Introduction - What is sexual behavior?

History of the Term 8

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the „father of psychoanalysis“, greatly expanded the concept of sex. He saw in it the expression of a basic drive toward life (Eros) which struggled against an opposing drive toward death (Thanatos)

Once the all “dirty” words had been banned, a few "acceptable" terms now had to be stretched considerably in order to cover the same semantic field. Thus, the word "sexual", for example, continued to acquire certain new meanings simply by filling the newly created terminological vacuum. Modern Europeans and Americans often had no choice but to use the single word "sexual" when talking about many formerly distinct and unrelated phenomena. Such usage, in turn, could not remain without influence on the general public consciousness. People became accustomed to finding sexual implications in all sorts of behavior which before had been seen as "pure"' or sexually indifferent. In other words, men and women began to develop a highly sensitive, hypersexual attitude toward each other. With the beginning of the 20th century, and under the growing influence of psychoanalytic thinking, the concept of sexuality became even more inclusive. It now referred not only to procreation and the pursuit of erotic pleasure, but also to the need for love and personal fulfillment, i.e., to the "lust for life" itself. Indeed, Freud and his followers learned to see a sexual element in nearly all human activity and then described it as the expression of a primary instinct, the manifestation of a basic and powerful inner "drive".