ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and others have repeatedly pointed their blaming fingers at the Christian ascetic religion as the “bedrock” for our neurotic repressed sexuality. The point is, however, that while prima facie modern thinkers seem to join hands in their antirepressive efforts, the idea or rather ideal of sexual repression is equally alive and kicking among psychologists, although in a disguised manner. The “broader” contraction paradigm, which conceives sexuality and creativity as a union between the contracted-frustrated physical impulse or drive and its expanded spiritual-mystical component, is derived from two concepts associated with the notion of tzimtzum: the concept of yetzer and the mystical practice of the kabbalisticdevefeui. The sexual either/or norm seems to derive its legitimation from the democratic notion of one’s commitment to exercise his or her right of self-determination.
