Alternative Relationship

1970, FEMEIA

The child born out of wedlock
The way of the family, the product of our socialist state, consecrating the full equality in rights between the child born in wedlock and the child born out of wedlock, has brought this principle to life through a series of legislative measures of particular importance, meant to concretely and effectively guarantee the realization of the rights of minor children.

There are two legal instruments provided by the Family Code for legitimizing children born out of wedlock:

Voluntary recognition of paternity, the act by which a man willingly acknowledges the filial relationship between himself and a child whom he claims as his own.

Forced or judicial recognition, when the court is called to establish the filial link between the child and the man summoned to court, who unjustifiably denies his status as parent.

In the current system of the Family Code, these two methods can be used only after the child’s birth.

In my work as a judge, I have found that in numerous cases, the failure to voluntarily recognize the child is determined by the long time that elapses between the date of conception and that of birth, a period in which the beautiful feelings and plans for the future built by the two can be shattered for insignificant reasons or, sometimes, due to selfish interests, for which the child they brought into the world — the fruit of those feelings — bears no blame.

In such cases, the courts, when judging actions to establish paternity, face great difficulties in the administration of evidence due to the intimate nature of relationships of this kind.

I ask myself the natural question: why couldn’t a child born out of wedlock be voluntarily recognized as soon as he or she has been conceived, and not only after birth, specifying, of course, that such recognition would produce legal effects only if that child is born alive?

I consider that allowing voluntary recognition during this period as well would lead to:

• a significant decrease in the number of court actions to establish paternity;
• encouraging the conclusion of marriages between the two parents;
• and, finally, would even more comprehensively correspond to a constitutional principle, that of protecting the interests of the minor child.

Moreover, in some situations, this measure would even constitute the only way to establish paternity. For example, in the case where a man would make a recognition through a will, admissible and legal, this, according to current regulation, would operate only after the birth of the child. But if the man dies before the birth of the child and without leaving any heir, such recognition could no longer produce legal consequences, because at the father’s death the child had not yet been born, and after his birth, in the absence of heirs, it would no longer be possible to start an action to establish paternity.

A regulation of this kind, allowing voluntary recognition of the child born out of wedlock even after conception, would not be alien to our socialist law, because even today Decree 31/1954 (art. 7, paragraph 2) contains a similar provision, namely that “the rights of the child are recognized from conception, but only if he or she is born alive.”

Obviously, such a measure depends on a future amendment of the Family Code, which, I believe, would be welcome and would have positive consequences in this field.

by Elisa Beta Ionescu, judge at the civil section of the Supreme Court of the Socialist Republic of Romania

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1992, ȘTIINȚA ȘI TEHNICĂ

Normality and deviance in sexuality
by Dr. Constantin D. Drugeanu

The sudden release experienced by all of us in the hot days of the good winter at the end of 1989 allowed us not only to address without restraint the very complex issue of sexuality, thus responding more openly and competently to the multiple questions of readers and their thirst for information to make up for the low level of knowledge in the field, but also to take a stand in the context of a certain libertinism, of increasing aggressiveness, alongside the expansion of a process of deviation from the norm in sexual behavior.

Lately, we have been witnessing a veritable journalistic debauchery in the field of sexuality, with sexual freedom giving way to pornography, sexual perversion, and inversion, preying especially on adolescents and young adults, but also on those with a low degree of discernment, easily drawn into a current of opinion opposed to a minimum and appropriate ethics. Various practices and techniques are being recommended, through different means of public dissemination, often in street publications, accompanied by expressive images, the material interest justifying these concerns without taking into account the harmful consequences of such private initiatives. We will try in this column to take a stand, illustrating with dramatic cases from medical and judicial practice, causally linked to the sexual criminogenic potential of certain local publications of this type.

We have been and remain supporters of an effective content in couple sexual relations, generating mutual erotic satisfaction, going beyond the rigid prejudice of the traditional purpose of human sexuality – fertility. Affectivity in couple relations, even outside of marriage, remains the basic condition, with the natural tolerance of possible and undeniable beginnings and occasional sexual experiences. This must be present in couple life, in sexual intercourse, in the erotic foreplay — indispensable and decisive in the quality of the sexual act — as well as in the effective performance of the copulatory act, the mutual erotic skill of the partners corresponding to their organic, functional, and psychological particularities.

To the erotic affection, as the foundation of sexual relations between partners, we must add sexual refinement, a potential ability at first, developed through desire, through attractiveness actively offered by the partner or imaginatively, through experience accumulated together, abandoning excessive modesty and outdated prejudices. In couples with long cohabitation, a certain habit, boredom, and exhaustion of erotic capacity can appear, risking a reduction in sexual harmony, perhaps even the disintegration of the couple. In this context, sexual refinement expressed outwardly is not only “saving” but also optimizing.

Sexual refinement is often confused with sexual perversity, pornography, erotic debauchery, by the followers of conservatism, anchored in a dull stereotype, in a false ethic of couple relations.

Given that this article addresses a current topic — namely behavioral sexual deviance, sexual perversions, and inversions — it is necessary to present the features that define the concept of sexual deviance and its pathogenesis, and in future articles we will detail the types of perversions, the symptomatological profiles, clinical cases, and therapeutic recommendations.

So, what is normal and what is abnormal (deviance) in sexuality? We do not refer to a deficit of sexual dynamics, but to the attitude towards sexuality and sexual behavioral orientation. There is a risk — as Georges Vacolet also points out — of schematizing one of the fundamental functions of human life: the sexual function. Unlike animals, in humans sexual behavior is linked to education and socialization. Even if some higher species show sexual loyalty, in humans the motivation is cultural and not strictly biological.

Human sexuality, polymorphous at first, is structured by a cultural context of permissions and prohibitions, crystallized in the family institution. In humans, libido is not conditioned by strict physiological cycles. In human sexuality, the socio-cultural factor is decisive. Thus, normality in sexuality becomes a complex notion, variable depending on country, era, social status, permissiveness, or prohibition. Criminologist Denis Szabo states that it is not nature, but culture that defines what is normal in behavior, including in sexuality.

A normal sexual act is considered heterosexual copulation, with or without erotic satisfaction. Normal sexual behavior involves preliminary pleasures and a functional integration to achieve orgasm. In contrast, deviant sexual behavior (or paraphilia) involves a persistent, unilateral, or bilateral deviation from sexual conduct considered normal.

Both sexual perversions and inversions affect sexual dynamics as a whole: foreplay, the sexual act, and the relations between partners.

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1992, ȘTIINȚĂ ȘI TEHNOLOGIE
Normality and deviance in sexuality III

In dealing with the topic addressed in this column — a topic of broad and current interest in sexuality, imposed by a worrying incidence of manifestations deviating from normal sexual behavior and, what is also particularly serious, by a tendency toward libertinism in this field, much spread in our contemporary society — we will operate with three terms. These are: sexual normality, sexual refinement, and abnormality or sexual deviance (according to the Americans, paraphilia).

Although in a previous article we defined these notions, we insist on one of them, namely sexual normality, defined as a heterosexual act (the couple partners being of different sexes) generating orgasmic satisfaction. In this sense, it must be specified that there exists, on the one hand, a great diversity of preludial modalities that precede the sexual act (which nevertheless fall within the rather broad area of sexual refinement), as well as varied copulatory positional practices, on the other. As appears from the specialized literature, the latter differ depending on the type of society, civilization, era, culture, and, ultimately, on the individual and couple particularities.

It is true that within classical sexology (perhaps too much called so, given that it refers to a human biological function contemporary with the formation of the first couple in the history of the human species), associating sexual refinement with sexual normality enters a dangerous territory, as many of the means and erotic preludial techniques used to ensure an efficient copulatory sexual act, as well as those for sexual arousal, were once integrated — partially or totally — among sexual deviations or sexual perversions.

We will detail these controversial situations without making any concession from a certain ethical standard, accepting as normal (sexual refinement) such practices preceding sexual intercourse. This presupposes a judicious reconsideration of the entire sexual cycle of the couple — from arousal, to the act, and to its consummation.

Outside of any controversy as a deviation from the norm remain perversions related to the object of sexual orientation (pedophilia representing a sexual interest in children; necrophilia in corpses; zoophilia or bestiality in animals, etc.).

Even if in some countries there are ideological and factual tolerances, as well as legal permissiveness regarding homosexuality or sexual inversion (male or female), regardless of the liberal and apparently objective arguments brought in support of this, it is impossible for us to accept as fitting to human nature a sexual conduct between partners of the same sex. The human genital apparatus and the typological psychosomatic differentiation between the sexes (no matter how many osmotic mutations of inter-influence may be detected in men with feminized traits and vice versa) reveal the permanent foundation of this undeniable sexual reality: normal sexual relations can only exist between the two sexes represented in the temporary (even occasional) and permanent couple — factual or legitimate.

