EXCERPTS AND COMMENTARY:

A. Chattopadhyaya, PhD.
The Psycholinguistics of Repression 96p., Mangalore University Press, 2002
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I must say I had fun reading this rambling thesis. It was sufficiently erudite and although in some places utterly incomprehensible, it made some sense to me. The overall mask of social denial is a posture the author doesn’t hesitate to ridicule. He points out that energy spent in communication or proselytic fury is simply the energy of attention. The thesis involves the choice of words, but the overall point he makes is the ’self targeting’ nature, the cry for attention inherent in the moralist.

In ground breaking research his college laboratory in the United States tested ten subjects using controversial media. Apparently several highly conservative individuals tested overwhelmingly susceptible to various different types of fringe media and reacted violently. They went on to register formal complaints, even bring a lawsuit to bear against the three students involved in the experiment. Their demand was not that their personal results be suppressed but that the whole experiment be disbanded and the students dismissed. In this paper he calls that behaviour ’smokescreening’ and states that it is the norm, not an aberration.

Using the example of hostility towards homosexuality. It’s flashpoint of violence peaks usually only in “adolescent males unsure of their sexual roles, and frustrated by information society – which offers every opportunity and yet never any release.” He then goes on to say “Any sentiment of violence or hostility is a direct manifestation of this repressed libido – like we see in American society today directed against registered sex offenders.”

He frequently quotes Wilhelm Reich and Amy Adler whose work in this area has earned them the respect of a few, and the derision of many.

He goes on to indict legislators and politicians who focus on sexually charged issues and human sexuality riding the wave of media and attention to high office. “They too are simply advertising their notion of what is in the public mind.” His conclusion is simply this: they are their stated foe. It is like “an auto immune disease of the mind.” They are violently attacking any manifestation of their own ‘turn-on,’ because it turns them on. This admission is invisible to them. “The self-realized man is like a king among emperors and their wardrobes.”

The primary point which Impressed me is his emphasis on studying the “linguistics of repression in puerile disguises” in its capacity to reveal what is actually meant. “The words used during pre-linguistic stages to the child are themselves a form of social conditioning, and studied with phonetic etymologies – one finds a large number of sexually charged sounds and syllables, as well as concepts.” The list is huge, compiled over years – but some examples he gives that I can remember are ‘bear’ not a friendly animal, but a homophone for ‘naked’ – ‘poopy’ which is all but synonymous with excrement, the addition of the syllable ‘-kins’ to words immediately charges it with incest motive, etc… The same thing happens in all language bases.

He goes on to direct language and censorship issues. The adult language which is censored from television, film and polite conversation – is immediately charged with power. It is elevated in status to being language that can provoke rage in public by its very utterance. Stickered record albums outsell their ‘radio’ versions two to one. Why then, knowing the status this gives a word, do we exactly promote it thus. Yet again, we are revealing what turns us on. By comparing which sets of words are considered ‘dirty’ we can conclude the very sexual behaviours of people. For example, one subject who was introduced into light alolagnia and ‘water sports’ by a sexual partner suddenly revised his list of ‘dirty words’ to include the word ‘piss.’ Before he discovered his pleasure in ‘pissing’ he did not consider the word even worthy of notice. This ‘adult’ language is also used extensively in an intimate context. It is so ‘turning on’ because of it’s forbidden nature.

We are asleep to the fact that we FORBID what WE WANT. It’s like putting a neon sign up saying: this is MY PERVERSION. This principle may apply to all laws. We are a species in denial, and that is the death of freedom for all.

Adult film actors are not given scripts, so their conversation during lovemaking is almost a free-association exercise. The analysis of their verbal expostulations made up the raunchiest portion of the paper – but good reading overall. He goes on to say that cross-indexing these lists of words in different communities, along with the sex-laws of those communities, and the list of words considered ‘foul language’ together in aggregates – will give you a cohesive grasp of their hidden behaviours and paraphilias.

I have captured the essence of the paper here, but I would recommend reading the entire thing to anyone in the field, or even interested. The body of evidence in support of the conclusions is exhaustive and detailed. Above all – he stresses that the information age has changed the access we have to information but not the attitudes we have to that information.

He uses quotes like “judge not lest ye be judged” to illustrate that our species seems to have built in safety valves for the aggression that can be generated by twisted crusaders with agendas of power. Now how can we find them and how do we get them to heed their own creed before the bloody tide rises for us all?

Kathy Srinivas, M.D.

And anything published online has the potential to turn into a conversation, in a way that TV and print don’t facilitate.

I think one reason for the sexual revolution you mention in your “global trends” essay (http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/ccies/globaltrends.php) is that women are getting together and talking about sex, and starting to feel like they deserve a better piece of the pie.

In the US especially, sexual conversation is a huge part of our interaction — not just in media, but every time women get together with women, and sometimes now in co-ed groups, the conversation turns to sex.

I just learned about SexQuest today and I’m delighted to find it!