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The Return of child pornography
Paul writes that in 1970, the National Commission on Obscenity and Pornography noted that the "taboo against pedophilia had almost remained inviolate and that the use of prepubescent children in pornography was almost nonexistent. But between 1996 and 2004, the total number of cases handled by the FBI's cyber-crime investigators increased twenty-three fold."
File sharing networks ensure the availability of a "huge quantity of child pornography."
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports a fourfold increase in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that depict child pornography or child erotica images just from 2001 to 2002.
John B. Rabun, Jr. described his experience working as program manager for the Louisville-Jefferson County, Kentucky Exploited & Missing Child Unit in the 1980's. Well before the explosion of Internet pornography, while hundreds of adults were being prosecuted for various crimes involving the sexual exploitation of child through prostitution, a successful prosecution of 40 major cases found:
At the time of their arrest of and/or service of search warrants, ALL of these adult predators were found with various forms of adult pornography and in most cases child nudes and/or pornography.
Viewers of regular pornography often inadvertently come across pictures of child pornography. It's a slippery slope, what first seems like a harmless fantasy, becomes subconsciously linked to sexual arousal. The three A's of Internet pornography: access, affordability anonymity
A Culture Out of Control
1) Americans rent 800 million pornographic videos and DVDs ( 1 in 5 of all rented movies )
2) $ 4 billion spent on video porn yearly in the US
3) 1 in 4 Internet users look at pornographic web site in any given month
4) Divorce lawyers report a startling upsurge in cases where Internet pornography was a contributing factor in the break up of marriages.
5) Preadolescents are now being treated for pornography addiction, children, some as young as 11 are creating their own pornographic web sites or texting naked pictures of them- selves to friends. Toddlers have been reported acting out moves from pornographic movies.
Affect on the Brain, "Neuroplasticity"
Dr. Norman Doidge, Research Faculty at the Center for Psychoanalytical Training and Research at Columbia University, explains how pornographic tastes can be acquired by altering or "rewiring" the brain. "Human libido is not a hardwired, invariable biological urge, but can be curiously fickle, easily altered by our psychology and the history of our sexual encounters," Doidge calls this "sexual plasticity." Neurons that fire together, wire together.
Pornography has the capacity to reshape the brain in ways similar to the biochemistry of addiction. This evidenced by the evolution of hardcore pornography over the last thirty years to become increasingly graphic and sadomasochistic, fusing sex with hatred and humiliation. The naked image is so prevalent, it has lost its ability to excite, and deviant behavior becomes necessary. Like a drug addict who can no longer get high, pornography customers are building up a tolerance to tamer content. "All addicts show a loss of control of the activity, compulsively seeking it out despite negative consequences, developing tolerance so that they need higher and higher levels of stimulation for satisfaction, and experience withdrawal if they can't consummate the addictive act." All addiction involves long-term, sometimes lifelong neuroplastic change in the brain, eventually resulting in decrease of pleasure.
Pornography's effect on relationships
Pornography use affects intimacy and sexual intimacy in both men and women. Women report feeling both insecure: not feeling sexy or attractive enough because they don't resemble the women in pornographic videos and betrayed: it feels like their husband is cheating with another woman, even if it's not a flesh and blood woman. Male pornography users can avoid the uncertainty of dealing with women who might possibly reject them, her vulnerabilities, his fears and insecurities all lie unaddressed. Pornography use affects a couple's sense of trust.
Studies show that heavy porn viewers have a less positive view of marriage. Writes Paul, "most porn-centric fantasies are far from matrimony-oriented. Porn is a fantasy of permanent and unfettered bachelorhood; married characters are adulterous and sexual pleasure is hampered by monogamy."
Further explanation of pornography's effect on the brain
Human beings aren't gluttons, we are more like gourmets and are drawn to types, having strong preferences. Instincts generally resist change, thought to have a clear, hardwired purpose. No other instinct can so easily satisfy without accomplishing its biological purpose, and no other instinct is so disconnected from its purpose.