Therefore, the main ground for discussions, interpretations, and distinctions between what is normal and pathological in sexuality remains — in our opinion — that of perversions (pathological sexual conduct) related to the means used for sexual arousal, for the realization of a sexual act. Here there may appear differences or deviations from the norm considered by some as sexual refinement, by others as perversions, sometimes judicially punished.

This is also the opinion of Prof. Dr. Denis Szabo of the International Center for Comparative Criminology in Montreal, Canada, who argues that it is not nature but culture that determines what is or is not sexually perverse. Bernard Muldworf essentially limits the difference between normality and pathology in sexual behavior to whether or not the social status of permissiveness or prohibition of the sexual manifestation in question is violated, with cultural and politico-social entities having, in time and space, different views in this respect, in relation to the particular values and interests they wish to protect.

Of course, the same issue can be raised in the case of homosexuality, but for the reasons mentioned above it is difficult for us to accept as justified a rational and useful attitude of tolerance, fitting to human nature, of such an orientation, even in the conditions of our society today when, in the name of a hollow, contradictory ethic, claiming and manifesting an anarchic freedom, minimal duties regarding social coexistence are being violated. We are neither for a modesty taken to extremes, nor for an unrestrained exacerbation of sensuality, the whipping up of eroticism through pornographic techniques, caring less for the mutual affective bond between partners and only for the performances of sexual experiences or compensations for certain sexual impotence, the preaching of sexual simulacra, etc.

In addressing sexual behavioral deviance of the psychopathy type (although psychopaths are the majority among sexual perverts), referring to sexual perversions in general (and especially to those mentioned under the title “in actu” — that is, referring to the means and methods of prior sexual arousal indispensable to the realization of the sexual act or substituting for the sexual act) it must be emphasized — as a general characteristic — the alteration of the psycho-behavioral personality, with or without organic deficit, including genital.

Among the causes of these sexual deviations can be listed:

• constitutional-genetic,
• biological (primarily endocrine), and
• social.

The constitutional-genetic causality was considered until about 20–25 years ago as determinism in the sexual deviance of some subjects; today it is admitted as a predisposition toward criminogenesis, especially through the presence in some people of so-called excess gonosomes (X or Y), activated under the conditions of an unfavorable social climate in which these individuals have been included.

The biological substrate — and especially the endocrine one — can also be considered among the causes involved in sexual deviance. Perverse-type disorders can be encountered, in a certain context, in some hypogonadal pituitary cases, adrenal cases, hyperestrogenic cases with consequent psychic changes, in some of those with a history of precocious puberty, with neurocerebral lesion backgrounds, etc.

Psychic causality — in interdependence with the other factors — is also a generator of perversions, namely some types of unbalanced personalities, some hypo- or hypercrine psychoendocrine types, etc. In the same framework we include a wide range of psychopathic, neuropsychopathic, psychotic, oligophrenic, involutive, epileptic, or drug-addicted possibilities.

Finally, the sociopathic substrate, more rarely in exclusivity, most often correlated with one or more of the causal categories mentioned, explains sexual deviations of the perversion type. In this category of factors we include especially the negative family environment, the harmful influences of the street environment, of certain friendships and adverse circumstances, etc., grafted (most often) on a biosomatic and psychic individual risk background.

Dr. Constantin O. Drăgăneanu

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1992, ȘTIINȚĂ ȘI TEHNICĂ
Normality and deviance in sexuality (IV)
SEXOLOGY

In our previous article, using the classical classification accepted in sexology and forensic medicine of sexual perversions, we referred to the category of sexual perversions regarding the object (the tendency of sexual orientation), listing them and referring to each of them, specifying that male homosexuality (the most frequent) and female homosexuality (quite widespread, both in our society and especially in other countries) will be treated separately, homosexuality as sexual inversion being delimited from all other perversions.

In French forensic medicine, three categories of sexual deviations are accepted, namely:

• hypersexuality (debatable and to which we will refer on another occasion),
• “in actu” sexual perversions, in which the couple is heterosexual, and the relational act exceeds the natural, normal, physiological character of sexuality,
• and anal coitus or sodomy.

As for oral coitus, when it does not limit sexual conduct to this type of orientation, when it is transient or foreplay, for the purpose of more active erotic arousal, it may sometimes not be treated as an actual sexual perversion, but as a licentious act, a borderline sexual refinement, explainable in the context of mutual erotic arousal in the couple. The free consent of the partners in this direction and the non-permanence of this modality in concretizing the actual erotic response in the couple prevents the integration of oral coitus among perversions.

In this article we will refer to sexual perversions concerning the means or methods used to arouse erotic desire and obtain the actual sexual response, achieving erotic satisfaction.

From this large category of sexual perversions are part of:

• fetishism,
• exhibitionism,
• frotteurism (or “the passersby”),
• voyeurism,
• sadism,
• masochism,
• coprophilia, etc.

Onanism or self-masturbation (the most frequent), as well as hetero-masturbation (under certain conditions), being presented at length on other occasions, are not rarely encountered also in other sexual perversions, including in homosexuality.

Before referring to each of these types of perversions, a few general clarifications are necessary regarding the pathogenesis, generating mechanism, and evolutionary course of these sexual conduct disorders.

In his well-known work Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, republished in France in 1962 by Gallimard Publishing House, Freud, referring to the sexual drive, defines it through four terms:

• a push (stimulus),
• a source (an organ),
• an object,
• a goal (satisfaction),

The object and goal proving to be extremely fluctuating. In sexual perversion, the drive remains fixed on a precise object or goal, in such a way that erotic satisfaction can only be attained in this manner.

A causal link is made with the genetic-hereditary constitution of the individual. This dependence is possible but incompletely elucidated, the idea seeming more plausible not of a determinism, but of a favorable terrain upon which psychosomatic and social favorable factors are then grafted.

Genital obsession, the irresistibility of the tendency, the replacement of the sexual act with sexual “compensations” generating erotic satisfaction are some of the traits of those concerned.

In their etiology, the following can be identified:

• organic causes: endocrine, neurological (involvement of some intracerebral centers — frontal, hypothalamic, occipital, sensory, lumbosacral spinal — concerning the sexual centers),
• toxic causes: alcoholism, etc.,
• in correlation with psychopathological causes: disharmonic psychopathic personalities, neurosis, psychopathy, oligophrenia, psychotic states (including with toxic, post-traumatic, or senescence etiology),
• social causes: the family environment and the surroundings in which the subjects live.

Fetishism
It is the type of sexual perversion that consists in orienting sexual interest and desire (irresistible) toward objects or clothing items belonging to a certain partner.

Obtaining this preferred object, imbued with a certain symbolic value, generates sexual impulse and orgasm.

Important clarification: not every fetishism is pathological or falls under perversions.

In the erotic psycho-behavioral complex, the sources of arousal can be:

• visual,
• tactile,
• olfactory,
• cerebral (erotic fantasies).

All these contribute to an endocerebral, psychic process of sexuality.
Thus, the partner’s smell, voice, gaze, walk, and dance can have a normal seductive capacity.

When does fetishism become pathological?
When the desire to possess a partner (specific or random) is absent, and her objects (through touching or collecting) cause erection, ejaculation, and orgasm without copulation.
The erotic sensation is linked exclusively to the object, and the real partner has no sexual significance.

Etymology:
According to Charcot and Magnan, from the word “fetisso” (charm),
or from the Portuguese “fetico” (spell, magic object).

Cases:

• an accountant who, in a crowd, would cut pieces from women’s clothing with which he would masturbate at home;
• others — fetish for stockings, handkerchiefs, women’s shoes (sometimes stolen);
• in women, more rarely: masturbating with male objects.

Exhibitionism
Found especially in men with mental disorders (psychopaths, psychotics, epileptics, neurotics) or alcoholics.
It consists of exposing the genitals in public (or secluded places), in front of women (minors, adolescents, or adults), with the aim of:

• attracting attention,
• triggering masturbation (not the sexual act itself).

It is a perversion:

• discontinuous, periodic,
• with episodes of restlessness, impulsivity,
• accompanied by mental scenarios.

Not considered exhibitionism:
Men with uro-prostatic problems who urinate in public out of necessity.

Frotteurism (or “the passersby”)
A form of sexual perversion related to fetishism and onanism.
It consists of:

• rubbing the genitals in a crowd against the clothes of unknown women,
• without their knowledge or consent.

Who does this?

• men with mental and sexual disorders,
• in whom onanism no longer produces satisfaction,
• who thus try obsessively to obtain orgasmic ejaculation.

Voyeurism is a sexual perversion that manifests through the obsessive tendency of some people, primarily male, to witness, most often under conspiratorial conditions, the sexual act of a couple, preferably heterosexual, more rarely homosexual.
The erotic excitatory influence is known (especially in some males, but also in females affected by sexual deficiencies with primarily psychogenic causes) of visually participating in erotic or pornographic scenes of a hetero or homosexual couple, in sexy erotic displays (such as striptease), or in film sequences, photo albums, etc.

