Dr. Ignatius J. Reilly
Twenty years ago when I was an illegal alien in the US, my girlfriend's father advised me to enroll in a college in order to obtain a J1 visa and protect myself from deportation, and his daughter from the unlikely trauma of my being carted off in an immigration wagon.
Having failed my leaving cert three years earlier, college was not on my wish list, at least not before the 'rich and famous contract'. Fortunately her father was a lecturer at a small university in Orange County and the requisite forms were procured and stamped. Whether by necessity or design, the father insisted that I should enroll in at least one class to validate my visa. Looking back now I suspect he may have wished to address my lack of education, and the willful ignorance that was the undoubted source of my inflated self confidence. The unfortunate thing about ignorance is that it is almost invariably oblivious to itself, and at the time I perceived no shortfall in my philosophy or my world view. On the contrary I believed myself capable of almost anything, I could, as a point of fact; sing, play the guitar read, crack some whoppers and generate a bit of a laugh, what more does a young Irish immigrant need?
Some years previously my own father had wisely counselled me that I should leave home and travel the world whilst I knew everything, because, he said, "by the time you get to my age you'll realize you don't know shite!"
Indeed I could do almost anything, bar school and college, and really the only thing that was out for me (or so i thought) was to become President as you have to born in the US to be eligible for that job. America has a funny way of convincing you of all of that (see http://youtu.be/mKkdFSqAxV8 ). Regardless of my confidence in other things, the Irish education system had put me in my place in terms of learning or academics, and my dirty little secret was, that I was a bit stupid and no good at school.
There I was taking a class or two each semester, for no other purpose than to keep my visa alive, so why shouldn't I take classes in subjects that appealed to me? It didn't matter a rats arse if I failed them or didn't show up, I experienced that inverted form of discipline that is a consequence of the total lack of discipline, and as such I rarely missed a class or an assignment. This was helped by the fact that I took classes in subjects that I found interesting, like English, (I could at least speak the language) and Human Sexuality, I had, and as yet retain one of those as well.
I have no doubt whatsoever the American education system is the best on the planet, and despite being; anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, anti-consumer and anti-American foreign policy, my medical degree and much of what I am today (if I am anything more than Sam I am) I owe tot he wisdom of my x's father, and to the vistas that were opened and the encouragement I was afforded by the American education system.
In that system anyone attending University spends their first two years completing a course of General Education, where units are chosen from the disciplines of; Arts, Science, History Geography Maths, Culture and language. Once one has enough units one progresses on to to upper division units which are derived from classes in ones chosen field. As with most aspects of American society (outside of the prison system) the individual is the priority, not the institution, an inversion of the traditional Irish approach where institutions always come before people( See: Ruin of the Irish economy, any author). One chooses what classes one wishes to take, when, and in what order. In America, University is more about educating people, dispelling their ignorance, opening up vistas and new horizons, whilst our relatively primitive Victorian model is almost entirely about 'training', about teaching people to put pegs into holes, about manufacturing performing monkeys. The products of this distinction can be observed in the generality that innovation comes from America, whilst productivity and discipline comes from the self imposed slavery of the Bavarians or the Europeans.
Around that time I had discovered A Brief Introduction to the Writings of Sigmund Freud, and had fallen in love with the tweed suited old man with the cigar, who emerged from the pages of my secondhand copy, as the father I had never dreamed of. The path I wanted to put my newly found learning-feet upon, pointed towards an understanding of human understanding.
Personally I believe that Freud was more of a philosopher than a clinician, although an army of experts would undoubtedly disagree. Nonetheless were I to attempt some of the clinical practices he employed; to lie my patients on my examination couch and ask them to free associate, or tell me about their dreams or their sex lives, I would probably spend the morning tearing up solicitors letters. However, the ideas that Freud employed, if not discovered, are alive and well, and I regularly bring a chronic back pain sufferer to the realization that she may have lost touch with herself and her sexuality, and that within the context of muscle or psychological tension, the female orgasm is therapeutic and not an example of self harm or a criminal act.
