l I - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

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But with the number one complaint in sexual therapy being "a lack of desire",
one must wonder just what it takes to get stimulated these days. A possibility
is that we are all affected by the amount of sexual input and respond by
shutting down. Whereas an exposed knee, at one time, sent young boys away in
embarassment, we are now barely stopped in our tracks by total nudity.
As mental health professionals, we can postulate that pornography has
deleterious effects on some individuals. First of all, some men may have
difficulty separating the use of women as sex objects from their everyday
dealings with women in their lives. This comment pertains to pornography in
general. The use of childhood heroes and fantasies adds even more complexity to
the problem.
It is a natural response for sexual feelings to come and go at most any time
and in most any situations. Mothers will occasionally notice an attraction
to their sons broadening shoulders, fathers will notice how appealing their
daughters are as they develop. We have great prohibitions against these
feelings if they are incestual or otherwise inappropriate, however, so we keep
the feelings at bay. One facZor in enabling natural parents to suppress or
sublimate sexual feelings they have toward their children is the Fact that they
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have a long-standing history of nurturing and protecting that child. Parents
who diaper and sooth a baby, deal with a tempestuous toddler and teach a
youngster to ride a bicycle have established a parental relationship with that
child and this activates instinctual, biological drives and unconscious
archetypes of parenting. These drives also proscribe sexual relationships with
children and reinforce taboos against incest.
One possible dangerous effect of these pictures is that they disinhibit the
prohibition, making less secure people more aware of inappropriate sexual
Feelings and more confused about what to do about them. Repeated exposure to