Psychology of Sexual Intercourse - What You and I Need To Know

The psychology of sexual intercourse is crucially important because while we may focus on the physical aspects of sex, what is evoked in us by sex is a mental stream of attitudes, values, images, longings and traumas from the past.

This is our key statement for you to consider.

You don't want to make love, and not have it be a satisfactory or even wonderfully important experience, do you?

Sure, we get excited by seeing ourselves having sex with someone, or even seeing others have sex in front of us, or certainly seeing videos of sex, of people stripped naked, showing their Adam and Eve's freely, doing sex practices, and so on.

Ever wonder if seeing video and still images of attractive people naked doing sex behavior is having a good influence on you, or a demeaning influence on you?

Many relationship counselors are talking about sexual addiction these days. Why are they defining wanting lots of sex with different partners, or watching lots of sex videos and images, as a sexual addiction?

Because therapists always get clients if they can convince the people who consider coming to them that they have something wrong with them.

• Sex is an addiction only when engaging in sexual activity if it has no direction and control by you so you cannot choose not to do the activity.

But if you are not addicted to sex, might you still have some growth work ahead of you to handle the effects of sex on your mental state?

Here in this Hubpages report on the psychology of sex we will give you some lists of fundamentals to consider. You will be able to place yourself in these lists and to start deciding what you want to do about how your psychological dynamics are affected by your sexual activity.

You know about the tons of stuff written about sexual intercourse and its physical dynamics.

You may have seen a lot of sex videos and images so you think you know sex and have accepted sexual intercourse as a natural thing.

But, but what have you seen that is really real about the mental states that go with and are evoked by our sexual intercourse with men and women of the same sex and the opposite sex?

Don't you want to explore this, as I certainly do?

It's good stuff, really!

What do they say?

Sex is in the mind?

The biggest sexual organ is the brain?

The average person thinks something sexual every seven minutes of their waking lives?

So, let's have a good think on what our sexual intercourse life is all about so that we may bring insight and choice to our having sexual intercourse with the lovers that come our way during a lifetime.

Remember, sex is simply a biological and emotional function. There is nothing dirty about sex. Only the human being makes sex dirty in attitude and in some behavior. Our job is to clear our sex life of restrictive and false religious and cutural attitudes so that we may fulfill ourselves and others in healthy ways. Right? 

I speak as a professional psychologist having helped a few thousand people in my career, so just maybe I know something about human sexual experience?

Surprisingly, at the top of a search list more people are searching on the web for information about the penis than any other word.

For those of you who maybe don't know a lot about this organ, let us define the penis psychologically and physically as follows.

The male penis is an emotional-physical functioning appendage that engorges with blood to a fully extended erection when the prospect of sexual intercourse with another human being is at hand.

We might add first that there are far less searches on the Web for information and pictures about the vagina, commonly known as the (common cat name).

Why is this? We can suggest psychologically that women are more secure and accepting of sexual intercourse and the behaviors that surround sexual intercourse because their sexual organs, except the breasts, are internal.

Thus women generally have physical sex sensations automatically combined with psychological experiences of feeling and emotion.

Women are not split off from their sexual organs usually because their sexual intercourse experiences are largely internal, while a man's sexual intercourse experiences are largely external - centered in his erect phallus.

Here then is a list of psychological dynamics intimately associated with the man's penis.