This visual participation has, in certain cases, a usefulness in exploring the erotic reactive potential of some patients or as a therapeutic procedure, alongside actual drug therapy. Voyeurism is evident in cases where the elements of obsessive preoccupation of the respective subjects, the conspiratorial nature of the interception, and the exclusive erotic satisfaction, with or without consecutive self-masturbation, are correlated with an inherent background of psychological impairment and deficiencies in sexual dynamics.

It should also be mentioned that voyeurism is sometimes associated with exhibitionism and the practice of self-masturbation.

Sadism and masochism are treated together, as they have in common pain as the generating factor of sexual arousal, showing a strong psychogenic component.
Sadism, named after the Marquis de Sade, who was the prototype of this sexual perversion, consists of suffering, of small or great intensity, inflicted on the partner (male or female) as the only necessary condition for obtaining sexual satisfaction and performing the sexual act.

It should be mentioned that even in the history of ancient Rome examples of sadism are found: emperors such as Tiberius, Nero, etc., famous women such as Messalina and Catherine de Medici, who were not only nymphomaniacs but also sadistic.

It should be noted that sadism can be minor or major, depending on the intensity of the aggression and sexual suffering, sadism ranging from small pinches, bites, etc., to stabbings and corporal flogging on the chest, buttocks, etc., inflicted on partners, sometimes going as far as mutilations and murders.

In the history of domestic and international criminology and forensic medicine, there are many examples of such cases. We recall the sadistic murders of Jack the Ripper, Vacher — the shepherdess killer, etc.

Sadism is often associated with rape. If in the case of minor, occasional sadism, sometimes influenced by states of acute alcoholism, the mental background of the persons is not profoundly altered, in the others (the great sadists) there are frequent integrations into major psychic pathology.

Unlike sadism, masochism is characterized by self-inflicted suffering. The name comes from the German novelist Sacher-Masoch, who described this perversion in detail in his works, torture (committed at the request of the partner) being also associated with his humiliation.

Dr. CONSTANTIN O. DRUGEANU

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1992, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Normality and deviance in sexuality (VI)

Continuing the presentation of sexual perversions regarding the means used for erotic stimulation in order to achieve the sexual act or obtain sexual satisfaction (orgasm), we refer to sadism and masochism, defined in our previous article.

Sadism, like masochism, are two pathological entities with judicial implications, thus concerning forensic medicine and criminology and being the subject of numerous sexological, medico-legal, psychosocial studies, etc. Sexuality and cruelty are often associated; a moderate aggressiveness of one partner towards the other (more often male towards female) is found in any sexual act and depends on the subject’s temperament, his psycho-behavioral system, the intensity of desire, expressing the imperative impulse to possess, to dominate the partner, thus obtaining the other’s submission. In the case of a stable couple, in normal sexual dynamics, complex processes of mutual adaptation, accommodation, concessions, etc., inevitably occur.

Another way of interpreting sadism, but which does not fall within sexual pathology, is that of crude sadism, manifested through fantasies or imagined mental representations of brutal possession, with the torture of the partner before or during the sexual act. It is found more often in subjects weak from a psycho-behavioral and sexual point of view, with negative experiences (with one or more partners), in those who have not had a sexual debut or with ineffective debut attempts, who are complexed (possibly with prolonged masturbatory practice). This form can be associated with moral sadism, namely the psychological torture under multiple aspects of the partners — this being, paradoxically, a generator of erotic satisfaction. Those who engage in such acts belong to psychopathic behavioral types.

It is not within our scope, but we mention them because they highlight psychological types that belong to the pathological domain, also showing deviant sexual orientations of the sadism type, certain human categories who either feel an irresistible attraction to bloody spectacles (for example, bullfights, executions, etc.), or participate in brutal manifestations, in violent outbreaks, devastation, bodily harm, lynching, murders, at funerals, suicides, accidents, etc., participations that generate satisfaction. The last world war, concentration camps or prisons, death camps, etc., abundantly provide such examples. Such persons often also manifest deviant sexual orientations of the sadism type, sometimes culminating in heinous murders.

Minor sadism is more frequent and manifests in very varied ways: through stabbings, pinching, biting, scratching, etc., both before and during the sexual act. Based on our own case history and existing specialized literature, we also mention the pricking with sharp objects of some real or potential partners (or even random, unknown persons in crowds, in public transportation, etc.). The pain felt by the victim, doubled by the surprise caused by the violent act in question, generates in the perpetrator desire, sexual stimulation, and a certain satisfaction with an erotic nuance.

Clinical examples followed, detailing subjects examined for acts of sadism, including:

• a young man who stabbed strangers in public transportation;
• a 40-year-old man who bit his partner, causing her to bleed;
• another who resorted to flogging to induce his orgasm.

Forms of active sadism (the perpetrator commits the aggression) and passive sadism (satisfaction derived from directing another person to commit it) are distinguished. Symbolic sadism was also mentioned, such as urinating on the partner’s genitals.

From an ethical, legal, and sexual normality point of view, sadism is indictable, involving a frequently pathological mental background. Possible causes are indicated: psychopathy, neurosis, schizophrenia, neurological sequelae, chronic alcoholism, oligophrenia, senility, etc. Some subjects may have an apparently stable couple life, but with occasional perverse “deviations.”

Major sadism involves serious aggressions: injuries, mutilations, even murders — sometimes with “post-mortem” lesions. It is associated with aggressive rapes, violent homosexuality, pederasty, and targets women, children, rarely men. The perpetrators are often psychopaths, psychotics, demented, alcoholics, etc. Frequently, acute alcoholism is a triggering factor. Forensic expertise focuses on:

• physical trauma,
• means used,
• seriousness of the act,
• responsibility according to mental disorders.

Two cases described by Krafft-Ebing are cited:

• a young man obsessed with watching the sacrifice of animals;
• another who murdered women and split their genitals.

Masochism — also called passive algomania — resembles sadism in that pain (physical or psychic) produces erotic satisfaction. The difference is that in masochism the pain is endured, not inflicted.

Masochists may feel the need to:

• be whipped, beaten, humiliated,
• be cursed at, dominated, sometimes even to simulate hanging.

The term comes from the writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, described as such by Krafft-Ebing. Masochism and sadism often appear together, with interchangeable roles. Although historically more often associated with women, today male masochism is frequent, with specialized clubs existing where women — usually prostitutes — play the role of flagellators.

There are mild and major forms (with flogging, severe torture). Ideal masochism is imaginative, based on fantasies or painful erotic memories.

Example: a man with combined masochism and minor sadism, he and his partner (both psychopaths) intentionally injuring each other with erotic intent.

Causes: mental disorders secondary to organic, toxic conditions, oligophrenia, psychosis, etc.

The responsibility of subjects before criminal law, which incriminates such conduct, depends on the conclusions of psychiatric expertise.

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1992, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Normality and deviance in sexuality (VII)

In previous articles of this mini-series, we referred to the chapter on deviations from normal sexual behavior, a chapter with complex and serious psychosocial, medical, and legal implications. We did not have, and could not have, the pretense of having exhausted the subject, given the multitude of issues addressed, the references from specialized literature, as well as the richness of case histories. The assumed task was to correctly inform readers, helping them form a culture and a lucid attitude in this field, thus contributing to real prevention and to the optimization of the exercise of the human sexual function. Based on a long experience as a forensic doctor and practicing sexologist, we have sought from these two perspectives to present the main categories of sexual deviations, grouping them according to criteria agreed upon in specialized literature, interpreting causally the forms of manifestation, symptomatology, giving appropriate examples and making assessments on the prognosis of recovery of the respective subjects.

We continue with the presentation of two other large categories often encountered in practice and therefore useful to be known: hypersexuality and hypereroticism, which are — like other pathological sexual categories — associated up to a point. For this reason, we will treat them comparatively. From a quantitative point of view, sexual behavior shows large individual variations: what for one subject is normal, for another may be little or much. Therefore, in general, it is difficult to assess the state of hypersexuality and hypereroticism. Nevertheless, there are men and women with pathological hypereroticism. In both sexes, normal eroticism depends on neuropsychic factors, stimuli from the external environment and those from the internal environment (represented especially by sexual hormones), as well as on the genetic factor. It is also known that the sexual impulse of the adult increases under certain external environmental conditions: warm and dry climate, exciting diet, eroticizing education, etc., as well as in certain physiological or pathological states of the body.

