EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU SO SEXY
Sex Therapy – Irving Kirsch and Brenda Smith
Where to begin, dear readers; I mean, where to begin? Here at Cosmic Pancakes! we collect old hypnosis books, sexy hypnosis books, and quality academic hypnosis books. Okay, we troll each other with the sexy ones (and some of the old ones), but mostly we’re here for the hypnosis. But what happens when one of your academic heroes – eg, Professor Irving Kirsch – has written a sexy book? Well, you just have to troll your other half with that.
And so it began. But Irving hasn’t written a lewd novel, or a sexy fake therapy book, or a book about sexy hypnosis. No, Irving has written a book literally about sex therapy. Now, you might be thinking a) oh, actually, that will be technical (and therefore dull) and a very unsexy method of making people’s sex lives and sexual dysfunctions much better, in a purely professional and upstanding way; or b) here’s a particularly unsexy set of case studies of people having their sexual dysfunctions therapised.
So, it’s mostly ‘a’, everybody, but it’s not dull at all. And it’s a bit sexy – if you’re actually one of the many adults actually having sex and interested in the nuances of how it could potentially be better. Now, obviously, over in Cosmic Pancakes! towers, we have the best sex you can possibly imagine, as I’m sure you are having, too, in your own towers; but it’s always nice to hear that there isn’t much room for improvement, and, actually, there are people with hang-ups that you’d never even considered.
Voyeurs, sado-masochists, pedos; they’re all here. Even the shoe fetishist gets a decent case study from the Masters and Johnson database on which much of the book is based. (It starts out so well-meaning, but ends in public masturbation on the train, with his crotch covered by a newspaper. He can even cum by just looking at women’s legs and shoes with no “manual manipulation”. Yeah, on a train. On YOUR train. That’s precisely what that smell is.)
It’s not all extremities though; a lot of it is overcoming very modern ailments, even though it was written in 1973. Literally this book is older than myself. Maybe premature ejaculation is a bit of an issue? Or impotence? Or lack of orgasm, in any gender? Before this book you’d be splurging $2,500 on a 10-day course of treatment. In 1973. According to Google, that’s $16,712.16 in today’s money. That’s a lot for most of us to find.
But the book presents the Masters and Johnson course that can be followed at home, for the cost of the paperback alone. And it’s not onerous – you just need to be honest, dedicated, open, and prepared to change. And then it all gets better. Everyone gets hard and cums. Literally everywhere. Honestly, I think this would make an awesome gift for every adult you know. Why suffer? Even with YouTube, PornHub, and Goop, reading this small and simple paperback will take you to a much more sensible and successful place so much faster than most modern equivalents. Learn the squeeze technique and bask in newly found intimacy.
But then… then… there is an overly long diatribe on Freud. Man, that guy was fucked up. Kirsch and Smith are pretty dismissive of his generalisations, but they are still shocking. I can only wonder what Freud would have made of transgendered and/or non-binary people. (Yes, the “and/or” was a joke… but I felt the need to highlight it… oh, never mind.) You can forgive Freud for writing in the early 20th Century when information, evidence, and lived experience were rare, but what you cannot forgive him for is his blatant, decisive pseudo-explanations for how people are.
It’s one thing for not knowing how or why people are the way they are. It’s another to (ahem) take one’s own experience and thoughts, and then paste them on everyone else’s experiences and self-identities. I can’t say for definite that Freud wanted to fuck both his parents, but I’m pretty sure he did, just on reading this alone. And I don’t really want to expand my thinking to all the other areas of sexuality that Freud wrote about. Suffice to say, I think Freud was driven to sexuality because he had “issues”.
But, you know, this book is much more than this. Freud is discussed mostly for context and the therapy has little to do with his ideas. It’s smart, simple, concise and practical. I don’t know what I expected from Prof Kirsch but he certainly delivered. So many times I had to quote from it to Amy, mostly for LOLZ, but sometimes because it’s just so insightful. Unfortunately, I don’t know where you’ll find a copy; we can’t reveal our special skills in book acquisition, so you’ll just have to look out for it and set an alert on eBay or something.