• Erect Phallus - the man feels powerful, potent, striving, demanding, ready for action, needing a receiver for his heightened energy, the soft, feeling-expressive vagina and body of the woman.
• Failure To Get Erect - a limp and short penis represents to the typical man a lack of vitality to extend oneself into the world, symbolized by extending oneself into the body of the woman, and into her life. The limp penis man does not meet his responsibility as a fertilizer and catalyst for new life. The limp penis man does not meet his responsibility either to relate to women so that a relationship may be built.
• Failure To Get an Erect Penis with a Woman - A limp penis next to a woman can represent for the man that they are homosexual. If they are erect only by stimulation of other men, or man, then they interpret themselves as gay. But they may not have faced psychological dynamics evoked in themselves by near sexual contact with a woman.
• Sex by a Man with a Man - Psychologically, certain men can be stimulated by other men to erection and orgasm because contact with another erect penis, and the man with it, evokes double the masculinity aggressiveness that the man has alone, say in solitary masturbation. Such a man goes minus with a naked woman, and only plus with a naked erect man. It's all energy dynamics!
• Sex by a Woman with a Woman - Psychologically, a woman may fear what happens to her in sexual intercourse with a man and thus feel too vulnerable in having a sexual-emotional relationship with a man. Male sexual aggressiveness needed to maintain the penis erection may be taken by the woman as too much vulnerability on her part, evoking fear instead of pleasure. Sex with another woman then evokes psychological dynamics of soft sex feelings of safe pleasure and nurturing mother feelings.
• Same Sex Sexual Intercourse - Woman To Woman - Is this even possible? A woman strapping on a dildo, a representation of an erect phallus, for penetrating ones female partner, is probably not the same psychologically as a real man with a real penis penetrating a real vagina of a real woman. The dildo act is physical and the dildo strapped woman lover can feel psychologically what it is in part to be a male, aggressive penetrator, but still, you decide? Have maybe some experiences yourself to see what gets evoked in you.
• Oral Sex Licking To Orgasm - Woman To Woman - This would seem to be "soft aggression" to orgasm, at least sometimes. Woman who do this seem to prefer the softer sex of women to women and the pleasurable, safe but infantile feelings this sexual behavior evokes. Just know the difference between the types of sexual behavior you engage in or explore so you can know what is evoked psychologically inside yourself. Sex itself is often infantile bonding experience with Child and Great Mother enacted symbolically in adult life. 
• Woman or Man Sexual Intercourse Oral To Adam and Eve Organs - Psychologically is this similar to genital to genital, male-female sexual intercourse? Psychologically different dynamics are evoked. Male dominance through the erect penis is evoked by the woman orally engaging the phallus. This is primarily pleasurable for the man, who in the moment does not have to work that much to achieve orgasm. Penetrating a pretty face is certainly visually different from penetrating a what used to be a pubic haired vagina. Now since women shave pubic hair, does this show a regression to infantilism, or child body before sexual puberty? Again, one-sided dominance pleasure, also experienced in reverse with the man being oral with Eve's Eve. It's okay, but recognize what it is. It is not sexual intercourse in the full sense of the word of equals partnering together through their sexual behavior. (to avoid distastfulness for some readers we use scientific and poetic terms for genital behavior where necessary) Thanks for your cooperation in this educational article to help people by. 

Question - If the man has to be evoked to erection by being orally stimulated by either a female or a male, what is going on inside of him, his psychological dynamics?

Question - If a man cannot get erect with you, what is he feeling about you as a person? Do you think he really knows you as a person and sexual being, or is he having psychological difficulties concerning you and your sexual-relating behavior? Most likely such a limp male is having psychological difficulties inside himself and maybe also with you. You may want such a male to talk freely about his sexual experiences from the beginning up to now meeting you. This can encourage intimacy and realness. 

• Basic Sexual Intercourse Practice - Do not continue to have sexual intercourse with someone who has to be stimulated to have an erection to have sex with you. Or, with focus on the woman, do not have sexual intercourse with a woman who remains dry in her vagina in response to you. Deal instead with why the man remains limp or the woman remains dry. This puts the psychological dynamics in ascendancy over the physical behavior. Talk about sexual fears. 
• Practice - Don't try and solve sexual intercourse problems by trying out physical methods of sex stimulation. Go to the mind! Work there, both of you. Find your attitudes, your fears, your secret thoughts about yourself and the other person.
• Primary Practice With Sexual Intimacy - Develop first psychological intimacy between you two. Be naked and forthright about yourselves mentally. Share freely and honestly with your partner or partners what is going on inside both of you as you engage in sexual intercourse together. If you are both in psychological contact with each other through honest and caring communication, then your physical sharing, like sexual intercourse, will more likely be exciting and felt as real experience between you two.
• A Big Don't - Don't seek to solve sex problems with physical means. Why? Because then you work ineffectively in the wrong arena for change and development. Human beings are psychological as well as physical, or why else have humans developed sophisticated languages for expressing thoughts, emotions and observations about themselves and life.

Don't:

1. Read and try out sex manuals that are primarily physical
2. Don't evaluate a sexual relationship based on how exciting you feel the physical acts are
3. Don't fantasize during sex, but seek instead to focus on what you feel of the other person and yourself physically and psychologically. If you have to fantasize to achieve feeling and orgasm, question then your ability to be fully present in the moment with this person you are having sexual intercourse with.
4. Challenge - To test the above principle for yourself why not for three months keep yourself from having sexual intercourse with anyone you have to fantasize your ideal sex with at the same time you are being physical with someone. Unclear? Don't fantasize another person while having sexual intercourse with someone. Or, if you do, at least share with the actual person what you are doing mentally at the same time. Why? Because you are then creating intimacy and realness together.
5. Challenge - Males, don't masturbate alone anymore, or for a year, so you get out there in the real world and do your sex thing with another human being or two. Women, don't use dildos, vibrators or hands to make yourself orgasm. Why? Because this more often limits your ability to let go in real sexual intercourse and orgasm as a letting go, and not a controlling making yourself come. Certainly know the difference between these two orgasming styles and choose to work on experiencing both if you have to.
6. Be a Psychological Relater - Don't focus on the physical act of Sexual Intercourse solely but work in as many psychological dynamics as possible.
7. Don't take anything I say here so literally that you don't evaluate for yourself your own thoughts and experiences.
8. Do try new concepts and practices for yourself in real experiences.
9. Do try new ways of relating all your life at the daily level.
10. Do learn from your relating experiences.