Hypersexuality represents sexual activity increased compared to the average of the social group of belonging, by this meaning persons of the same age, health, socio-geographic, couple, professional particularities, etc. In the sense accepted and used by us, hypersexuality is characterized by a permanent or periodic increase in libido, which becomes obsessive, unrestrained, reaching levels that exceed the normal potential of sexual effectors. Thus, the pathological aspect results from the uncontrollable desire, from the intensity and frequency of sexual intercourse, this having organic causality — as a consequence of cerebral or endocrine disorders — and psychological causality.

It should be noted that hypersexuality can also involve sexual deviations.

As for hypereroticism, the feminine form is known as nymphomania, and the masculine form as satyriasis or satiromania. It differs from hypersexuality in that it is limited to libido, showing an uncontrollable and imperative need, never however satisfied, to have sexual relations, regardless of whether or not they might be gratifying.

As an additional nuance, we mention yet another term used in specialized literature, namely erotomania. Very close to hypereroticism, this translates into an ideational sublimation of erotic love, of libido, without any effectual intention, having a platonic character, not materialized even as an erotic fantasy. Erotomaniacs can be “in love” not only with a heterosexual human being, but also with animals, objects such as paintings, statues, dolls, etc. (Alcidias, for example, was in love with the statue of Cupid, and Hoffmann, the character from the opera The Tales of Hoffmann, with a doll). Erotomania manifests in some psychoses: in the manic phase of manic-depressive psychosis, in schizophrenia, in progressive general paralysis, or in senile dementia.

To more clearly distinguish hypersexuality from hypereroticism, let us illustrate the two categories through two famous characters from fiction, clearly different from each other: Don Juan, who is the type of the hypererotic, and Casanova, the type of the hypersexual. Don Juan is thus “a narcissistic, anxious, and aggressive man,” as described in the works of Dr. Tudor Stoica, a seducer; regardless of the performances obtained and the sexual concretizations, libido — of which he is obsessed — takes precedence, and the masculine vanity of the conqueror dictates his actions. He is nonselective, even has doubts about his sexual capacity, and the copulatory consequences he gives way to do not satisfy him, sometimes the sexual act giving way to aggressiveness, exhibitionism. He is not loved by women.

Casanova, on the other hand, attracts women who, in turn, accept him easily and give themselves to him. Casanova sexually subdues the partner, without having his own orgasm, but at most the satisfaction of fulfilling a revenge on the weaker sex.

Male hypereroticism, like female hypereroticism, has organic and/or psychological causality, with some notable differences between the two sexes. Male hypereroticism can be neurodependent; it appears after cranio-cerebral trauma, as a more or less late consequence of these, or as a manifestation of some post-traumatic cranio-cerebral psychic disorders, after encephalitis, in tabes. It is also found in disharmonic personality structures, in obsessive neurosis, and in delusional psychoses. At the same time, states of hypereroticism are known in cases of drug addiction (at least in the initial phases): alcoholism, cocaine addiction, morphine addiction, etc.

On the other hand, excessive secretion of sexual hormones determines exaggeration of sexual impulse and sexual potency (especially hyperandrogenism). In hypereroticism with endocrine causality, we also include preandropause, a situation in which, with the hormonal balance changing, libido can increase, but sexual efficiency decreases, being accompanied also by psychic symptoms: lability, impulsivity, depression, intrafamilial conflict situations.

In women, the neurogenic etiology of hypereroticism is also known, this making its presence felt after encephalitis, in Parkinson’s disease, through hypothalamic lesions. But even more evident is the endocrine causality. Studying excessive eroticism of endocrine origin in women, some authors have grouped them into the following categories:

• hyperfolliculinic women (excess of pituitary gonadotropic hormones);
• women with excess progesterone through gonadotropic stimulation;
• women with hyperandrogenism (excessive secretion of androgens of adrenal or ovarian origin);
• hyperthyroid women.

Depending on hormonal predominance, different somato-psychic portraits have been described:

• hyperfolliculinic: exclusive vaginal excitability, short, chubby, with large breasts, affective lability, heightened sensitivity, weak maternal instinct;
• hyperprogesteronic: eroticism dictated by intense maternal feeling, extremely attached mothers;
• hyperandrogenic: clitoral excitability, masculinoid features, aggressive, hypoaffective, with increased libido;
• hyperthyroid: variable nuances.

Historical examples:

• Messalina, wife of Emperor Claudius — example of female hypereroticism;
• Julia, daughter of Augustus, wife of Tiberius.

Perverse hypersexuality has important social causes: eroticizing education, sexual liberalism, dissolving moral norms.

Dr. CONSTANTIN O. DRUGEANU

1992, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Normality and Deviance in Sexuality (VIII)
Aspects of Sexual Identity

Having partial implications, at least theoretically, in the genetics of sexualization, as well as in the etiology and practice of prostitution and homosexuality, transsexualism and transvestitism – manifestations of sexual identity – do not reach high rates in terms of number of cases, but deserve to be known by readers for the purpose of correct conceptual differentiation.

It is known that sex is determined through individual genetic programming, inherited, namely through a pair of sex chromosomes (XY for boys, XX for girls) and is achieved through the neuroendocrine system, sexualization evolving in stages from intrauterine life, then during extrauterine life, going through the genetic stages, gonadal stages (unisexual and differentiated – testes or ovaries), the structuring of internal and external genital organs, neurobehavioral stages (initially without specific somatic sex expression, then progressing at puberty and finally reaching sexual maturity). All these changes are accompanied by a tableau of somatic and psychobehavioral sex differences and imprints under hormonal influence, but also environmental, socio-cultural, and educational factors.

Although in the staged evolution of this process changes may occur that can lead to various forms of pseudohermaphroditism or authentic hermaphroditism, a normal evolution of sexualization and development of the genital apparatus does not always automatically guarantee the evolution and completion of efficient sexual behavior. Here the psychological dimension also intervenes, that is, the role of “learning,” the acquisition of the standard sexual behavior model, in a given social context.

Two additional notions appear:

• that of sexual or gender identity – an individual psychological notion, involving the inner conviction of belonging to one or the other sex
• and that of sexual role, a psychosocial notion involving attitudes, behaviors, and indicating the ability to react, according to this identity, in a certain sociocultural context.

One could also add, in the psychobehavioral evolution of the child raised in an affectionate family environment, a transitional psychological notion: that of psychological bisexuality, involving a first stage of identification with the maternal model and then gradually with the paternal model.

1. Freud refers to the existence in children, regardless of their real anatomical sex, of vestiges of the opposite sex.

Plato himself maintained that initially humanity consisted of double-sexed beings, Zeus separating them, humans still preserving the nostalgia of having lost one of the sexes.

And now let us refer to the two aspects of sexual identity: transsexualism and transvestitism.

Transsexualism
Represents a form of intersexuality without modifications of somatic sexuality, therefore with a subjective behavioral symptomatology.

Thus, the respective subjects contest the civil or legal sex of belonging (assessed exclusively according to external genital sex), claiming validation of the opposite sex by requesting somatic correction of the sex they have. The respective subject shows erotic impulses toward the analogous sex (claiming to be heterosexual), although they have a repulsion toward deviant sexual practices.

The transsexual refuses the clothing of their own sex of belonging (and to which they have the adequate somatic motivation), the games and company appropriate to their sex, the given name, etc., these orientations developing especially at puberty. Also, heterosexual behavioral habitus is accentuated, including profession, clothing, hairstyle, gestures, gait, etc. They progressively enter into a conflict of sexual and social identity, the subject persistently claiming their “rights.”

The transsexual differs clearly from the transvestite, as well as from the homosexual – with whom they can sometimes be confused – in that the latter does not contest their legal sex of belonging, but temporarily modifies clothing, habits, behavior exclusively for deviant sexual purposes.

From a causal (etiopathogenetic) point of view, this form of intersexuality has generated much discussion, being considered a mental perversion (psychopathy, schizoid-type psychosis). Some psychoanalysts incriminate the role of parents in the appearance of these disturbances through the desire for another sex, imprinting on the child an upbringing and clothing commented as such, while some neurologists base these manifestations on comitial-type disturbances. Endocrinology explains these manifestations through hyperandrogenic syndrome in girls or through hyperestrogenic tumor in boys, which lead to a “thinning” of masculine somatic sexual characteristics, thus in a feminine direction.

Treatment is differentiated, depending on obtaining the change of legal sex (this based on an elaborate forensic medical expertise, objectifying whether this claim is possible).

Treatment is mixed: medicinal (hormonal, to accentuate existing sexual characteristics) and surgical, both accompanied by psychotherapy for psychosocial integration.

Transvestitism
Unlike transsexualism, in the case of transvestitism it is evident that the subject has the tendency to dress in the manner characteristic of the opposite sex, either temporarily or for a long period of time, this having a playful tendency to play the sexual role of the opposite sex.

In the series of sexual identity disorders without biological basis (genetic, somatic, etc.) homosexuality is often also included. But not all transvestites are homosexual: the transvestite feels the imperative need to disguise himself as a woman, for example, to play in an eroticized role the role of a woman, although he is not of real sexual identity, deluding himself only on a heterosexual level, he may marry (as can the mixed homosexual).

