The Reluctant Exhibitionist

by Martin Shepard

  One young man came to a marathon group* and stated his problem simply. He was thirty-two years old, had discovered masturbation only at age thirty, and had been intimate only twice. He wasn’t even sure that he had fulfilled his part satisfactorily on those two occasions, for he said that he had no sensations in his penis. No amount of talk seemed to do anything except elaborate data upon data, more amplification of historical fact.

  Finally, I suggested that I could have him do something, guaranteed that it would help him, but wouldn’t tell him what I wanted him to do unless he agreed first to do it. The man, after some initial hesitation, said, “Yes.”

  I then asked him to remove his clothes. That done, he was instructed to masturbate. He turned away slightly from the group and did as he was told.

  I asked him if he felt some sensation in his penis. He responded, “A little.”

  He continued to fondle his penis.

  “How are you feeling now?” I asked.

  “A little silly, being the only one disrobed.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I guess I want someone else to undress.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  I undressed. He kept looking at me.

  “What do you want now?” I repeated.

  “I want you to lie next to me,” he said, living out his fantasy.

  “Now what?”

  “I want you to touch my penis.”

  I did so, and after some moments again asked him what he wanted. There was a long silence.

  “I want someone else to lie on the other side of me.”

  “Who?”

  “Her.” He pointed to a young, attractive married woman. “I would like her to take her clothes off.”

  The lady complied with his request, undressed, and lay next to him. Again I asked: “What do you want?”

  “I want her to touch me.”

  She placed her arm about his belly and then gently took his penis in her hand.

  “Do you feel anything?”

  “Yes.”

  By this time he was experiencing an erection—more with the girl’s touch than with mine. The three of us continued to lie there naked, I embracing him on one side and the girl, touching him on the other.

  “Now I only want her,” he said.

  I got up and dressed. Both people now realized that they were sexually aroused by each other. They voluntarily stopped any further foreplay and the young man proceeded to ask questions about female genitalia. These questions were answered along with an anatomical demonstration of the married lady’s sexual equipment. The young man touched the vaginal lips and hesitantly and momentarily poked his finger inside of her.

  I feel that through asking for what he wanted and living through the fantasy with encouragement, support, and acceptance from the two of us, the man reached certain conclusions, made certain gains—some intuitive, some mental, some emotional.

  First, he accepted responsibility for his actions. For aside from my asking him to take his clothes off and to touch his supposedly unfeeling penis, he called all the shots in response to my asking him what he wanted. He also learned that he was more turned on by a woman than a man, although his fear was that the opposite was true.

  He learned that he could respond sexually, that his physical problem (an anesthetized penis) was an illusion. He found that to undress and masturbate in front of a group was not shameful to him or the group. He experienced people who were willing to take his problem seriously, sensitively, and helpfully.

  He learned that he was incredibly unknowledgeable about the act of making love and, even more important, about the female anatomy.

  He learned that his fears of the vagina’s being bottomless and engulfing were of his own making. He learned that his thrusting deeply would not hurt his partner.

  He gained an understanding friend.

  He found that an attractive married woman could be turned on by him.

  He was pleased with his performance and his willingness to take chances, and gained in self-esteem. He discovered that his problem was not irremediable and acquired faith in his ability to solve it.

  He ended with a superawareness of himself, his environment (people), and what one does to cope with it more effectively. So successful was this last realization that in the weeks following the marathon he established his first satisfying heterosexual relationship with another young woman he knew.

  I offer these incidents to you, Peter, not as “success stories” or as routine happenings, but rather to let you know that I will try almost anything that I think might be helpful to someone, convention or propriety be damned.

  I realize that I am offering you only fragmentary reports of how I work. I’m sure that there are people who would like to read a case with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And yet, there is no end, really. Life is made up of fragmentary moments piled upon one another. “Therapy” is just one moment, one stage of learning which, if successful, allows people to go on learning afterward without any longer using the “therapist” as a catalyst of change.

  Also, there is no case that is typical. Some people fail at therapy, some succeed. At times there are dramatic moments, some of which I’ve described. Quite often there is the dullness that results from either my own torpor and/or the boredom that afflicts most people’s lives. Most of my work is decidedly asexual, my Tantric-journal summer nothwithstanding.