In many respects there is an enormity of therapy in healthy sexual function, and although Irish women and Irish doctors generally don't go in for that sort of 'dirty' talk, I owe it to Freud that I can make the connection between chronic back pain, irritable bowel, fibromyalgia and the absence, or perhaps more correctly the 'social theft' of the female organism. In recent decades male masturbation has undergone something of a liberation, as a phenomenon it occupies a kind of subliminal social space, one where it has been almost entirely divested of it' immorality and is neither moral nor immoral. Female masturbation on the other hand has perhaps not been so fortunate and it remains within the realm of the immoral particularly for married women, where an orgasiim is something she may (if she is fortunate) be 'given' by her partner. There is a fundamental inequality here, and aside from the etiquette of masturbation in general, we must ask why this should be so and upon what basis does this inequality continue to be substantiated.
Some time into my own academic journey one class that has an indelible mark upon my medical brain and emotional soul was: Human Sexuality, at American River College in Sacramento California. The course was given by a tall thin wiry grey professor of psychology, I can't remember his name but I can see him clearly in my mind. I was immediately impressed on the first day because he came to class wearing shorts and sandals (an educated hippy who's brain cells had survived the sixties). He stood silently behind the podium until a self imposed quiet filled the air. His opening remarks were simple and serious; "If you have come here to be titillated, and to giggle like children when the words penis or vagina are mentioned, I strongly advise you to leave before I have the displeasure of throwing you out." He said, or words to that effect. "This class involves the science and psychology of sexual function, if you are looking for something different, you are in the wrong place. The lecture theatre was packed to capacity and no body stirred. The sombre introduction did not get in the way of a few laughs along the way and the class left a deep impression on me and gave me a strong hang-up about hang-ups about sex. I have been liberated from my fear of penises and vagina's and in my practise I can use these words on a daily basis as though they were a normal part of our language.
One of the reasons that class made such an impression was not simply because of the scientific manner in which human sexuality was explored, or the infinity of myths that were dispelled. The Penis the vagina, the Orgasm (male and female), ejaculation, etc etc were each and all discussed and considered in a practical and scientific way. Drawing heavily upon the seminal works of Kinsey Masters and Johnson, undoubtedly the founding fathers of our modern schools of sexual function. Interestingly, late into the course when the topic of orgasm was begun, the professor introduced the subject by citing a study conducted in Ireland in the 1970's which found that some 60% of Irish women did not know what an Orgasm is and some 70% of Irish women had never had one! After reassuring myself that my mother was in the appropriate group I proceeded to be thoroughly shocked.
An article in the Irish Examiner in 2012
The more you relax, the better chance you will have an orgasm
Interestingly the first dildo was a medical device, invented to treat hysterical or anancastic women. The device was in wide use amongst general physicians, up until someone realised what it was that the device was eliciting. Undoubtedly some bright spark within the profession declared in a Eureka moment that, if it looks like an orgasm, shakes and wobbles like an orgasm, then it probably is an orgasm. After which the device was quietly dropped from clinical use, and quietly passed on to the eternal custody of the sex-shop.
Whilst I am certainly delight that the device is no longer part of the accoutrement of my profession, it is a sincere pity that the concept of the orgasm and its therapeutic value are shrouded in this silliness that usually surrounds the pragmatics of normal sexual function, and perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in Ireland.
There is not a week that goes past in my own practise that I do not encounter the somatic consequence of sexual depravity and emotional isolation. Not infrequently I advise my patients that 'if you cannot connect with your own body in a healthy manner', you are certain to experience tension and stress as a consequence. In many respects this 'connection with self' is a merely euphemism for the orgasm.
It is of course the same tension and stress that causes muscles and bowels to spasm and cramp, sleep to be broken and diet to fall to pieces, pain to worsen, unhappiness to deepen etc. To my mind our generation must free sex from the vulgar, and the immoral and re-instate it as an essential barometer for a healthy psychology. To the horror and despite the perhaps justified warnings of many of my colleagues, a question I very often ask my patients is firstly are you happy? and secondly; 'When was the last time you had an orgasm? The answer very often is returned with a flood of tears, as the curtain is parted for a moment and one glimpses the unhappiness that lies behind most if not all chronic conditions.
If could have one wish for the women of Ireland it would be to give them back their orgasms. However to do this to even contemplate this vulgar horror, this immoral obscenity, we must first ask who stole it in the first place?
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