In vestimentary transvestitism, behavior is “ostentatious,” caricatural, deliberate to make an impression, unlike transsexualism, where everything is done naturally, without ostentation. The etiology of these cases (at least in those in our statistical sample) is predominantly psychogenic, with sociopathic influences, the prognosis for cure varying from case to case.

Dr. CONSTANTIN D. DRUGEANU

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1992, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Normality and Deviance in Sexuality (IX)
Homosexuality
by Dr. Constantin D. Drugeanu

In the conclusion of this series on normality and deviance in sexuality, we will refer to the much-controversial problem of homosexuality or, as it is also called, sexual inversion, which consists in the psychosexual attraction of an individual to another individual of the same sex. We have considered it useful to devote more space to this topic, given both the contrast of homosexuality with sexual normality, which presupposes heterosexuality (that is, the sexual desires of men or women are directed toward subjects of the opposite sex), and the increasingly frequent occurrence of homosexuality in contemporary society.

Homosexuality reveals a complex issue from an etiopathogenetic (causal) point of view, being criminalized in most countries, with variations regarding the social and legal attitude toward it, but also regarding the mode of approach (biomedical, psychosocial, legal, etc.). In the following, we will refer to the major aspects of homosexuality, with data on etiopathogenesis (causality), therapy, as well as the legal attitude toward it in our country (legal provisions and judicial evidence, including forensic medical).

From the outset, the necessary distinction must be made between male homosexuality and female homosexuality (lesbianism), with the mention that sexual inversion is more frequent in men than in women, with many notable differences between these two forms, which is why we will treat them separately.

Starting from defining the notion of homosexuality, it must be mentioned that it is integrated among sexual perversions, namely in the group of those called “in objecto” (regarding the orientation of the sexual impulse, the object of the sexual tendency).

The notion of homosexuality corresponds – from a psycho-medical as well as legal standpoint – to sexual relations between similar sexes, with the mention that it may often be limited only to an inclination in this direction, to a latent endogenous potential for orientation toward the same sex (latent homosexuality). But this does not exclude, in parallel, heterosexual relations: the subjects – men or women – can be part of legitimate or de facto heterosexual couples. On the other hand, homosexuality quite frequently extends to other types of sexual perversions (as we have noted in our previous articles).

As far as we are concerned, we declare ourselves motivated and stable opponents of the tendency to include homosexuality in pathological sexuality, aberrant, sexual inversion being against nature. We make this mention because, at present, in some countries, other, more permissive or tolerant views (even legalized) prevail regarding homosexuality.

As a current definition of homosexuality, that inscribed in the provisions of Article 200 of the Penal Code is accepted, that is, sexuality within the same sex (sexual relations), in our country only concrete sexual relations being criminalized, with the mention that these are all the more serious when certain human categories are involved, such as minors, for example.

In classic forensic literature, the notion of homosexuality also extends to pederasty (orientation toward active homosexuality, consisting in the tendency toward anal coitus) and uranism (in which sexual inversion corresponds to the irresistible attraction to anal coitus, but also presupposes a passive form). For informational purposes, given that this point of view is no longer shared, currently a simplification is applied, in the sense that all sexual relations between same-sex partners are designated by homosexuality.

It was admitted that in pederasty there was an acquired perverse causal substrate, the background being psycho-socio-pathological, and the prospects for cure more concrete, unlike uranism, where sexual inversion was considered congenital, constitutional, incurable, therefore an innate morbid state. Uranism could be complicated by fetishism, sadism, masochism, etc. In the case of uranism, subjects show repulsion toward women and a tendency toward feminine clothing, jewelry, etc.

Homosexuality is much more frequent in men than in women, but it cannot be numerically estimated, since in most countries it is punishable by law and therefore manifests itself conspiratorially. Most cases are mixed, episodic, circumstantial (in situations where subjects are deprived of heterosexual partners), as well as potential or latent.

Dr. Kinsey, cited by Dr. T. Stoica, estimates a high incidence of homosexual orientation among American men, namely between 12% and 30%. It must also be mentioned that in rural areas homosexuality is less common compared to large urban agglomerations, where certain cultural-professional categories are more frequently involved in the practice of homosexuality.

The causes are multiple: from a certain nonconformism to a different view regarding sexual relations and the couple partner, a certain harmful social influence.

______________________

1992, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Normality and Deviance in Sexuality (X)
Dr. CONSTANTIN D. DRUGEANU

Referring to the clinical aspects of homosexuality, some authors classify it in a table of nosological entities called sexual or psychosexual psychopathies, with a constitutive or acquired character.

According to the etiology of this behavior, the following are distinguished: constitutional (innate) homosexuality, acquired (educational) homosexuality, psychopathic homosexuality, delusional homosexuality, symbolic homosexuality, homosexuality from perversion, and functional homosexuality.

The innate homosexual manifests homosexual tendencies from childhood and accentuates them in adolescence. As early as 3–4 years old, signs of an affective attraction to persons of the same sex appear. He likes to play with little girls (if he is a boy), chooses toys specific to the opposite sex, enjoys dressing in the clothing of the opposite sex, and imitating its characteristic gestures. He avoids the company of those of the same sex and prefers girls or women. These traits are maintained in adolescence and become accentuated at puberty. It might appear that there is a transsexual tendency. In reality, the difference is clear. The transsexual contests their legal sex and demands to be treated and accepted as belonging to the opposite sex, while the homosexual accepts their own sex and does not wish changes in this sense, but manifests sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex.

Most authors consider constitutional homosexuality as irreversible, impossible to treat, maintaining that innate homosexuals cannot become heterosexual through any treatment, being unadaptable to any form of psychiatric or psychological therapy. It is also claimed that they have a low libido, being oriented predominantly toward aesthetic pleasures. In the opinion of others, innate homosexuals can have an extremely active sexual behavior and even an orgiastic type of sexual life.

The acquired homosexual develops their behavior under the influence of the surrounding environment: education in collectives (boarding schools, dormitories, army, prison), through imitation, seduction or coercion, but also through insufficient development of the sexual instinct in adolescence. In these individuals a “sexual compensation” appears in the absence of an opposite-sex partner or in the presence of difficulty relating to such a partner. In the absence of strong inhibitors (education, religion, moral norms), deviant behavior sets in and repeats, becoming habitual over time. This form of homosexuality is considered recoverable.

Psychopathic homosexuality refers to those individuals who present disharmonious personality traits, with emotional instability, impulsivity, lack of self-control, and a tendency toward deviant behaviors. In these cases, homosexuality is only part of a complex psychopathic picture. The prognosis is guarded, and treatment is difficult.

Delusional homosexuality is encountered in schizophrenia and in other psychoses, in which the patient has false, well-systematized beliefs related to an imaginary homosexual relationship. In these cases, the behavior is not necessarily homosexual, only the idea. Treatment is that of the respective psychosis.

Symbolic homosexuality appears in some individuals as a manifestation of protest or defiance of social norms, as an act of contestation. There is no real attraction toward persons of the same sex, but only a symbolic expression through gestures, clothing, or behavior. It is reversible.

Homosexuality from perversion is associated with other sexual deviations, such as exhibitionism, fetishism, masochism, etc. The sexual behavior serves to satisfy a pathological need and not an affective one. Treatment is difficult and long-term.

Functional homosexuality sets in as a result of hormonal or neuropsychic disorders, which can disrupt sexual orientation. It is reversible through treatment of the underlying condition.

An important aspect is that homosexuality should not be confused with bisexuality, which implies attraction to both persons of the same sex and persons of the opposite sex. This appears more frequently in women than in men and may have a causality similar to homosexuality.

From a forensic point of view, homosexuality does not constitute a crime, but it can appear associated with crimes such as rape, corruption of minors, pimping, etc., which requires a careful approach.

Homosexuality has been and remains a controversial subject, not only in the medical sciences, but also in social, moral, religious, and legal sciences. The current tendency is to consider it a variant of sexual behavior and not a disease, provided that it is not associated with elements of social or psychopathological dangerousness.

In the next issue of our column, we will deal with female homosexuality or lesbianism.

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1992, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Normality and Deviance in Sexuality (XI)
Female Homosexuality
Dr. CONSTANTIN D. DRUGEANU

Also known as lesbianism, female homoeroticism, tribadism, or sapphism, female homosexuality is less frequent than the male form. Although some Western authors, as well as part of public opinion, are in favor of the “free choice” of women toward homosexuality, and American psychoanalyst Socarides and French writer Simone de Beauvoir plead for the free decision of women toward this sexual orientation, as far as we are concerned we maintain the opinion that female homosexuality is also unnatural to human nature, having a pathological character.