  The only constant in my office is me. And even here I find myself erratic, changeable, and with a penchant for springing surprises upon people.

  In talks I have given to professional societies I am frequently asked whether or not there are specific techniques to use in dealing with particular problems. That is a somewhat similar question to yours, Peter. My answer is that there is no way of pre-selecting such tactics. Not that some professionals don’t try that. Indeed, they do. But I feel that such attempts are either well-intentioned folly or rationalizations of orthodoxy.

  For me, the really good therapist is much like the good artist. In art school you study technique after technique. You learn perspective, landscape, figure drawing, abstraction. You practice working in various media: oils, watercolors, tempera, charcoal, ink, wood block, etching. You attempt to understand all of the “rules” for working in each of these modalities. And in the end, if you are any good at all, you throw out all the rules and work instinctively. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that you go beyond the rules. What comes out of you then is YOU, tempered and refined and broadened by all you have studied and then “forgotten.”

  In the same way the gifted therapist exposes himself to all the psychological disciplines he can and then acts instinctively, assuming that his organism will pull out of his vast experiences that response to his “patient” that makes the most sense.

  From what I’ve said about the essence of “therapy” (making sound comments and sound contact) you should not be surprised that I consider individual psychotherapy an anachronism, a holdover from the past. I’ve come to feel that it is outmoded, unnecessary, extremely expensive, ridiculously “private,” and limited, inasmuch as the “patient” gets only the limited feedback and comments of one person—the “therapist.” Whereas in a group other people might have useful comments to make and experiences to share.

  What I largely do now is run encounter groups at Anthos and train other group leaders. I continue to see a few people in individual “therapy,” mostly because they insist upon it, because I have free time, or as a temporary measure while they accommodate themselves to working in groups.

  So much for my own explanations of myself and what I do. When you asked me to write about what I did that “worked”—about my “successes” and “failures”—I thought that the best answers might come from those who’ve worked with me. And so I put your question to people I’ve seen in groups and individually. You understand, of course, that these comments are kinder than those that might be obtained from clients who’ve sat in my office
once or twice and found me wanting.

  I quote from a woman in her thirties: “Your outfrontness makes it easier for people to be out front. You don’t really seem ashamed of anything and so you make it easy for people to talk to you about things they would never think of discussing with their mothers, or ministers, or friends. People are always waiting for someone else to go first before they say anything … and you go first.

  “You’ll do almost anything to reach someone, short of killing them. Most doctors I see at the hospital have some sort of image to maintain. They’ll only go so far along prescribed routes in an attempt to make contact with a patient. But you have no image to protect and are free to try anything.”

  Another lady in her thirties: “You make people think. When a person is dumbfounded and says, ‘I don’t know,’ you ask them ‘Well, if you did know?’ Tact is not your greatest virtue. Directness often drives people off.”

  A man in his late twenties: “You’re eclectic, clever, rational, impulsive. You have a great sense of humor and are in touch with the absurdity of existence.

  “You inspire confidence in me by your own lack of fear to be who you are. That is the greatest thing you gave me as a psychiatrist.

  “I’d describe you as a maverick, an iconoclast, a demystifier of the holy grails of psychiatry.

  “As a criticism I would list your inconsistencies and apparent lack of concern—your seeming inability to be touched by other people’s pain. But,” he said with a wink, “I guess you’re a good kisser, for a man.”

  Still another man describes me as being “quite perceptive, really, and feeling what the client is feeling.”

  I liked this one from a man in his late forties: “You’re arrogant. And a very skillful therapist. What you do of value is cut through a lot of bullshit. You come to the point of a problem very quickly. But sometimes it’s the wrong point.”

  This from a boy just turned twenty: “You’ve very sensitive and catch most things. You care about helping people. On the positive side I’d say that you don’t take bullshit but cut right through it. You don’t go in for long monologues or philosophies. When you know something, you say it. You’re not silent. Negatively I’d say that your timing is not always good. It’s not what you present but when you present it. The timing is yours and doesn’t take into account the other person.”

