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PloS One 2022The study purpose was to assess, in a U.S. probability sample of women, the specific ways women have discovered to experience pleasure from anal touch. Through...
The study purpose was to assess, in a U.S. probability sample of women, the specific ways women have discovered to experience pleasure from anal touch. Through qualitative pilot research with women that informed the development of the survey instrument used in this study, we identified three previously unnamed, but distinct, anal touch techniques that many women find pleasurable and that expand the anal sexual repertoire beyond the more commonly studied anal intercourse behaviors: Anal Surfacing, Anal Shallowing, and Anal Pairing. This study defines each technique and describes its prevalence among U.S. adult women. Weighted frequencies were drawn from the Second OMGYES Pleasure Report-a cross-sectional, online, national probability survey of 3017 American women's (age 18-93) sexual experiences and discoveries. Participants were recruited via the Ipsos KnowledgePanel®. Data suggest that 40% of women find 'Anal Surfacing' pleasurable: sexual touch by a finger, penis, or sex toy on and around the anus. Approximately 35% of women have experienced pleasure using 'Anal Shallowing': penetrative touch by a finger, penis, or sex toy just inside the anal opening, no deeper than a fingertip/knuckle. Finally, 40% of women make other forms of sexual touch more pleasurable using 'Anal Pairing': touch on or inside the anus that happens at the same time as other kinds of sexual touch such as vaginal penetration or clitoral touching. These data provide techniques that women can and do use to explore the anus as a pleasurable region for touch-which can enable women to better identify their own preferences, communicate about them and advocate for their sexual pleasure.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Anal Canal; Cross-Sectional Studies; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Pleasure; Sampling Studies; Sexual Behavior; Touch; United States; Young Adult
PubMed: 35767540
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268785 -
Frontiers in Neural Circuits 2017According to our model, the motivation for appetitive-searching vs. distress-avoiding behaviors is regulated by two parallel cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC)...
According to our model, the motivation for appetitive-searching vs. distress-avoiding behaviors is regulated by two parallel cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) re-entry circuits that include the core and the shell parts of the nucleus accumbens, respectively. An entire series of basal ganglia, running from the caudate nucleus on one side to the centromedial amygdala on the other side, control the intensity of these reward-seeking and -fleeing behaviors by stimulating the activity of the (pre)frontal and limbic cortices. Hyperactive motivation to display behavior that potentially results in reward induces feelings of hankering (relief leads to pleasure); while, hyperactive motivation to exhibit behavior related to avoidance of aversive states results in dysphoria (relief leads to happiness). These two systems collaborate in a reciprocal fashion. We hypothesized that the mechanism inducing the switch from bipolar depression to mania is the most essential characteristic of bipolar disorder. This switch is attributed to a dysfunction of the lateral habenula, which regulates the activity of midbrain centers, including the dopaminergic ventral tegmental area (VTA). From an evolutionary perspective, the activity of the lateral habenula should be regulated by the human homolog of the habenula-projecting globus pallidus, which in turn might be directed by the amygdaloid complex and the phylogenetically old part of the limbic cortex. In bipolar disorder, it is possible that the system regulating the activity of this reward-driven behavior is damaged or the interaction between the medial and lateral habenula may be dysfunctional. This may lead to an adverse coupling between the activities of the -fleeing and reward-seeking circuits, which results in independently varying activities.
Topics: Antidepressive Agents; Bipolar Disorder; Happiness; Humans; Models, Biological; Nerve Net; Neural Pathways; Pleasure
PubMed: 28588455
DOI: 10.3389/fncir.2017.00035 -
Integrative Psychological & Behavioral... Dec 2021The present study examines the embodied feelings of daily-life among a sample of Albanian college students. The specific methodology of 'body-diaries' used for such a...
The present study examines the embodied feelings of daily-life among a sample of Albanian college students. The specific methodology of 'body-diaries' used for such a purpose goes beyond a mere experimental writing, it fosters a creative and (un)comfortable way for making sense of bodies as subjects. Sharing intimacy and co-constructing pleasure and pain takes place in the unpopular, pre-web 2.0, textual format of a diary, lacking of the contemporary usual online audience. The innovative aspect, here, is the explicit focus on putting one's body into words in daily-life. Such a methodology stems from embodiment and critical sexuality studies and follows the idea that symbolic realms and abstraction are always already materially located and speaking. The complex relationships between language and body is elaborated with respect to systemic and individual communication strategies. How do we come to terms with sensations of pleasure in our everyday routine? How do students approach themselves and others when explicitly asked to focus on bodily issues in a rapidly changing society like Albania? A a particular emphasis will be given, then, to the ongoing transformations between public and private spheres and related affective reconfigurations.
