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THE EROTIC MIND by Jack Morin

THE EROTIC MIND

Unlocking the Inner Sources of Sexual Passion and Fulfillment

by Jack Morin

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-016975-3
Publisher: HarperCollins

A sex therapist invites readers to improve their own sex lives by learning from the turn-ons of others. San Francisco therapist Morin developed his Sexual Excitement Survey in the mid-1980s and since then has obtained from some 351 anonymous men and women, both straight and gay, descriptions of their peak erotic encounters and fantasies. Through analysis of their accounts and through his work as a therapist, Morin has come to some conclusions about eroticism, the most important being that it is paradoxical in nature: both joyful and dangerous, life-giving and troublesome. One day while contemplating the elegance of the equation Attraction + Obstacles = Excitement, he had a sudden insight: that eroticism has four cornerstoneslonging and anticipation, violating prohibitions, searching for power, and overcoming ambivalence. Morin also finds that six emotionsexuberance, satisfaction, closeness, anxiety, guilt, and angerare associated with peak erotic experiences and that a unifying scenario, or core erotic theme, shapes each individual's turn-ons. These ideas are explored and illustrated at some length with excerpts from survey responses, passages that some readers may find more of a turn-off than a turn-on, for their language is often crude, colorful, and explicit. Readers are urged to keep private sex journals and to explore their own core erotic themes. For those with what Morin terms ``troublesome turn-ons,'' he proposes a 7- step program for positive erotic change, which he takes care to distinguish from any existing 12-step self-help programs. For those who wish to participate in Morin's ongoing study of eroticism, a copy of his Sex Excitement Survey is provided in an appendix. Interesting for its paradoxical perspective on eroticism, but too abstract to be a truly effective self-help program. ($35,000 ad/promo; author tour)