ABSTRACT
Power over pleasure, over what people are able to enjoy, is a central feature of human societies. This chapter describes a few ways power produces pleasure and one interesting way in which it affects the body. It sketches the relationship of power to sexuality and describes some suggestive research on how power relations interact with hormones. Power and high status are associated with pleasure. Weakness and subordination are associated with depression, if not also with a more complex array of factors. An extensive literature both confessional and scientific describes how readily people can become prone to depression when they suffer severe reversals in economic, political, sexual, and social life. Low status and powerlessness are obviously uncomfortable conditions, even physiologically. There is a relationship between power, sexual pleasure, and short-term sexual control, as is reflected in prostitution, or even in "escort services" which may or may not provide sexual services.
