Sexual excitement
R. J. Stoller
Sexual excitement depends on a scenario the person to be aroused has been
writing since childhood. The story is an adventure, an autobiography
disguised as fiction, in which the hero/heroine hides crucial intrapsychic
conflicts, mysteries, screen memories of actual traumatic events and the
resolution of these elements into a happy ending, best celebrated by
orgasm. The function of the fantasy is to take these painful experiences
and convert them to pleasure-triumph. In order to sharpen excitement-the
vibration between the fear of original traumas repeating and the hope of a
pleasurable conclusion this time-one introduces into the story elements of
risk (approximations of the trauma) meant to prevent boredom and safety
factors (sub-limnal signals to the storyteller that the risk are not truly
dangerous). Sexual fantasy can be studied by means of a person's daydreams
(including those chosen in magazines, books, plays, television, movies, and
outright pornography), masturbatory behavior, object choice, foreplay,
techniques of intercourse, or postcoital behavior.