As for the question of whether female homosexuality is or is not assimilable to the male form, we can affirm that although Socarides and other researchers maintain that the conflictual nucleus is the same, going back to early childhood and mother–child relationships, there are obvious differences between these two categories, the psycho-affective development of the boy being different from that of the girl. The specific homoeroticism of the pubertal stage should also be emphasized: persistent (even explosive) interfemale affective states emerge and crystallize, generated by hostility toward the other sex, psychogenic shocks following failures in heterosexual relationships, affective disappointments, etc.

At present, three categories of lesbians can be distinguished, according to the classification made by J. Cohen:

• mixed – having heterosexual relationships and episodically (or in parallel) a homosexual erotic life;
• real – entirely homosexual, with aversion toward the opposite sex;
• psychopathic – with structured personality disorders (neurotic and psychotic), including homosexual orientation.

We mention, however, that if the first two categories mentioned above are “unassailable” as clinical reality, the latter can be considered as one of the causes of real female homosexuality.

From the point of view of causality, a few more frequently encountered possibilities can be considered: contaminated lesbian women (having a certain type of favorable psychic personality, but also a particular prepubertal evolution); women oriented toward these practices through reactive compensation for traumatic heterosexual erotic failures (inadequate conduct of male partners, sexual dissatisfaction, vaginismus, frigidity, anorgasmia). In this latter category may also enter brutal sexual debut, possibly rape.

Among lesbians there are persons who despise men, deny their significance, and avoid the male environment, and others who maintain their interest in this sex, wishing to be part of it.

Somatopsychic investigations, including psychoanalysis and psychological testing, as well as thorough medico-social anamnesis, often reveal certain endocrine disorders, masculinoid constitution, as well as unbalanced psychobehavioral personality types, psychoneurotic disorders.

Lesbians with a masculinoid constitution are usually active, attempting to adopt a parodied image of the man, both behaviorally, through authoritarianism, harshness, and in clothing.

In very few cases have genetic disorders been identified. Most data, however, are provided by psychosocial, family, and educational investigation regarding the patient’s debut and heterosexual past, the particularities of couple sexual relations – an investigation that reveals the importance of psychosocial and environmental factors in the appearance of sexual inversions.

The typological differences between active and passive lesbians are evident: the former marry rarely or not at all; passive lesbians – whose somatopsychic portrait is clearly feminoid – sometimes marry for convenience (more for social protection), but sexually remain frigid and incapable of authentic love, usually not wishing to have children. Tenderness and typically feminine erotic traits are directed toward the same sex, lesbians manifesting jealousy as well as brutality in such situations.

In women who present alternating periods of heterosexuality and homosexuality, during sexual relations with men, sadistic components toward the male partner or masochistic components, in which they find satisfaction, become evident. Some lesbians, during sexual relations with men, must imagine a female partner in order to obtain erotic satisfaction and to avoid repulsion toward the male partner.

If in both male and female homosexuality the possibility of a genetic–constitutional causal support can be considered as a predisposing factor, in both cases exogenous causality (external factors) is significant. Especially in lesbianism, environmental influences, traumas of sexual debut, and those of heterosexual couple life can be causal.

Dr. T. Stoica enumerates the paths by which women can arrive at lesbianism as follows:

• through homosexual initiation, due to a lesbian feminist environment (lesbians, as in the case of other perversions, try to recruit adepts among friends or acquaintances; sexually unsatisfied women, especially those who present vaginal frigidity, being more easily captured);
• due to traumas within relationships with opposite-sex partners (brutality in the debut of sexual relations, impotence or selfishness of men);
• educational mistakes that cultivate fear toward sexual relations with men, especially in emotionally immature girls, which delay the crystallization of a clear heterosexual preference.

The prognosis of this sexual inversion can be favorable especially in cases of passive, accidental female homosexuality. In such situations, it is sufficient to remove the socio-family conditions and predisposing factors.

Treatment is easier when lesbians are aware of their condition (especially in homosexuality of neurotic or psychic origin).

Therapy is medicinal (endocrino-psychotropic) and psychological (elimination of favorable conditions that led to lesbianism). Forensic expertise, as basic judicial evidence in criminal cases of this kind, is less local (genital), but especially psychic and socio-familial.

Dr. CONSTANTIN D. DRUGEANU

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1995, THE MODERN WOMAN
SIN as a way of life
STOLEN LOVES

Adultery is a sin as old as the world.
We will not try to present its explanations, but rather the dramatic consequences of the irresponsibility with which some partners let themselves be carried on the deceptive waters of momentary impulses.

WHO WALKS THROUGH NEIGHBORS

Two months after their wedding, Ioana and Ioan Puiu welcomed into their home a little one baptized with the holy name: Gheorghe.
This reason for joy should have brought the two spouses closer, not separated them. Coming to Timișoara from the Dolj region, the mother had not lived much more than a free drift in her own family.

Tired — not rushing from the demands and pretensions of her husband’s relatives — she threw herself, without many scruples, into the consignment process. In the pleasure of selling, “dedicated” to worldly matters, she usually forgot what was at home, for the sake of women with full baskets.

At home, she became particularly sensitive to illness. In her small, fat body, suffering found a suitable nest, despite sporadic attempts to take her to the hospital to make an easy recovery possible.

Until one day, when the woman washed herself, leaving the woman and the mother behind. The child, barely past two years old, had coughing fits again, and on the verge of winter, the so-called respiratory antibiotics, which had made him so vulnerable.

Ioana Puiu took him to the Children’s Hospital. The gray atmosphere — the mirror of a world burdened with worries and hardships — made the woman think of the lost freedom. A sickly child becoming a clear sign of a real burden in her way.

And then, what to do? How would it be to whisper a word in the waiting room, take her handbag on her arm, and leave.
The child? He had to be left with someone to take care of him, since there are so many others in the world.

Thus, Ioana Puiu returned to the life of an easy woman.
She was no longer interested in the upset husband, whom she would have left permanently, for a “life with a man” in Trăsteni.

The fear and despair of the abandoned little one, so condemned by this attitude, were not written in words at all. Our daily banality did not penetrate into the soul of such a child.

When, after a week, he was brought to the hospital emergency room, examined, and then admitted to the Children’s Home. The diagnosis was not new to the doctors: deficiency anemia and grade two dystrophy. In care, a parent said, of assimilation into the small community.

After a while, however, the woman who had given birth to him made a surprising move: she took the child, driven by the incomprehensible desire to deceive herself with the idea that she was a mother.

She returned home, with a sick child and a love for someone who no longer existed. The other man had disappeared, like the first husband, somewhere into the unknown.

This tragic story and, yet, too often encountered in the annals of the courts, unfolded in a dull space, without witnesses, but with many regrets.
With a young woman who, in search of a love, found nothing but traces of footsteps, in a confusion where she left her teenage dreams.

When, perhaps, things might have turned out differently:
if she had first loved her child, if she had looked at the world through the eyes of a responsible person.
When, perhaps, she could have found a path, without having to remind others that she was a mother.

MARRIAGE AS LONELINESS

Two spouses in full maturity separate.
It is not about individuals fallen to the margins of morality nor about a family in disarray.
Two rural intellectuals — he, secretary at the Town Hall of Sângeorgiu (Mureș), she — kindergarten teacher at Fălăuani, same county.

Paradoxically: what consistency pride takes today when placed before reason and, more seriously, when instinctual urges dominate the feelings of birth.

After 14 years of living together, the two spouses reproach each other thousands of things…
(…)

There is no even dirty ethic of couple life, acceptance of obligations, but rather a total indifference, which remained to be maintained as such, from inertia, revolt against the partner who became a “house man.”

Still, even in this way of conceiving such an intimate aspect — love, marriage — we cannot overlook the educational aspect.

The two have children.
The two share a house.
The two should, especially for their children, remain in a moral space at least somewhat clean.

Marriage is the joining of the feeling of love with that of responsibility.
When one is missing, the other falls.
Love without responsibility becomes powerless.
And responsibility without love is sterile.
In both cases, the family is a desert.

No kind of tact in using children as “weapons” and means of blackmail.

The break between the two spouses must appear in the posture of maturity:
civilized, without reproaches to each other, rightful, independent, claimed by one’s own will and real self-evaluation, highlighted extramarital and not imposed on the family from its social destiny.

Thus, the situation happens unequivocally and, yet, with shortcomings. The lack of understanding between the two spouses leads to losses for the children.

They are witnesses to the inability of the parents to keep a home, to remain under the same warm umbrella of understanding.
They are witnesses to the failure of a family.

To the natural question: who loses the most among the three — the family with the adults involved or the child who grows up without the support of both parents — the answer is simple:
The child.

He may never again learn what the love of a home means and what sense was lost where the fruit of love was never regained.

ADRIAN-NICOLAE POPESCU

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1996, THE MODERN WOMAN
IS FEMALE INFIDELITY MORE SERIOUS THAN THAT OF THE MAN?

