The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions by Jaak Panksepp & Lucy Biven

Author:Jaak Panksepp & Lucy Biven [Panksepp, Jaak & Biven, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Psychotherapy, General
ISBN: 9780393707311
Google: bVdxXN_vVGEC
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-09-17T05:00:00+00:00

THE POLITICS OF SEX AND CONCEPTUAL CONFUSIONS:

WE CANNOT EVER SEE THE PRIMARY-PROCESS

LEVEL CLEARLY IN ADULT HUMANS

In a sense, we have been skating on some thin ice throughout this chapter. People have strong feelings about sexuality. Homosexuals and transgendered people have a hard time of it in many cultures. They are often denied equal rights under the law. In many countries, they are not allowed to marry with others who seem externally to be of the same sex. They are discriminated against—all at the tertiary-process levels of human life, those levels that are generally beyond our focus of concern in this book. However, these tertiary-process cultural phenomena are our great concern as human beings who respect human differences at all levels. And as scientists we must insist that those who do not comprehend or respect such human difference step forward from the dark cultural shadows of ignorance, fear, and hatred into the sunlight of scientific reality. Our cultural life is riddled with human stories where ignorance has promoted suffering. Thus, perhaps we who have been privileged to have a scientific education should seek to shine some light into the prevailing shadows that continue to surround this topic in many corners of modern culture.

Consider “Billy” Tipton, whose life story was depicted in “Suits Me”: The Double Life of Billy Tipton (Middlebrook, 1998). Born as Dorothy Lucille Tipton, in 1914, she became an accomplished jazz musician in her teens. When she decided on a musical career, she dressed as a man, apparently in order to be better accepted within professional circles. When not performing, she retained her identity as a woman. She spent several years in a lesbian relationship and at some point in her life she started to dress as a man all the time. Several other relationships with women followed. She managed to pass as a man by binding her breasts. During sexual activity she preferred not to be touched and probably employed a prosthetic penis. Although she never married any of her lovers, one of Billy’s partners confided that “he” was “the most fantastic love of my life.” Billy and another partner adopted three boys, all of whom regarded “him” as their father and were astounded to discover “his” true sexual identity following “his” death.

We know nothing of the psychological state of Billy’s mother during the second trimester of pregnancy. As a fetus, might Billy have been exposed to a surfeit of estrogen that programmed a male-type brain within a female body? Our knowledge of brain gender differentiation tempts us to accept the circumstantial evidence that Billy’s brain was indeed masculinized even though s/he had a woman’s body. However, perhaps Billy could not tolerate living in an era where a bright woman was not able to express all her fine artistic passions and skills with the same opportunities afforded any man with a comparable heart and mind. We simply do not know. These are questions that can never be answered in retrospect. And this is the problem that we are left with through much of this book.

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