Why sex is important in life?

 The role of sex in your life.

Today we are talking about sex, and since everyone at heart is ready to consider himself an expert in this field, it seemed to me right to provide the microphone only to professionals. In the Moscow studio of our radio there are sexologist Alexander Poleev and psychologist Boris Novobozhkin, clinical psychotherapist Elena Levental joined us by phone from New York.

Hello gentlemen! I know that psychotherapists - if very rude and very general - are always for sex, because it relieves stress, gives physical health and so on ... Actually, no one argues with the fact that sex is good. In terms of quantitative indicators, the people of Russia have everything in order with their intimate life: according to a poll conducted by the British firm SSL International, the average Russian makes love 122 times a year - three times more often than the average Japanese, but slightly less often than Americans. However, we got together to talk about the role of sex in our ordinary, everyday life, and how it corresponds to the public stereotype.

Boris Novobozhkin, what is your opinion: literature, cinema, television, theaters adequately reflect the real role of sex in the life of an ordinary person, do they underestimate or, on the contrary, overestimate this role? In a nutshell, please. Boris Novobozhkin: Different theaters, different cinema and, I would say, different sex. You said at the beginning that psychologists believe that sex relieves stress, I would not agree with that, it all depends on a more specific situation. Generally speaking, sex is a kind of cut through which we can consider human life.

But there are many other sections of this kind, and therefore, in this case, I would not talk about some percentage, role, how important it is, everything depends, among other things, on trends in various psychologies and in psychotherapy. If psychoanalysis really put sex at the forefront, then later the situation changed and, I repeat, depending on the direction, different instincts were put at the forefront, including not only instincts, there are different concepts, different points of view. I think in the course of today's broadcast we will find out about this, and I will tell you in more detail about my view of things. Tatiana Tkachuk: Thank you, Boris. Elena, what is your point of view?

Elena Leventhal: The media are forced to give some exaggerated image of any phenomenon, this is, as it were, a requirement of the genre. But as far as American media is concerned, I believe that it fairly adequately reflects the role of sex in modern American society. A very interesting question - is such a free manifestation of sexuality in society good or bad? We can touch on this issue, in my opinion, this is quite important. Tatiana Tkachuk: Thank you, Elena. Alexander Poleev, whose point of view is closer to you?

Alexander Poleev: In principle, Lena's point of view from the glorious city of New York is closer to me. I believe that literature, cinema, theater, television, ancient manuscripts in quantitative terms really adequately reflect the role of sex in human life, and there are big claims in terms of quality, since literature, writers, authors of plays, and so on, rightfully claim the role of engineers of human souls , but nevertheless, the professional engineers of human souls are psychologists, psychotherapists, and therefore I could argue about the quality of reflection.

As for the quantitative, there is such a peculiarity: after all, we really do not practically engage in intimate life in life, in total, some one hundredth of our time, but we think about it, fantasize a lot, ours largely depends on it. self-esteem, our self-perception, our way of life. And in this regard, of course, the great interest of art and the media in sex seems to me absolutely adequate.

Tatiana Tkachuk: Thank you, Alexander Poleev. Now let's see how people, our listeners, reacted, we asked this question on the site. But before I put the question about the role of sex in our life on the Radio Liberty website, I "tested" this question on my friends. The result was as follows: men answered in unison that sex is a hundred times more important than it is recognized by society, women, shrugging their shoulders, said that the role of sex, well, oh-oh-oh, is greatly exaggerated. Honestly, I was puzzled and even thought about how, in general, with such a formulation of the question, mankind manages to make up some kind of pairs ...

Then the listeners' mail went, by the way, mostly sent with the mark "not for publication", which suggests that the majority of people are still not ready to publicly speak on this topic. And this post brought together two letters from young, apparently, women: Masha writes that sex is not more important for her than friendship, communication with parents, study and work; Anna - that sex plays a priority role in her life. And next to it are two letters from men: Anthony writes that there is a stirring up of an unhealthy interest in sex in society today; another listener, who did not subscribe, says that for the sake of sex he is ready to quit his career, abandon all other contacts, including friends, colleagues and in general the rest of humanity, and leave only his partner. In a word, the mail showed that it is probably not true to say that for men in general and for women in general sex is important to varying degrees? Boris, what do you think?

Boris Novobozhkin: I think, indeed, in order to answer this question, you need to understand what situation the person is in, who specifically did you interview and what specific relationships, let's say, with sex this person has. If we talk about the role of food in human life, then hungry people will give one answer, and well-fed people will give a completely different answer. But I have some suspicions that when you interviewed your acquaintances, you got such a result due to what psychologists, or rather, sociologists, would call an unrepresentative sample, that sample that, perhaps,

does not reflect the situation that exists in the whole society, for this, strictly speaking, it is necessary to conduct a sociological study. And, in particular, those polls that are conducted on the Internet, you understand, we also poll quite specific people here. And to some extent it can be assumed that, for example, an Internet user may be more puzzled by sexual problems, because at the moment they are just not having sex, but sitting at the computer.

Tatyana Tkachuk: Thank you, Boris Novobozhkin. We have a listener call. Hello, please introduce yourself. Elena: One of the characters of Woody Allen, I don't remember in which film, to the rhetorical question - is sex dirty? - answered like this: "Of course, dirty, then only if it is done correctly." This is a joke.

And I would like to say that sex plays one of the main roles in my life, and I think that I need it to feel the fullness, versatility, and colorfulness of life. I think that without sex everything becomes somehow insipid: the food is no longer so tasty and there seems to be no tone in the body, everything is somehow insipid, as if spaghetti without sauce, and the world is seen in black and white instead of colored. Another thing is when you are making love with your loved one, the process of seduction and being seduced, it is nice to do crazy things and then remember them, and again want to do it all over again.