Customer Reviews

Love and Orgasm

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Why this book is not better known is beyond me. Lowen wrote it decades ago, and it still is far ahead of anything else written to this point on the subject.

His views of homosexuality may clash with today's world, but the essence of the book is full of humanity and deep insight into the nature of love. I can't say enough about this book. It is a gem of pure beauty.

Lowen writes both about what sex can be at best, and what it usually is in fact. Most other writers on sex can only do one or the other. Lowen also bridges here the biological and the psychological as he does in his other works--another rare achievement. Sex is not everything, but it is fundamental. Understanding sex is fundamental to understanding human functioning and human suffering.

Two things should be gotten out of the way: 1) Lowen considers homosexuality a far less than optimal sexual expression. This is not saying too much, because in the context of the Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen tradition, about 99% of people are considered to have less than optimal sexual expression (including Lowen admits, himself) Still he writes about the subject with a slight flavor of condescension. 2) Lowen seeks to explain commercial sex work in purely psychological terms. Perhaps because, unlike the entire rest of his writing, he did not speak from his vast clinical experience, this section seems to fall short of his usual great explanatory skill.

This book is likely to be upsetting because it bursts many illusions about sex. Sexual functioning has not gotten any more satisfying for most people since this book was written, probably it is generally less-satisfying, because estrangement from the self, from the body, and from feeling has gotten worse in those five decades.

This book is wonderful and eye opening. His views on performance versus feeling and being are right on point.I intend to buy this book for my friends.

I have just been re-reading Lowen's book Pleasure and am struck by the compassion and insight he provides to the basic problem of being human. I read Love and Orgasm years ago and find the distinction between intimacy and the sexual performance still relevant to our increasing narcissistic society. Although Lowen's approach to homosexuality may be politically incorrect, it is still suggestive of the ways both men and women reinterpret their bodies in search of the nurturing intimacy that many children never experience from a primary caregiver. I find it amazing that Lowen as a thinker and writer of the late sixties and early seventies, deeply committed to the human potential movement, still resonates in contemporary culture. A reissue of this book will find a ready audience.