     

• Obviously I probably know what I am talking about. Yet how will you know what I am talking about if you do not remind yourself of these principles and practices and practice them?

   

Here is a list of some practices I have used, as well as I have noticed from others.

Sex Effectiveness List

1. Flirt psychologically - advance, open, then withdraw, close a bit. This stimulates and amplifies the male-female and masculine-feminine dynamics.
2. Challenge the other person psychologically a bit. Seek to penetrate each others defenses, attitudes, behaviors, creating a bit of tension between you that might have to be resolved with sexual intercourse and the feelings it evokes between you.
3. Be as flowing and accepting of the other person as possible in those moments you want to feel close together as the preliminary to sexual intercourse.
4. Talk more about your own feelings, images and needs and certainly less about the other person, so that you are revealing to your potential sexual partner.
5. Exaggerate a bit your behavior to get laughs and humor into the situation. Laughs and humor are more likely to lead to sexual intercourse between you than is seriousness and deadly demands to be given to.
6. Be daring and flexible at the same time. If your other does not want sexual intercourse at that time, switch to any other form of intimacy available, not to manipulate them into giving in to sexual intercourse, but to create the relating between you in the moment.
7. Always remember, sexual intercourse physically is not often the needed goal, but psychological intimacy often is.
8. Do not mistake physical sexual intercourse as psychological or relational intimacy. You cannot make up emotionally by having sex together. Sex is sex as a driving physical intercourse necessity. Sexual intercourse as the result of immediate intimacy via communication and shared feeling experiences is the foundation for the physical relating between you two.
9. Not sex first to achieve feeling intimacy.
10. Achieve some feeling intimacy and physical sex will be more possible as well.
11. Do not manipulate the other person into giving you sexual intercourse and relationship. This kind of power play fails to give satisfaction to either of you.
12. Do not seduce another person by physical means
13. Do not use sexual intercourse to get some other goal achieved.
14. Yet, if sex with someone with power over you, as in the movie industry, is necessary, don't be afraid to use sex as power manipulation once in awhile. Just know what you are doing. Don't deny to yourself or others the truth about your own behavior and motivations.
15. Negotiate sexual liaisons. Don't give sex away free. Sexual intercourse costs something to each party. Make sure that what you give is worth what is taken from you, and that you receive back in return.

You have heard that there is no free lunch.

Likewise, there is no free sex. Sex always costs something to each of the parties involved.

Those who sell sex for money, have their own psychological problems, like us all, but at least they may have realized this through the experience of selling their bodies. Sexual intercourse is itself an exchange business and therefore needs to be often negotiated, even in living together partner experiences. 

In an ongoing relationship of two people living together, this negotiating framework still holds. You want intercourse with him or her? What will they have to do to have sex with you and what will it cost them in the moment in terms of time and energy away from other projects they feel they need to do?

On the other hand, if you are relating together, the same precept as above applies the other way. Why should the children always come first, or some big work project, or earning money?

True and comprehensive sexual intercourse together means you guys have to take the time when you are both hot for it, right?

Take advantage of the moment at least sometimes or life flies right by you while you are trying to be important, or are driven by life's countless challenges and your own anxieties.

Enough said for now. Let's summarize.

True development of the human being in all her-his facets involves often both physical and psychological factors.

• Why not choose to include both then before, during and after sexual intercourse?

Strephon Kaplan-Williams is a professional Dreamwork Psychologist and relationships couselor. Strephon is available on a session basis via Skype conference calls. Please leave a message with your purpose, personal email, and Skype phone, on Strephon's Skype message service.

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Other trainers in dreamwork psychology are available for travel and giving workshops internationally. Leave an email message at one of our sites and our training director will get back to you.

His books are also available via RoseCirclePublishing.com.

Strephon invites you to benefit from his many writings on life issues at his membership and free blog site: StrephonSays.com.