Embracing Post-Traumatic Sex

We've been hearing a lot lately about so-called "terror sex" or "end-of-the-world" sex, a phenomenon in which some Americans are reportedly now feeling an increased sex drive in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Following this country's recent catastrophe, the story goes, strangers are reconnecting with a renewed sexual intensity. Reporters, for their part, are alternately speculating that "terror sex" is an attempt to triumph over death, or that we have a biologically programmed human need to propagate the species in the face of threats to our survival, or that fear and arousal are somehow intrinsically linked, or that sex is simply the means by which we re-establish meaning in the face of the unknown.

Of course, the problem with these explanations is that they don't fit with the clinical experience of a psychologist such as myself at all. In the 20 years that I've been practicing psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, I've treated many people who have lived through catastrophes, from survivors of violent crimes, to earthquake survivors, to people who have fled from terrorism in their homelands. On the occasions when these patients do report a parallel increase in sexual intensity, their primary issue isn't biological or existential. Rather, it is about safety. At the deepest level of our psyches, the real reason some of us get turned on by disasters is because disasters make us unconsciously feel safe to be sexual.

In this, those who find themselves especially erotically excited after a tragedy are no different than the rest of us. The human psyche is wired such that sexual desire can only be experienced in a safe context. Safety doesn't only refer to the absence of external dangers, like terrorism, but freedom from internal dangers like guilt, worry, shame, rejection and helplessness. People can't get turned on if they're worried about hurting their partners or feel overly responsible for satisfying them, if they're guilty about being selfish or feel shame, depression or helplessness. As an example, one female patient of mine can only get aroused if she has sex in the dark because the darkness helps her unconsciously feel safe from feelings of shame. A male patient likes to be on the bottom during sex because the image of a strong woman dominating him reassures him against his fears of hurting women. And yet another patient is aroused by taking on the dominant role in the bedroom because it reverses chronic feelings of helplessness. It is only when we feel safe -- albeit momentarily -- from these dangers that we can become sexually aroused.

A patient once told me about an incident in which he and his wife were held up at gunpoint, but managed to escape. This man had struggled on and off his whole life with depression, and his relationship with his wife was secure but rather flat and tepid. That night of the mugging, however, he told me that he was a veritable sexual tiger. When they finally came home, not only was he not depressed, he felt strangely excited. His wife looked different to him, he said. He noticed her body and was aroused by it. "I jumped her," he told me. "She was into it too. We did it on the living room floor. I can't tell you how unusual it was. It was like I almost felt reborn and somehow sex was a part of it."

As we went on to discover, on a certain level, my patient felt that escaping the threat of serious injury or death gave him a reprieve from the self-hatred that lay at the core of his depression. On a symbolic level, surviving a danger felt like he was given permission to be alive, that Fate was saying that he didn't deserve to suffer or die. Momentarily freed of his guilt and self-hatred, he could feel safe enough to get sexually aroused. Often people in his position will believe the adrenaline rush of fear is what is arousing them. But, in all of these cases, what we find is that it is the very surviving of the danger that is so arousing -- not, in fact, the danger itself.