One of the most stubborn prejudices is that the man is more entitled to be unfaithful than the woman. Where this almost immemorial prejudice comes from is hard to say.

What is certain is that infidelity — as guilt, in the religious and moral world — was consecrated especially by Christianity. Marriage became a holy bond through the “Oath before the altar,” and the morals of the time, much more archaic than polygamy, saw the man as a sentimental being and the woman as a sinful being. At the same time, the husband was also the head of the family, and the wife could never cheat on him during this moral code.

It seems that things have not changed much. Interestingly, in this regard, is a survey of our magazine on the opinion of some people who commented with sincerity:

Adrian Niculae (priest at “St. George” Church in Sânt, Bucharest):
“Man and woman are equal before the Lord. But I believe that the sin of the body is more serious in the woman. She is the mother, she can be a mother, and thus, her mistake influences the children, therefore it has a greater moral resonance. To be a mother and an adulteress means to destroy the divine order. The woman must be the model in education. She must remain the ‘clean vessel’ to be able to receive the divine gift. For before God all sins are equal.”

Maria C. (cleaning woman at the House of Scientists, 36 years old, divorced, with two children):
“It depends on who starts the infidelity. If the husband is the first to err, the wife has the right to respond in kind. Fine. But if the husband perseveres in sin, he is more guilty than the woman who replied. Female infidelity is more serious because she returns home and sees her husband. He can no longer love a wife who betrayed him. A man cheats by instinct, not by heart. The woman, yes!”

Mariana Aniei (psychologist-speech therapist, Titan Polyclinic, Bucharest):
“Equality should also imply equality in sins. Anyway, I do not measure the husband’s mistake against that of the wife. The man cheats just like a woman! Isn’t it so that if the woman betrays she is immoral, and if the man does it, he’s just a ‘hunter’? This is a double standard!”

Vladimir Petcu (editor at Romanian Radio Broadcasting):
“Yes. The guilt is much greater for the woman. That’s how our generation was taught. There is only one excuse for an adulterous wife: the man. The man’s freedom is given by his role as conqueror. If the woman cheats with the husband of her friend, she errs in a way that no man considers such a betrayal to be a guilt toward his peers, but rather a superior error. Transcendent.”

Vasile Blănaru (colonel in reserve):
“A woman can be a mother. Infidelity is part of the children’s fate. I go by some peasant sayings: ‘If a man steps aside, he is forgiven, the woman, no!’ Male infidelity is more passionate. He is not satisfied with just an affair. I have seen men crying on television, in which the man was raised in the cult of the woman as bearer of holiness. She does not err. He does! Only once a year!”

George Tănase (chemical engineer, from the plant in Turnu-Măgurele):
“Yes, the woman’s mistake is more dangerous. She has more qualities, while the man has only one, often even sinful. The unfaithful woman plays with both the heart and life. If she has stepped astray, it is clear she will never love again.”

Tudor Bălănuță (biological researcher):
“Genetically, the woman is monogamous. The man is polygamous. We must understand the differences of sex as natural ones, compensation, for example, is a complex game of exclusion and attraction. The man’s freedom is a philosophy and an essence of his identity. The man is born a conqueror — thus he fulfills his social role.”

Mihai Anitu (psychologist, university lecturer):
“Male infidelity can be accepted as possible for anyone, but not in the case of the woman. She has a special sensitivity. With a moral faith, and other much more concrete feelings.”

Miriam Elmasi (mathematics teacher, Freiburg, Germany):
“I believe the man is more entitled to be unfaithful. Here it is not a matter of morality, but of a natural, almost social mechanism. The woman self-manages the balance of the soul more and more specially. As is known, the first relationships are much harsher than those of the man. Women give meaning to life and men bring revenge. If all men remained faithful, female infidelity would no longer matter. But since it is not so, let us forgive them too!”

Valeriu Moca (correspondent at the Ethics Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, Bucharest):
“The man’s guilt cannot be compared to that of the woman. She can be forgiven, the man, no! The woman can find excuses, love, affection, doubt, lack of communication. The man does everything mechanically. He betrays instinctively.”

The conclusion is, therefore, clear. You have read what psychologists, priests, and ordinary people say: female infidelity is more dangerous! Why? Because she loves differently. And with her heart. As someone once said: “Let us not speak of forgiveness until the truth comes openly.”

ȘTEFAN CIOACĂ-IONID

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1996, THE MODERN WOMAN
THE MISTRESS’S SECRET…

After the 1980s, considered the peak of the feminist struggle, relationships between partners underwent a radical change. More precisely, the woman ceased to be an “object” in her relationship with the man and, depending on the case, was no longer limited to remaining a “knick-knack” or a “broom.” This apparent victory, however, bore bitter fruit, as it triggered the variable geometries of the conjugal couple. Increasingly frequent, to the point of becoming commonplace, relationships between men and women became polygamous, polyandrous, triangular, and in many other forms.

This was also the moment when homosexuality became an outright social issue. Often, children of modern couples have one natural father and another who educates them — meaning one who conceived them and another or others who raise them and provide behavioral role models.

In all this modern Babylon, however, an unbeatable character appears — the mistress — that is, the woman who replaces the wife most of the time. Around men, there are colleagues, subordinates, or bosses, women in positions free of obligations. They have become the “forbidden fruit” or, rather, the “bud” freshly blossomed every morning, the temptation that stirs in the shadows inhabited by human demons.

SHE, the daytime woman, even if she is also a wife herself, offers the lover-man, even without realizing it, only the face cleansed of worries and obligations. The wife has curlers, calluses, sweats, but the secretary is only the final result, a product of unseen, unendured preparations. The wife becomes the emblem of the problems of a life, the mistress only the wrapping of dreams.

In this vicious circle, the man slides, skates after a chimera, namely the woman-object of his desires, will, and aspirations. The wife — the man denies this attitude — but in the intimate realm, the mistress becomes for him an ideal of life. And then, we ask ourselves, what was the real gain of feminism?

In fact, this failure expresses the impossibility of standardizing relationships between people, the lack of a common denominator to which the “recipes” for happiness as a couple could be reduced. The mistress’s secret lies in the fact that she offers a new soul every morning, another face of femininity.

The true struggle women must wage is to polish more and more faces of their own femininity, for by the Law of Nature, they remain the magnetic pole of the world of men — poor men, doomed to spend their lives chasing the shifting sparkle of the Ideal Woman.

LIANA BULIGAN

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1996, THE MODERN WOMAN
LET’S SPEAK OPENLY
HOMOSEXUALITY: vice, illness, or freedom of choice?

Criminalized from 1969 to 1994, sexual relations between persons of the same sex are currently punishable under criminal law only if committed in public or if they caused public scandal. Recently, the government approved the draft law for harmonizing certain provisions of the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure with Resolution 1123/1997 of the Council of Europe, adopted also in Romania, in this respect proposing, among other amendments, the repeal of Article 200 of the Criminal Code regarding relations between persons of the same sex.

Many have misunderstood — wrongly! — this repeal as a legalization of homosexuality, when, in fact, it had existed since 1994. The legislative initiative, however, aims to ensure equal treatment in terms of criminalization and punishment of acts committed by those guilty of sexual acts, whether they are heterosexual relations or relations between persons of the same sex.

All acts of violence provided for in Article 200, all acts without violence committed against a person between 14 and 18 years old, if committed by a guardian or supervisor, attending physician, teacher, or educator, using their position, sexual acts committed in public or causing public scandal are or will be criminalized under other articles of the Criminal Code.

The issue of repealing Article 200 has stirred much commotion — both among ordinary people and in the thinking of specialists. For this reason, we try to make an X-ray of these perceptions, presenting to you a few points of view for and against homosexuality.

LET’S SPEAK OPENLY

Aurora Liiceanu, psychologist:
I believe the discussion is necessary because Romania is not an isolated country but is connected to the spirit of the times. However, here there is no history of this aspect of sexuality, and the lay thinking of the man on the street, because in general it is a taboo subject. Everyone views homosexuality with hostility, without distinguishing between minority and majority. The population must be educated to accept that a person has the right to be different. You cannot condemn a transparent behavior simply because you do not agree with it. Acceptance of a minority is a matter of democracy. In our country, no sexual education is provided, and it is considered that providing information means incitement. We must talk about homosexuality because, beyond the psychological side, there is also a social side: how it is perceived by others and how the problem is understood depending on each person’s level of education.

Constantin Bîlejan, senator:
As a doctor, I am interested in conducting medical research to find out whether it is possible for some people who have this genetic flaw not to be inclined toward this object of desire, as I consider it — a man, if he is a man, should not be attracted to another man, but to a woman. I believe homosexuals should not isolate themselves. I insist on specifying that the homosexual must be treated and not rely on European legitimacy.

