Sexuality and Time
by Edwin L. Young, PhD

 I am a 77-year-old male retired psychologist.  I dealt with both genders for over forty years.  The number of people I dealt with in private practice, institutions, schools, and universities is unrecorded but I can estimate it to be many thousands.  Early on, I began to form the opinion that the human being is extraordinarily plastic, capable of being and behaving in a vast variety of different ways.  I inferred from observations of people over decades that most remained rather constant over time but that these were people who remained in the same or similar environments.  Of those whose environments changed dramatically, their way of being and behaving also changed dramatically and for those who did not change with the changed environment their tenure in the change was short-lived.  Reflecting on my many encounters with people who confided in me about their sexual behavior and preferences, I concluded that the human has the potential to form a wide variety of close relationships with a wide variety of types of other people and that they can derive sexual pleasure from anything that can stimulate their sex organs.  Circumstances are a significant determinative factor.  Cultures, periods of history, religion, life circumstances, and so many other external factors can shape proclivities and temporary alterations.  Over the last almost sixty years, I have also noticed that psychological 'conclusions' tend to trend with the vogue.  I would caution psychologists who write for the general public to avoid definitive pronouncements about the nature of human beings.  Perhaps, we are extraordinary pliable and plastic.  Ten, twenty, one hundred, one thousand years from now today's pronouncements may seem so idiotic as to be laughable.  Yet, as arrogance seems to be a part of our current nature, I presume such 'ex cathedra' pronouncements will continue and will continue to be a lucrative way to make a living.  Expertise enjoys its time on the stage.  After all that flourishing, expertise tends to be anchored in its time and a very transitory thing.

3. "The Ice Storm" (1997) movie about the negative effects of wife-swapping in 1973

4. "The Blood Oranges" (1999) movie supposedly in a timeless context but reflective of the 1970s

5. "American Swing" 2008 New York City's Plato's Retreat, the legendary sex club that catered to adventurous heterosexual couples in the 1970s and beyond.