Topics: Albania; Communication; Humans; Language; Pleasure; Students
PubMed: 34169441
DOI: 10.1007/s12124-021-09616-w -
The International Journal of... Apr 2020The nature of the intersection between literature and psychoanalysis has been variously theorized since Freud first acknowledged his debt to the "poets and...
The nature of the intersection between literature and psychoanalysis has been variously theorized since Freud first acknowledged his debt to the "poets and philosophers". I propose that one way we might conceptualize the shared work of poetry and psychoanalysis is as the working-through of the founding violence of our initiation into language, a working-through sustained by a bonus of pleasure. A detailed reading of "In the village" by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop suggests that she and Piera Aulagnier may be read as parallel theorists of this necessity for a bonus of representational pleasure. Aulagnier's concept of the pictogram, a primal psychic representation recording the affect present at the moment of the first encounter between mother and infant, places reciprocal pleasure at the origins of the infant's capacity to invest in the activity of representing. Bishop's text stages an initial trauma, a maternal scream, damaging her child's linguistic functioning. It then charts the progressive revivifying of the child's representational capacities as she hears a "beautiful sound". This leads to a partial cure of her linguistic functioning, enabling her to metabolize the initial scream, to find metaphorical resonance within language and to delimit the impact of the initial trauma.
Topics: Female; Humans; Language; Pleasure; Psychoanalysis; Psychotherapy; Violence
PubMed: 33952042
DOI: 10.1080/00207578.2019.1698299 -
The International Journal on Drug Policy Nov 2017Harm reduction policy and praxis has long struggled to accommodate the pleasures of alcohol and other drug use. Whilst scholars have consistently highlighted this...
BACKGROUND
Harm reduction policy and praxis has long struggled to accommodate the pleasures of alcohol and other drug use. Whilst scholars have consistently highlighted this struggle, how pleasure might come to practically inform the design and delivery of harm reduction policies and programs remains less clear. The present paper seeks to move beyond conceptual critiques of harm reduction's 'pleasure oversight' to more focused empirical analysis of how flows of pleasure emerge, circulate and, importantly, may be reoriented in the course of harm reduction practice.
METHODS
We ground our analysis in the context of detailed ethnographic research in a drug consumption room in Frankfurt, Germany. Drawing on recent strands of post-humanist thought, the paper deploys the concept of the 'consumption event' to uncover the manner in which these facilities mediate the practice and embodied experience of drug use and incite or limit bodily potentials for intoxication and pleasure.
RESULTS
Through the analysis, we mapped a diversity of pleasures as they emerged and circulated through events of consumption at the consumption room. Beyond the pleasurable intensities of intoxication's kick, these pleasures were expressed in a range of novel capacities, practices and drug using bodies. In each instance, pleasure could not be reduced to a simple, linear product of drug use. Rather, it arose for our participants through distinctive social and affective transformations enabled through events of consumption at the consumption room and the generative force of actors and associations of which these events were composed.
CONCLUSION
Our research suggests that the drug consumption room serves as a conduit through which its clients can potentially enact more pleasurable, productive and positive relations to both themselves and their drug use. Acknowledging the centrality of pleasure to client engagement with these facilities, the paper concludes by drawing out the implications of these findings for the design and delivery of consumption room services.
Topics: Affect; Anthropology, Cultural; Female; Germany; Harm Reduction; Humanism; Humans; Male; Pleasure; Social Environment; Substance-Related Disorders
PubMed: 28893455
DOI: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2017.07.005 -
Substance Abuse 2019There is a dearth of literature concerning the sexual behaviors of women who inject drugs. The existing literature emphasizes the violence, trauma, and social...
There is a dearth of literature concerning the sexual behaviors of women who inject drugs. The existing literature emphasizes the violence, trauma, and social disadvantage experienced by these women and obscures any sense of agency or sexual pleasure. This omission imperils our ability to develop effective interventions for women, ignores the true context of their sexual and injection practices, and presumes women to be free of agency and thus at the will of external social, environmental, and economic factors. This qualitative study strives to extend the boundaries of conventional risk-focused research to understand the complex and multidimensional sexual practices of women who inject drugs. Purposive sampling was used to select women who inject drugs from a syringe exchange program in New York City. The principal investigator and trained study staff conducted interviews with 26 women. The interview transcripts were thematically coded in Atlas.ti with a grounded theory approach to understand the concerns, actions, and practices to further explain patterns. Four themes emerged with respect to women's descriptions of their sexual and injection experiences: (a) linguistic parallels of sexual and injection experiences, (b) substituting sex with injection drug use, (c) pleasure, and (d) injection drug use as intimacy. Our findings indicated that there was much positive discourse about sexual experiences and injection drug practices, with some women describing injecting as a substitute for negative sexual experiences and others noting that injection drug use served as a foundation for intimacy and eroticism in a relationship. In contrast to the literature, women who inject drugs demonstrated power and agency and discussed pleasurable sexual experiences. Ultimately, interventions should recognize the realities of women's experiences to help empower them to practice safer sexual and injection practices.