Research shows that our brains - neuroplasticity is not ghettoized within certain departments nor confined to the sensory, motor and cognitive processes
Hypothalamus is plastic- regulates instinctive behaviors, including sex
Amygdala is plastic - processes emotion and anxiety
Both cortical and noncortical parts of the brain have plastic potential
Hippocampus is plastic - terms short-term memories into long-term ones
If one brain system changes, others do too
Brain maps - Complex brain maps, for example if you hear a melody of six tones you won't have six different brain maps, but one they will be linked together
Freud discovered critical periods for sexual plasticity. An adult's ability to love intimately and sexually unfolds in stages beginning with an infant's first passionate attachment to his parents.
Early childhood is the first critical period , childhood sexual abuse is especially harmful during this period.
If parent is warm, gentle and reliable, the child will develop a taste for that kind of relationship later on.
If parent is disengaged, cool and distant child will seek a similar mate later on.
Critical periods are when new brain systems and maps develop with the help of stimulation in one's environment
Adult's tender names for each other , "sweetie pie" or "baby" is regressing from mature mental states to an earlier phase of life. It triggers pleasant memories.
Drugs, such as cocaine, make the pleasure-giving neurotransmitter dopamine more active in the brain. Dopamine is called the reward transmitter, because accomplishing something triggers it s release. It gives us a surge of energy, exciting pleasure and confidence. Losers don't get this surge, addictive substances hijack our dopamine system. Dopamine consolidates the neuronal connections responsible for the behaviors that led us to accomplish our goal. Dopamine is released in sexual excitement, activates the brains pleasure centers.
A single dose of an addictive drug will produce a protein called iFosB (delta Fos B) that accumulates in the neurons. It accumulates each time the drug is is, until the I FosB throws a genetic switch, affecting which genes are turned on and off.
Sensitization is different than tolerance. Tolerance means that the addict needs more and more to get the same effect. Sensitization means the addict needs less and less of the substance to crave it intensely. Leads to increased wanting, though not necessarily liking.
Two separate pleasure systems centers in the brain: exciting pleasure and satisfying pleasure.
Exciting system, appetite system, anticipate the pleasure we are going to get, dopamine related, raises tension level
Satisfaction, consummatory pleasure, from actually doing the thing we like, calming, fulfilling pleasure, based on endorphins, which are related to opiates, gives a peaceful euphoric bliss.
Porn hyperactivates the appetitive system, porn viewers develop new maps in their brains based on the photos and videos they see. Our brain is use it or lose it, when we develop a new brain map we long to keep it activated. Because plasticity is competitive, the brain maps for new, exciting images at the expense of what had previously attracted.
Without being fully aware of what they're looking for, pornography viewers scan hundreds and hundreds of scenarios until they hit on some buried theme that really excites them. Unlike real women these, images are available whenever the addict wants them.
Doidge thinks that the Internet creates new fantasies out of aspects of sexuality that have been outside of the surfer's conscious awareness, bringing these elements together to form new networks. Hardcorn porn unmasks some of the early neural networks that formed in the critical periods of sexual development and brings these forgotten or repressed elements together to form a new network, in which all the features are wired together. A surfer will sooner or later discover a killer combination of elements that presses a number of his sexual buttons at once Then he reinforces the network by viewing the images repeatedly, masturbating, releasing dopamine and strengthening these networks.
But because he develops tolerance, the pleasure of sexual discharge must be supplemented with an aggressive release, and sexual and aggressive images are increasingly intermingled. (page 20)
Falling in love provides another opportunity for plastic change. Romantic love can reconfigure what we consider to be attractive. Rewires aesthetic taste
Process
Pleasure centers discovered in the limbic system, part of the brain involved in processing emotion, septal region fires during pleasant experiences. Found to be part of the brain's reward system, the mesolimbic dopamine system. When these systems are turned on, everything we experience is pleasurable. Cocaine acts by lowering the threshold at which our pleasure centers will fire. Falling in love also lowers the threshold at which pleasure centers will fire.
