Norms of Communication and Communication as a Norm in the Intimate Social System

Both in the immediate social experience and in the scientific study of human sexuality, sexual lust and its constraint by norms have formed an almost inseparable unity. The strict social taboos and sanction-amoured norms once associated inseparably with the topic of sexuality (Freud, 1930; Kinsey, 1948), however, have generally given way to less rigid perspectives. In the instrumentalization of erotic lust under the imperatives of achievement and consumption, however, these are often no less alienating than their repressive predecessors (Marcuse, 1970; Nitzschke, 1974; Münz, 1985).