Topics: Adult; Cocaine-Related Disorders; Decision Making; Female; Grounded Theory; Heroin Dependence; Humans; Middle Aged; Needle-Exchange Programs; New York City; Orgasm; Pleasure; Qualitative Research; Sexual Behavior; Substance Abuse, Intravenous; Women; Young Adult
PubMed: 30810509
DOI: 10.1080/08897077.2018.1547811 -
Culture, Health & Sexuality Feb 2024This article draws from qualitative interviews to provide the first in-depth exploration of reasons for engaging in chemsex in the Philippines. It articulates the many...
This article draws from qualitative interviews to provide the first in-depth exploration of reasons for engaging in chemsex in the Philippines. It articulates the many forms that drugs assume as , or enhancers of libido, demonstrating the multidimensional pleasures of chemsex along overlapping sensorial and affective planes. By showing the inextricability of the corporeal to the affective, and of the emotional to the erotic, we contend that chemsex also involves the embodied and performed attainment of pleasure. As such, chemsex is both central to modern sexual scripts yet also a negotiable aspect of any sexual encounter. In constructing this rare account of drug use in settings of pleasure in the Philippines, we situate chemsex within a historical pattern of bodily tinkering and, more significantly, demystify people who use drugs by departing not only from global public health's pathologising approach to chemsex, but also from the scholarly tendency to locate drug use in the country within scenes of hardship and marginalisation.
Topics: Male; Humans; Homosexuality, Male; Unsafe Sex; Illicit Drugs; Pleasure; Philippines; Sexual and Gender Minorities; Sexual Behavior; Substance-Related Disorders
PubMed: 37000038
DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2023.2192256 -
CNS Spectrums Apr 2019The habenula, which in humans is a small nuclear complex within the epithalamus, plays an essential role in regulating the intensity of reward-seeking and...
The habenula, which in humans is a small nuclear complex within the epithalamus, plays an essential role in regulating the intensity of reward-seeking and adversity-avoiding behavior in all vertebrate ancestors by regulating the activity of ascending midbrain monoaminergic tracts. In lampreys, considered to possess a brain comparable to humans' earliest evolutionary vertebrate ancestor, the activity of the lateral habenula is controlled by a subset of glutamatergic neurons of the animal's pallidum (habenula-projecting globus pallidus) that inhibit reward-seeking behavior when this conduct is not successful enough. The pathophysiological roles of the habenula and habenula-projecting globus pallidus in humans have hardly been studied, which is probably due to insufficient resolution of common neuroimaging techniques. Their dysregulation may, however, play an essential role in the pathogenesis of mood and stress disorders and addiction.
Topics: Behavior, Addictive; Biological Evolution; Habenula; Happiness; Humans; Nerve Net; Pleasure; Reward; Substance-Related Disorders
PubMed: 29091022
DOI: 10.1017/S1092852917000748 -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Apr 2020Can people track several pleasures? In everyday life, pleasing stimuli rarely appear in isolation. Yet, experiments on aesthetic pleasure usually present only one image...
Can people track several pleasures? In everyday life, pleasing stimuli rarely appear in isolation. Yet, experiments on aesthetic pleasure usually present only one image at a time. Here, we ask whether people can reliably report the pleasure of either of two images seen in a single glimpse. Participants (N = 13 in the original; +25 in the preregistered replication) viewed 36 Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS) images that span the entire range of pleasure and beauty. On each trial, the observer saw two images, side by side, for 200 ms. An arrow cue pointed, randomly, left, right, or bidirectionally. Left or right indicated which image (the target) to rate while ignoring the other (the distractor); bidirectional requested rating the combined pleasure of both images. In half the blocks, the cue came before the images (precuing). Otherwise, it came after (postcuing). Precuing allowed the observer to ignore the distractor, while postcuing demanded tracking both images. Finally, we obtained single-pleasure ratings for each image shown alone. Our replication confirms the original study. People have unbiased access to their felt pleasure from each image and the average of both. Furthermore, the variance of the observer's report is similar whether reporting the pleasure of one image or the average pleasure of two. The undiminished variance for reports of the average pleasure of two images indicates either that the underlying pleasure variances are highly correlated, or, more likely, that the variance arises in the common reporting process. In brief, observers can faithfully track at least two visual pleasures.
Topics: Adult; Beauty; Esthetics; Female; Humans; Male; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Pleasure; Young Adult
PubMed: 31898260
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-019-01695-6 -
Medecine Sciences : M/S Jan 2023
Topics: Humans; Pleasure; Coinfection; Autophagy
PubMed: 36692313
DOI: 10.1051/medsci/2022189