Jack Morin

I think this might be a life changing book for me. It's too early to tell, since I just finished it, but it offers so much insight into human sexuality that I think it might have really helped me.

The book's great achievement, I think, is that it finds the middle ground between the kind of archaeological approach of Freudian analysis and the mechanical approach of behaviourism or whatever you call what's in vogue at the moment. Morin calls his approach the paradoxical perspective and looks at the interplay between emotion and sex. He argues that sexuality is greatly influenced by your childhood but not in the complex, almost mystical way that psychoanalysis proposes. This meant I was able to pinpoint aspects of my childhood and family background that had a significant impact on my emotional development and thus on my sexuality, without having to wade through nonsense about the Oedipal complex.

I really like Morin's prose style, too. He writes with the clarity required for technical exposition, but he also has the appropriate amount of lyricism for the subject of eroticism.

If you find yourself lost in the space between love and lust, I'd highly recommend this book.… (altro)