The Human Psychology, Sexuality, and Erotica of Disgust.

Disgust is a human emotion which has been hugely neglected in psychology, and other fields of study, in its complex meanings, human, and social functions, which to some extent, are shaped by our cultural views of other people, and how we relate and think about certain marginalised or oppressed groups in society, such as psychiatric-diagnosed people, who are often subjected to sexual stereotypes or mentalisms, which we can be both inducted into, or feel compelled to parody, copy, act out, or absurdify.

Masochism is to a some extent an induction, and sadism is internalised oppression, abuse, violence, cruelty, and bullying, although some people are obviously more genetically or naturally inclined towards these tendencies, which cannot be completely eliminated or reversed, by the counterproductive use of bullying in mental health or psychiatry, or by the obsessive hygiene, violence, and unpredictability of psychiatric aversion therapy. These terms, ‘masochism’ and ‘sadism’, are also to some extent, psychiatric labels, for more complex human, gender, or sexual needs, such as the need for love, assertiveness, or nurturing, which have perhaps been abused or deprived in a persons childhood, and as more genuine human or individual needs in adult life, have by-passed some more socially rigid, gender, desire, or behaviour categories. In this respect, men who are slightly sexually passive, nurturing, or masochistic towards women, and women who are slightly sexually assertive, dominant, or sadistic towards men, are in a sense, more naturally and completely human, unless these fairly natural human needs are repressed, denied, or exploited, making them extreme.

The lack of writing or psychology on human disgust, has left a great deal of this complex human subject and emotion, to be discovered in more obscure areas of literature and writing, such as hard-core pornography or erotic literature. On a sexual and social level, some pornographic literature, and social observation, sheds light on the complex and paradoxical nature of human disgust. The human and social meanings both projected and received about disgust, are conditioned not only by ingrained conservative or rigid attitudes towards sexuality and social conduct, which can be conditioned by political, religious, or class notions, but are also bound up with some contradictory notions of both contempt, and pity, as well as more intense contradictory human emotions, such as extreme prejudice, empathy, and love. Disgust is also a social power response, and like sexuality, is also to do with the power relations in society.

Because of some cultural, political, religious, social or class notions of disgust, disgust tends to be mostly perceived in the derogatory or pejorative, but as with disgust and sexuality, which is also very complex and paradoxical, I think that psychological disgust is both a valid, necessary, and a positive human emotion, if it’s understood for what it is and does in its entirety. I believe it is impossible to love, without feeling some disgust, unless we opt for a dangerous traditional Nietzschean, of extreme individualism with a total absence of empathy or pity, and without a complex grasp of society and human nature. This would not only be only impossible without the use of extreme cruelty and emotional indifference towards others, but is also stupid, in the sense that such total emotional vacuity, would by-pass these other complex human and social behaviours, meanings, and functions of disgust. This reminds me of the psychopathic and sexually eccentric character Otto, in the comedy film A Fish Called Wanda, who claims to be both a Buddhist and a fan of the philosopher Nietzsche, and who believes that the central concept of Buddhism is "Every man for himself".

Any kind of political or especially religious ideology or dogma, can be used to justify the supposed mystique, single cue, or banality of human disgust, which in reality, has very deliberate and complex social meanings and human responses. Likewise, sexuality can both be both hypocritically justified, and repressively condemned by religious people, if sexuality isn’t acknowledged as both a shared human, and very much an individual behaviour, with both separately very selfish, and very altruistic desires, needs, and motives. Some aspects of sexuality are inevitably very animalistic, and extremely self indulgent, which is why people have killed in order to get or revenge it, whilst other aspects of sexuality are intrinsically bound up with the need to express, share, give and receive, human sensuality, sexual desire, intensity of feeling, or love. But these are still very separate aspects of sexuality, albeit on quite a wide scale, and to give these very different ends of sexual behaviour and experience, a false holistic blurring, or a simplistic unified definition, inevitably leads to both extreme hypocrisy and distortion.

Overt examples of this, have been documented in the behaviours of religious fundamentalist, or cult leaders, who have either been exposed by dissenting disciples, as sexual hypocrites, or eventually exposed by survivors, as to the nature of their hypocrisy, sexual violence, oppression, and extreme sexual corruption, which exists in most religious groups to some extent, because of the ideological, oversimplified, and blurred-holistic model of sexuality, along with simultaneous anti-sexuality moral views, attitudes, and opinions.

Disgust itself, is also an active sexual feeling and emotion, and it both deliberately attracts and repels, which can instigate or create certain sexual reactions or responses in others, in order to distort, positively define, stigmatise, enhance, or negatively oppose, whilst contradictorily and inevitably creating some human attraction, because human attraction is a human function of disgust, just as much as empathy or love is also a part of it. This is why aversion therapy is so unpredictable and counterproductive in the long run, making peoples natural or individual sexual differences, needs, or tendencies, magnified, distorted, or extreme. It’s hard to admit to or realise this active or attractive deliberate sexual use or function of disgust, because of obsessive sexual and mental health hygiene, combined with our modern delusions, that such "sexually repressed views", are typical of a past Victorian era, which has supposedly ceased to exist in its sexual attitudes and opinions within modern society.

The Victorian era has a huge hangover effect in society, and in any case, the Victorians created these active disgust sexual-responses, through extreme sexual morality and repression, but they also failed to realise, or refused to admit, that the deliberate use of disgust, very much had a wider social and human function, which included both positive and negative meanings and responses. Only some modern sexual psychologists, such as Terrence Sellers in particular, a SM erotic writer and ex-prostitute, have realised and written about this more positive and complex social and human psychological function of disgust, and taken the subject on, within the context of Jungian ‘psychic transference’, which I have felt was extremely important to point out and widely expand upon, in this mental health article.