/similar_quotes/850

Showing 3 similar quotes for quote #850 from The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

Publisher: Free Press (1975)

194

As soon as it is fully accepted as a body by the partner, our self-consciousness vanishes; it merges with the body and with the self-consciousness and body of the partner. Four fragments of existence melt into one unity and things are no longer disjointed and grotesque: everything is “natural,” functional, expressed as it should be—and so it is stilled and justified. All the more is guilt wiped away when the body finds its natural usage in the production of a child. Nature herself then proclaims one’s innocence, how fitting it is that one should have a body, be basically a procreative animal.9 But we also know from experience that things don’t work so smoothly or unambiguously. The reason is not far to seek: it is right at the heart of the paradox of the creature. Sex is of the body, and the body is of death. As Rank reminds us, this is the meaning of the Biblical account of the ending of paradise, when the discovery of sex brings death into the world. As in Greek mythology too, Eros and Thanatos are inseparable; death is the natural twin brother of sex.10

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Is one oppressed by the burden of his life? Then he can lay it at his divine partner’s feet. Is self-consciousness too painful, the sense of being a separate individual, trying to make some kind of meaning out of who one is, what life is, and the like? Then one can wipe it away in the emotional yielding to the partner, forget oneself in the delirium of sex, and still be marvellously quickened in the experience. Is one weighed down by the guilt of his body, the drag of his animality that haunts his victory over decay and death? But this is just what the comfortable sex relationship is for: in sex the body and the consciousness of it are no longer separated; the body is no longer something we look at as alien to ourselves. As soon as it is fully accepted as a body by the partner, our self-consciousness vanishes; it merges with the body and with the self-consciousness and body of the partner. Four fragments of existence melt into one unity and things are no longer disjointed and grotesque: everything is “natural,” functional, expressed as it should be—and so it is stilled and justified. All the more is guilt wiped away when the body finds its natural usage in the production of a child. Nature herself then proclaims one’s innocence,

The inner self represents the freedom of thought, imagination, and the infinite reach of symbolism. The body represents determinism and boundness. The child gradually learns that his freedom as a unique being is dragged back by the body and its appendages which dicate “what” he is. For this reason sexuality is as much a problem for the adult as for the child: the physical solution to the problem of who we are and why we have emerged on this planet is no help—in fact, it is a terrible threat. It doesn’t tell the person what he is deep down inside, what kind of distinctive gift he is to work upon the world. This is why it is so difficult to have sex without guilt: guilt is there because the body casts a shadow on the person’s inner freedom, his “real self” that—through the act of sex—is being forced into a standardized, mechanical, biological role. Even worse, the inner self is not even being called into consideration at all; the body takes over completely for the total person, and this kind of guilt makes the inner self shrink and threaten to disappear.