywood star Michael Douglas famously checked into an Arizona clinic to be
treated for sex addiction during his marriage to his first wife Diandra.
Given his past, his second wife Catherine Zeta Jones had it written into
their pre-nuptial agreement that if they divorced she would get 1.7 million
for each infidelity she found out about.
His father Kirk Douglas also admitted to being a womaniser. His first wife
divorced him after he said he could not remain faithful and his second wife
agreed to turn a blind eye to his 'chance encounters'.
Halle Berry's ex-husband Eric Benet is also reported to have checked into a
clinic to help him overcome his sex addiction.
Prof Ebstein hopes his study will open up new ways to tackle and treat
sexual problems. At the same time, it may also provide reassurance for many.
"If you have a lower sex drive, it does not necessarily mean you should go
to see a sex therapist to see if something is wrong with you,' he said.
"As long as it is not causing a problem in your life, may be you don't have
a problem. If it does not bother you or interfere with your life, then maybe
you are best to just live with it.
"After all, if you are not good at music, you don't keep on trying to play
the saxophone."
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The new pleasure seekers
Ian Sample talks to the scientists teasing out why we strive so much for
pleasurable experiences - and why, when we have it all, we risk everything
for more excitement
Thursday December 16 2004
The Guardian
For as long as they have existed, students have embraced the role of
obliging guinea-pigs, on hand to take part in all manner of intrusive,
humiliating and bizarre experiments dreamed up by their supervisors.
Nonetheless, one of Michel Cabanac's experiments must have raised eyebrows.
"I offered them money to feel pain," says the physiologist at Laval
University in Quebec. "It can be quite dangerous,
because what if a student has just destroyed his parents' car? He's going to
need money really badly."
Undeterred, Cabanac lined his students up against a wall. It was going to be
bad, but not as bad as they might have thought. He got them to sit, as if
perched on an imaginary stool, a position which forced their weight onto
their knees. "Try it," he says. "The pain soon becomes unsufferable."
Cabanac then promised the students increasingly large lumps of cash to
endure the pain. The more he offered, the longer they suffered. The longest
lasted for eight minutes 20 seconds.
Ironically, Cabanac's experiment was part of a broader investigation into
the science of pleasure. His aim was to find out what, if anything, was the
point of pleasure. His conclusions, and those of other scientists working in
the field, suggest that not only is pleasure good for our health, but it is
at the root of our ability to make sense of the complex world in which we
live.
Cabanac's proof that people will suffer pain for payment will come as no
surprise to the millions who do things they hate in return for a monthly pay
cheque. But in a follow-up experiment, Cabanac showed there was a more
fundamental point to make about what influences our behaviour.
Before the second test, Cabanac asked people to rate the pleasure they got
from playing a video game. They were then sat in a temperature-controlled
room and Cabanac, while cooling it down, asked them to rate how unpleasant
the feeling was. He then combined the two experiments. "We cooled the room
down, and every time, the same thing happened. As soon as it was cold enough
for their displeasure rating to just outweigh the pleasure of playing the
game, they stopped the experiment," he says.
According to Cabanac, the tests show that, while it might not be obvious all
the time, each of our decisions is ultimately driven by pleasure-seeking.
"Pleasure is the common currency that allows us to make any, and I mean any,
decision in our lives," he says. "Any decision is made according to the
trend to maximise pleasure."
Pleasure-seeking certainly makes evolutionary sense. As organisms developed,
the emergence of pleasure as a sensation will have helped reinforce healthy
behaviour, such as eating certain foods, having sex and keeping warm. But
while Cabanac's theory might make evolutionary sense, that doesn't make it
correct. It doesn't take long to think of examples where a decision looks
entirely unpleasurable. What about a decision that ultimately leads to a
person's own death? How could that choice come out as the most pleasurable
path to take?
In 1969, Jan Palach, a Czech student, set himself on fire in protest at the
Soviet invasion of his country. He died from his injuries three days later.
"That's an atrocious death, yet he did it by choice," says Cabanac, who
assumes Palach was not mentally ill. "The fact that he was suffering hell by
dying by fire was compensated by an overwhelming joy of telling the Russians
'Look. Look what we are able to do against you. You do not win.'"
At the Neurosciences Research Institute at the State University of New York,
director George Stefano believes that pleasure is not only the driver for
every decision we make, but is a crucial component for making sense of the
world. "As human beings, we always pride ourselves in being rational, but if
we were 100% rational, we would have to weigh up every single possible
action we might take at any time. Imagine how time-consuming that would be.
Even a cognitive organism doesn't have time to be truly rational," he says.