Simion Crețu, priest:
Homosexuals must repent and turn away from their sins. God loves the sinner but hates the sin. The European Commission or the Council of Europe can say what they want, but the Bible says that homosexuality is a deadly sin and that those who practice it will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. It is a sin against nature.

Priest Silvestru Borduș, St. Nicholas Church, Bucharest:
The Romanian Orthodox Church has categorically expressed its point of view against the liberalization of sexual relations between men and considers that youth must be founded on what the good God made from the beginning — a man with a woman — and gave them blessing and the command to multiply. We cannot accept the sin of sodomy and do not want minors to learn in schools about homosexuality. On the contrary, they must be educated to fight against this sin.

Sorin Fusu, history teacher, “Dimitrie Bolintineanu” Theoretical High School:
Homosexuality is a behavioral deviation that causes the individual to lose his sense of self. Analyzing homosexuality as a social pathology, we can see the tendency to break a normal path of behavior and create another type of family. I cannot accept this anomaly being included in children’s education.

Denisa Hordoneanu, endocrinologist, Polyclinic of the Institute of Forensic Medicine:
As a doctor, I say it is a disease. In the clinic, we have homosexual patients who come for psychiatric or endocrinological treatment. It is a disease that can be kept under control but requires treatment. Society should not allow them free expression.

Andreea Deleanu, 26 years old:
Homosexuals must be accepted. I am bothered by the idea that some consider them sick people. Everyone is free to choose how they live. I have homosexual friends who are educated, decent, and well-mannered.

Nicolae Ștefănescu Drăgănești, lawyer, president of the Human Rights Defense League:
The point of view of the LADO Executive Bureau is that homosexuality is not a crime, it is not a deviation from the ideal, whatever the ideal may be. In a democratic society, people are free to decide.

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2000, THE MODERN WOMAN

2000, THE MODERN WOMAN

COHABITATION – advantages and disadvantages

The 1980s and 1990s marked in the history of the family the peak of unprecedented preference for new forms of cohabitation of heterosexual couples, defined as forms that replace the institutionalized classic family.

We naturally ask ourselves: why have these forms taken root in our country in the last ten years? Could it be that, in this sphere of the psychosocial, we are also talking about adopting the style and mentality promoted by the West, which is slowly “de-Romanianizing” us? Or is it a matter of a broad transformation of society, which is thus trying to adapt to new living conditions?

The most common form, a substitute for the classic family, is, as observed, cohabitation, which tends to become permanent. After 1970, both in Europe and in the USA, the preference for cohabitation, especially among young people, became so frequent that it significantly shook the stereotypical social attitudes that until recently condemned this way of living together. This preference today tends to take root with increasing force in our country, embraced primarily by young people.

Although this way of living together undeniably preserves the desire to maintain a definitive affective and social communion, the couple still maintains a view toward a personal availability or autonomy considered basic for an authentic relationship. All this can be explained by the fact that we are witnessing today, in full contemporaneity, an increasingly strong tendency to replace the legally constituted marriage, which has become increasingly shorter. With a new family model — the union or cohabitation — the goal remains to maintain the stability of the couple for as many years as possible.

Viewed with skepticism by previous generations, who cultivated the institutionalized family model, cohabitation is nevertheless not just a substitute for engagement or a kind of trial marriage, and even less a mere promise of postponed marriage. Preferentially adopted by young couples, the new model of cohabitation is therefore likely to extend over an entire lifetime and to replace marriage in all its phases.

Here another question may arise: what are the causes of cohabitation, which worries many because of its often apparent fragility?

Faced with the alternative of repeated and numerous marriages, which have always subjected children to developmental and social integration stresses, cohabitation — stable and harmonious over long or indefinite periods — seems to be a defense reflex of couples against social constraints. These social constraints are seen as belonging to morally exhausted traditional frameworks, in which fulfillment through the other has been short-circuited, thus triggering a true psychological protest.

Anyone convinced that in a modern couple the need for love, communication, and respect is placed last or may be absent altogether is mistaken. It has been found that precisely this human need for communion appears as a weapon against sudden changes and the socio-economic instability that have led to a heightened degree of personal insecurity. Therefore, the modern couple tends to prioritize the quality of the relationship over the durability of a legalized union.

What cohabitation offers young people in other countries, as well as those here, according to numerous studies, would be: increased sexual satisfaction, a stronger sense of intimacy, an added possibility of understanding oneself and one’s partner, avoidance of conventional meetings, etc.

Despite all these advantages, the idea remains that many forms of legal complications are possible in cohabitation more than in any romantic friendship. For this reason, many states consider that this type of social disadvantage falls outside the permitted social rules.

RUXANDRA MOLDOVEANU, psychologist

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2005, SIBIANUL
THE LESBIANS’ VOWS

Well hidden from the curious eyes of Sibiu’s people, lesbians have learned to live and love in intimacy. Weddings and vows of love and eternal loyalty between two women are rather common gestures in Hermann’s citadel.

ALTHOUGH MARRIAGES BETWEEN PEOPLE OF THE SAME SEX ARE FORBIDDEN!

THE LESBIANS’ VOWS

Declarations of LOVE, vows, wedding rings, and flowers. None of these are missing from the lives of lesbian couples in Sibiu. Women who love women “formalize” their relationship, both within their circle of friends and in front of the altar, but in great secrecy.

Lesbians stay hidden
Lesbians generally avoid the eyes and mouths of the world and prefer to love each other in secret. Thus, to have “access” to unusual details of the couple life between two women, you must be among their acquaintances. On the Internet, however, the matter changes. Protected by pseudonyms, lesbians have created true virtual communities in the form of discussion forums.

In search of lesbians
The reporter of the weekly SIBIANUL entered several chat rooms on mIRC servers and, after conversations with dozens of young women eager for feminine touches, found a lead that led him straight into the middle of a group of lesbians.

Scheduled love
After work, the “wives” meet at home. They cook, watch TV, take walks, love each other, and sometimes argue. Exactly like in an ordinary family. “Those who don’t know us wouldn’t realize. In public, we behave like two good friends, very close. When we go out, we don’t hold hands, we don’t kiss, and we don’t touch each other. We don’t want to attract attention to ourselves. We are afraid. We know the world is cruel and would never accept us,” says Ema, a 27-year-old woman who has been living for four years with her life partner.

The reasons for love between women
“When I was in middle school, I fell in love with my desk mate. She had green eyes and long hair. I was in the sixth grade. Back then, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was ashamed. I couldn’t talk to anyone. At 19, I had my first real relationship with a woman. I met her on the Internet. It was magical. Now, I’m with a wonderful girl. I love her. And I want to spend the rest of my life with her,” says Alina, 24.

Lesbian celebrities
It is no secret that many international celebrities have sooner or later acknowledged their homosexuality. Among them are Ellen DeGeneres, k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, Rosie O’Donnell, Martina Navratilova, and Portia de Rossi.

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2013, JURNALUL NAȚIONAL
Homosexuals and the sins of politics
Contempt – a personal choice, not a state policy
by Alina Turcitu

I admit, initially I thought Remus Cernea’s initiative was completely inappropriate. Romania has far more pressing problems than civil partnership for homosexuals. Moreover, I doubt that many gay couples would rush to formalize their relationship if tomorrow this were possible. Because the legal benefits would certainly be smaller than the risks involved in such an assumption. We live in a society where homosexuality has remained a shameful secret. Parliament cannot legislate sudden changes in mentality. However, neither should it become a tribune of bigotry and intolerance. And that is exactly what happened in recent days.

Hypocrisy from the Parliament’s tribune

The public reactions stirred by Cernea’s initiative are downright shocking. Top politicians competed in hysterical attacks meant to tickle the prejudices of the majority electorate. False theses were stated with aplomb, seemingly to fan the flames.

There was talk, for example, about “marriage” between homosexuals, falsely implying an entire religious symbolism. On this ground, any battle is lost in advance for the gay community. From the perspective of the Church, homosexuality is a sin, and the rights of homosexuals are only two: to penance and to abstinence. There is no room for negotiation.

A secular state does not mean the Romanian Orthodox Church
We still live in a secular state, so it is each citizen’s choice how they manage their relationship with God. And their private life. “Civil partnership” does not need the blessing of the Romanian Orthodox Church (obviously, it will never receive it). It does, however, need a parliamentary majority.

Our sin-laden politicians suddenly feel compelled to pose as valiant defenders of the true faith. Probably to distract our attention from other biblical commandments, such as: “Thou shalt not steal” or “Thou shalt not lie.” Their discourse is not only explicitly homophobic but also outrageously hypocritical.

Only now am I beginning to understand the counterproductive excesses of the tiny but vocal LGBT Movement. And to agree with Remus Cernea: the issue must indeed be subjected to public debate.

Because contempt (like sexual orientation) must remain a strictly personal choice. Not a state policy.