Research Idea #5637

I'm almost, almost, going to miss driving the somewhat excessive amount of kilometers home that I do, now. I'm going to miss it because the car has become my kitchen, and I eat ideas as I drive.

So, my great research idea, masticated upon as I drove home tonight, goes like this:

Through developmental cultural trajectories (why waste words?) see if it is possible to identify alternating but stable currents of sanitation of sex versus sanitation of death in cultural memes.

I'd need to establish:
1) that there are such entities as 'developmental cultural trajectories';
2) that sanitation of sex and death respectively do alternate;
3) a method of dealing with cross-cultural interaction.

Not easy. It's an interesting notion though, no? We live in a historical and cultural epoch of (relatively) free sexual expression, yet often we're not encountering death until it's that of our own grandparents, when we're already well into our own adulthood. There is the personal and the societal contrast to think about as well, I guess. While we may not see a dead body live in the flesh until we're quite a bit older (me and my royal 'We's') through the media, that secondary, distant way of viewing the life-of-the-world, we encounter death many times over, before we're really old enough to handle the scenes, if the research is indicative of the human-flesh experienced story, at all.

There's something more to think about too - about whether Eros and Thanatos are really a valid dichotomy. Not that sex and death aren't both on one level completely biological functions, it's just that, in terms of mind/body interaction, I'd propose that in the human species, sex has a biological beginning point and a psychic outcome, whereas death has psychic beginning point before it has a biological outcome. See that difference? I don't think it's trivial. I think the Eros/Thanatos dichotomy may be a red herring, as is identifiable by comparing sex and death as biological and psychical functions.

To turn it around into something recognisable, I'd propose that in my present cultural frame, sexuality in adult humans is psychological, primarily. Death is biological, primarily. The opposite ends of the psychological-biological spectrum that these two occupy makes me question whether it's possible to draw a model that directly contrasts their function. Much psychotherapeutic theory is grounded on this principle though - I'd love to have the time to unwind the tangles of my thoughts properly, about this.

I'm about to write a paper about self mutilation - I think I'll use a frame such as is it the ultimate act of self-destruction, or the ultimate act of self-love? There's a quote from my studies, earlier tonight, by one Francis Tustin:

'I have come to think that a sense of bodily separateness is the heartbreak at the centre of all human existence, and that for various reasons some people experience it in a more drastic way than others'.

Is self mutilation a retreival  of life, in some way, a temporary way to resurrect and reunite the separated parts of the self, or is it a denial  of life, a repression that speaks of far greater fear, with further reaching emotional and cognitive outcomes it's possible to integrate at a certain developmental level.

I've just presumed a developmental, evolutionary model, just there, did you see that? Sneaky old memes. :)