One enters an enthusiastic state because the appetitive pleasure system, the dopamine-based system associated with anticipatory pleasure, fires at a lower threshold. Because the pleasure centers are firing more so freely, the person falling in love is delighted with everything, "globalization." Surge of dopamine consolidates plastic change., wires associations into the brain. Harder to experience displeasure or aversion., globalization makes it harder to be unhappy.
Creates an opportunity to develop new tastes in what we find attractive, neurons that fire together wire together, feeling pleasure in the presence of something normally unappealing causes it to get wired into the brain as a source of delight. The "addictive" symptoms, the highs, crashes, cravings, withdrawal, and fixes of romantic relationships are signs of plastic changes going on in the brain.
As lovers get used to each other, they develop a tolerance. Dopamine likes novelty, it can be stimulated by new experiences.
Science of Unlearning, Another Plastic Phenomenon
Plasticity is competitive, a neural network, once developed, becomes efficient and self-sustaining, hard to unlearn.
When we learn something new, neurons fire together and wire together, chemical process called "long-term potentiation," LTP, which strengthens the connections between the neurons.
Unlearning associations, disconnects neurons, chemical process, "long-term depression," LTD
Unlearning helps make room for new memories in our networks.
Massive neuronal reorganization occurs at two life stages: when we fall in love and when we begin parenting. Massive plastic brain reorganization becomes possible because of abrain neuromodulator.
Neurotransmitters are released in the synapses to excite or inhibit neurons, neuromodulators enhance or diminish the overall effectiveness of the synaptic connections and bring about enduring change. Falling in love releases the brain neuromodulator, oxytocin, which allows neuronal connections to melt away so that larger scale changes can follow.
Oxytocin sometimes called the commitment neuromodulator in mammals, reinforces bonding, released by both sexes during orgasm, and when couples parent and nurture children.
In sexual arousal dopamine induces excitement, oxytocin induces a calm, warm mood that increases tender feelings and attachment.
In unlearning, oxytocin melts away the existing neural connections that then make it possible to learn new patterns.
Two brains in love go through a period of heightened plasticity, allowing them to mold together and shape each other's intentions and perceptions. Walter J. Freeman, professor of neuroscience at Berkeley: the brain is fundamentally an organ of socialization, there must be a mechanism that undoes our tendency to become overly individualized, self-involved and self-centered.
Brain Traps
Occur when two brain maps, meant to be separate, merge. "Focal dystonia" the harder you try to get out of the brain trap, the deeper it becomes. If every time you think of sex, you think of violence, the connections are reinforced. Brain can be retrained through positive reinforcement. Forces the brain to form two different brain maps, one for physical tenderness and another for aggression, including healthy assertiveness.
Sexual Masochism
Dramatic example of the extent to which our sexual tastes can be acquired, when physical pain gets turned into physical pleasure. Brain must make pleasant what is inherently unpleasant, rewires impulses that normally trigger our pain system into our pleasure system.
Perversions mix aggressions and sexuality, often celebrate and idealize humiliation, hostility, defiance, the forbidden, the furtive, the lusciously sinful, the breaking of taboos, feel special for not being "normal." Transgressive or defiant attitude essential for the enjoyment of perversion, the idealization of the perverse, the devaluation of "normalcy"
People with serious perversions seldom seek treatment, because they enjoy them.
Research revealed that people involved in sadomasochism all had serious physical illnesses as children, and had undergone regular, terrifying, painful medical treatment. All had long periods of hospital confinement without the chance to unload the their frustration, despair and rage openly and appropriately. As children, they took their pain, inexpressible rage, and reworked it in fantasies and daydreams, survived by erotizing their agony. Rewiring occurred during critical periods of sexual plasticity. |
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