This room of An Existential Philosopher's Museum
is now mainly of historical interest.
It has been replaced by an updated version:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/%7Eparkx032/CY-SSF.html

    Perhaps because this page was posted on the Interent in April 1999,
it is the first page you get when searching Google for
"imprinted sexual fantasies".
Because it has been available for so many years,
lots of links must have been created.

    Now (2008) it will be used to lead you to
some other good rooms in An Existential Philosopher's Museum: 

Imprinted Sexual Fantasies: A New Key for Sexology
This is the index page for a book of 176 pages.
50 of these pages are available free of charge on the Internet.

The basic contents of Imprinted Sexual Fantasies (176 pages)
also appears in a much shorter version (24 pages)
in New Ways of Loving:
How Authenticity Transforms Relationships:
Chapter 7:
"Loving Beyond Sex:
Transcending Our Imprinted Sex-Scripts".

Books Supporting the Sex-Script Hypothesis
About 20 books of sexology
that are basically positive about the idea of sexual imprinting.
A Presentation by James Park------------------------------------------------------Sexology
 

The Sex-Script Hypothesis:

Imprinted Sexual Fantasies

SYNOPSIS:

    Our sexual responses often seem mysterious even to ourselves.
We may feel that our 'sex-drives' possess us rather than we possessing them.
This presentation and discussion will outline a new hypothesis
which may be one step toward a comprehensive theory of human sexuality.
Older theories have tried to explain our sexual responses
either in terms of our biological heritage—animal sexuality—
or in terms of social learning—the way we develop most behaviors.

    But the sex-script hypothesis presents a third possible explanation:
Our internal sexual responses may have been imprinted into us at an early age.
During certain critical periods in our psycho-sexual development,
particular images, stories, and sexual responses—our "sex-scripts"—
were imprinted in our brains more or less at random.
And these sexual fantasies remain with us for the rest of our lives.

    A basic analogy that may help us understand sexual imprinting
is the phenomenon of acquiring a native language.
When we were infants, we quickly and permanently acquired our first language.
It seems that the 'language-file' is open for such imprinting
only during the first few months of life.

    We do not know just when the human "sex-file" is opened for imprinting,
but we may be able to identify specific events
which had a remarkably permanent impact on our sexual responses.
Much more research is needed to explore the possible connection between
adult sexual responses and sexually-imprinting events in childhood.

OUTLINE:

I. INTRODUCING THE SEX-SCRIPT HYPOTHESIS

II. THE EVOLUTIONARY BACKGROUND OF HUMAN SEX-SCRIPTS

III. SEXUAL IMPRINTING AT CRITICAL PERIODS IN PSYCHO-SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT

IV. THREE LEVELS OF SEX-SCRIPTS

V. VARIETIES OF SEX-SCRIPTS

VI. IDENTIFYING OUR OWN SEX-SCRIPTS

VII. HOMOSEXUAL SEX-SCRIPTS

VIII. THE IMPACT OF SEX-SCRIPTS ON OUR RELATIONSHIPS

IX. TRANSCENDING OUR SEX-SCRIPTS

X. FUTURE RESEARCH INTO HUMAN SEX-SCRIPTS

XI. SEX-SCRIPTS IN THE 21st CENTURY


    James Park is an existential philosopher and sexologist.
This presentation and discussion is based on a book called
Imprinted Sexual Fantasies:
A New Key for Sexology
This link will lead you to the table of contents of the book,
which will lead you to a synopsis of each chapter
and to other selections from the book.

    If you would like to read a very brief (3-page) summary of these ideas,
click here: Sources of Sexual Fantasies.

Go to other cyber-sermons by James Park,
organized into 9 subject-areas.

Go to the SEXOLOGY index page.

Go to the opening page for this website:
An Existential Philosopher's Museum.










The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.