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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

promiscuity’

‘Jay’

April 2009 Jay’ was a a 17-year-old American girl whose father was in the American forces stationed in the US. Her parents had separated 4 or 5 years earlier when her mother had started a relationship with someone else. After the split Jay lived with her father; but often stayed with her mother and her partner when he was away on duty. However, it wasn’t long before Jay started ‘going off the rails’. When she was 14, she was excluded from the school on the military base due to appalling behaviour. Attempts to have her ‘home schooled’ were only partly successful. Alcohol and drug abuse and sexual promiscuity were all part of the syndrome of self-destruction which emerged over the next 2-3 years. Jay came to me for therapy because she was concerned her relationship with her current boyfriend was falling apart, largely due to her own inability to handle her emotions. I found Jay quite a challenge – primarily because she was both fairly inarticulate and in many ways very niaive. Although she had had a difficult life, it had been a relatively-sheltered one – living in the military community on several US bases around the world. I estimated her… Read More

Is Sexual Infidelity Inevitable?

Updated: 20 November 2018 Personal sexual fidelity is certainly something many people truly espouse as a noble intention at certain points in their relationships – such as when first falling in love, or getting married, the woman getting pregnant or possibly resolving their partner’s bouts of insecurity. Some people seem genuinely to espouse fidelity to each other for years and sometimes even lifetimes. But these days actually sticking to one partner seems to be a real problem for an awful lot of people. In the Western world people – particularly in the professional/middle classes – tend to ‘settle down’ later (in their thirties, often with a number of ‘notches on the bedpost’). Fewer couples marry. (Marriage in itself cannot be a guarantee of permanence or fidelity; but, in theory, it is an action of intent.) People with money who do marry often make prenuptial agreements, effectively planning for the end of their relationship. Although there has been a noticeable decrease in UK divorce rates of 4.9% since 2016, the number of marriages ending in divorce in 2017 was still high at 42%. The number one reason cited for divorce remains adultery – although a number of marriages do manage to survive… Read More

Just how many Homosexuals are there really?

This week, in discussing Sigmund Freud’s views (1923a) on homosexuality with a class of A-Level Psychology students at Guiseley School in Leeds, the question was raised as to just how ‘normal’ gay and lesbian relationships are. When I stated that most recent surveys – ie: in the past 10 years or so – have tended to average around 2-4% of the adult population in the Western-ish world clearly identifying as gay men or lesbian – ie: verging on the statistically abnormal – I was quite taken aback by the sheer vociferousness of the class that the true number was at least 10% and, therefore, normal. 2 things struck me about this response:- How accepting the class were that homosexuality was ‘normal’ – quite a contrast with a Psychology class in Goole 3 years previous, in which the class had insisted that Evolutionary Psychology ‘proved’ that homosexuality was abnormal and a perversion Where this mythical number of 10% of the population had come from and how strongly it was entrenched amongst the Guiseley students In and amongst the praise heaped on my book, Knowing Me, Knowing You, by Integral Review in 2007, I was castigated for ignoring homosexual relationships; I had 3 chapters… Read More

Oh, goodie – Passionate Sex!!!

If you say you’re enjoying sex with the same person after three years, you’re either a liar or you’re on something.” – Sebastian Horsley, The Observer Magazine, 15 January 2006 The Observer (aka The London Observer) has had quite a makeover for the New Year. Down from broadsheet to Berliner size and with reorganised sections. Still good, informative and well-reported coverage of a wide range of topical news issues, both domestic and foreign. As part of this makeover, The Observer’s longstanding and well-respected colour magazine has a new regular feature: The Sex Columnists – in which Sebastian Horsley and Marion McBride offer his ‘n’ hers perspectives on issues raised by readers. The opening quote to this Blog was the beginning of Sebastian’s reponse to a reader writing in: “I’ve been in a relationship with my soul mate for three years, but our sex life has almost ceased. I’m terrified if I raise the issue he’ll say he no longer finds me attractive.” Sebastian goes on to say: “Of all the sexual perversions, monogamy is the most unnatural.” Given that point of view, it’s no surprise that he recommends the reader to end the relationship and move on. As I point out in… Read More