Pleasure, says Stefano, is our brain's way of short-cutting the rational
process by subconsciously and continuously ranking what is most important to
us from the vast number of options we are faced with. Stefano's phrase for
it is likely to make dedicated hedonists smile: "Pleasure leads to pure
rationality," he says.
As with the majority of neuroscience, some of the most reliable evidence
comes from studying people who were born with, or have later suffered,
damage to specific parts of the brain. At the University of Iowa, a team
lead by neuroscientist Hanna Damasio has been studying people with lesions
in a region of the cortex associated with pleasure. They found that although
the patients had no intellectual impairment, in a simple gambling test, they
made hopeless decisions. "They are oblivious to the consequences of their
actions," the team noted in a paper published in the journal, Brain.
Despite decades of effort, scientists are still teasing out the precise
neural circuitry that allows us to experience pleasure. In the 1980s, many
scientists believed there was just one major brain circuit that governed
pleasure. Triggered by the neurochemical dopamine, it excited the cerebral
cortex and other areas of the brain such as the amygdala and nucleus
accumbens. But more recent research has cast doubt on the role of dopamine.
It now seems the chemical plays a subtly different role - making us feel
desire rather than pleasure.
Scientists now know that another brain circuit, triggered by chemicals
called opiods, does play a key role in pleasure sensations. Injecting drops
of opiod into a part of the brain called the ventral pallidum heightens the
enjoyment of sweet tastes, they found, suggesting it boosts the natural
pleasure sensation. Meanwhile, at Oxford University, a team lead by
neuroscientist Edmund Rolls has discovered that a region of the brain called
the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which lies just behind the eyes, contains
bundles of cells that are triggered by different types of pleasurable
experience. Signals from the OFC are then thought to feed into the dopamine
and opiod circuitry.
According to Cabanac, pleasure can only be a transient sensation, the
feeling of warming up when cold, or of eating when hungry. He believes that
the lack of these gaps between how we feel and how we want to feel explains
a lot of misery in modern society. "We're not hungry, we're not cold, we
have everything," he says. The result, he says, is that we are tempted to
seek pleasure in other ways, by taking drugs, or over-indulging in
pleasurable activities. Extremely hedonistic lifestyles may be caused by
compulsive behaviour leading to an endless craving for pleasurable
sensations, or subtle damage to the underlying brain circuitry, he adds.
Of course, it's possible to have too much of a good thing, and pleasure can
easily become pain. This flipping of pleasure into pain has been
investigated using brain scans focusing on the OFC and have captured the
fine line that is the difference between the two states. Marilyn Jones-Gotman
of the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University recruited
self-confessed chocoholics and fed them lumps of chocolate while monitoring
their brain activity using a brain-scanning technique called positron
emission tomography. After each chunk, the person was asked to rate how much
they wanted another piece. "We fed them until they absolutely could not face
another bite," she says.
Jones-Gotman found that as the experience of eating chocolate flipped from
being intensely pleasurable to downright repulsive, activity in the
orbitofrontal cortex shifted from the centre to nearer the outside. They had
captured the exact point where pleasure became pain. But is this the change
that tells us when we've had too much of a good thing? Jones-Gotman doesn't
think so. "If you're over-eating, expecially in cases like Christmas dinner
when you're eating food that people like very much and associate it with the
good feeling of previous Christmases, you probably won't stop until it's
actually painful," she says.
While pleasure may have evolved as a way to encourage creatures to indulge
in healthy behaviour and avoid more harmful pursuits, Stefano believes there
is another benefit. Inside brain neurons, and also other tissues in the
body, is a chemical called proenkephalin. He says that when we experience
pleasure, proenkephalin is broken down, producing a substance that causes a
feel good sensation. But the same enzymes involved in that process also
release another chemical called enketylin, a strong antibacterial agent.
"Just think of the beauty of that: when you're feeling good, you protect
yourself," says Stefano.
Though scientists are slowly teasing out the secrets of pleasure, they have
a long way to go. One problem is that little funding goes into looking at
why things go right in humans. Instead, money pours into researching disease
and disorders. "It's time that changed a little," says Stefano. "Feeling
good is healthy. Why don't we look into it?"
Further reading
www.nel.edu/25_4/NEL250404R01_Esch-Stefano_v4_2p.pdf
The neurobiology of pleasure and its effects on health
http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/ARUreport01.htm
A review of pleasure systems in the brain
www.thebrain.mcgill.ca
Graphics of the brain and neural circuitry
Affective Neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions, Jaak
Panksepp, OUP, 2004
Descartes' Error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain, Antonio Damasio,
OUP, 1994
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