  And this final one from a man in his mid-twenties: “You have a fine sense of absurdity. You’re light, but you don’t take any bullshit. You’re quick to shock and enjoy shocking people with your own indifference and unshockability. You seem to get a lot of enjoyment out of dealing with people. You appreciate the absurdity of people expecting you to tell them what to do and you know that you don’t know any more than they do. And that you’re amused that they regard you with respect and think of you as other than having feet of clay.

  “You have a certain impishness. You are Everyman’s psychiatrist. If you deal with someone who wants a straight psychiatrist, you can be straight. And if they want a stoned freak, you can empathize and be that.

  “The thing you do best is say ‘I don’t know,’ and admit your fallibility. And the worst thing is that you’re fallible. And very heavy, hard, caustic, sarcastic, useful, and ineffective.”

  As I write these comments down, Peter, I am aware of the fact that they begin to sound like endorsements from a Billy Graham revival meeting. Still, they were given candidly and, I suspect, with some accuracy.

  Anyway, I hope I have given you more of the material you would like included in my book.

  Sincerely,

  Marty.

  * Free associating refers to random, unstructured, uncensored talking that analytic patients are encouraged to bring forth.

  * A marathon is a session lasting twelve hours or more.

  XXI-Taniric Road (concluded)

  Saturday noon, August 8

  I had not particularly looked forward to doing a couples’ group. Eivor had said she might come up to the retreat with me for it, but changed her mind at the last minute, feeling that it would be too much work caring for the baby and being in a workshop at the same time. I anticipated that special type of loneliness that is engendered by being the only “have-not” in a room full of “haves.”

  In all, seven couples registered. I started last night’s session before the last pair arrived by asking everyone: “Find out as much as you can about the other people present without talking to them. You are limited in your interactions solely by your inhibitions, imagination, or the restraints imposed on you by others.” The hour that followed was most interesting.

  One fellow jauntily walked around “Don Juanning” every woman in the group, with a hug, a kiss, a hand on the breast, or a hungry stare. His wife, a rather pretty, sad-eyed brunette with braces on her teeth, stayed fairly well rooted, looking about and relating nonverbally to those who approached her. One elderly man seemed confused by the proceedings and out of it, particularly when someone else removed one of his socks and began throwing it around the room. The brunette, responding empathically to his confusion, stepped behind him and began massaging his shoulders.

  I was touched by her caringness while her husband was cruising and went behind her to do to her what she was doing to the old man.

  In the midst of this, our seventh couple arrived; the husband, a stiff-looking bearded man of about thirty, and his wife, a lithesome blonde with a long pony-tail and the biggest pair of knockers I had ever seen. She out Don-Juaned Don Juan, with her eyes flashing, her buttocks firm and hard beneath her tight pants, and her breasts bouncing gaily under her jersey as she approached every man in the room.

  When the exercise was over, everybody invented a tale about everyone else. Don Juan was almost universally described as a playboy, ne’er-do-well, or gigolo. It turned out he was a psychologist. I said that I thought his wife was either an ex-stewardess or a nurse, so kindly had she treated the old man. She was indeed a former psychiatric nurse. And our femme fatale, Peggy, was thought to be a dancer, a hooker, the madam of an elegant whorehouse, and a person who drove her husband insanely jealous. In reality she was a psychotherapist, and both she and her husband, a research physicist, were into “the new morality”—meaning they were both open to sleeping with others together or separately, could share it, and stayed as happily/unhappily married as most.

  It was also the most sophisticated group I had ever run. In addition to the above, there were two attorneys, and two business executives, and the old man was a professor of mathematics. Their wives and girlfriends were equally capable people.

  This morning I asked each couple to think of the secret they had not shared that would be most destructive to their relationship. And then I asked them to share it. It is a technique popularized at Esalen that often helps couples start afresh by clearing the atmosphere of secrets they would rather not keep. Besides which, no one is forced to participate in such an exercise if he sees no value in it. Peter, the playboy psychologist, began by telling Carol that he had slept with one of the women who worked in his clinic. Her eyes showed even more sadness as they looked at the floor. “Why did you?” was all she could murmur. He went on to minimize the importance of the intimacy and then began to berate her for her perpetual sadness and jealousy, which dated back to her first learning of another affair he had had two years before.

  “Why shouldn’t she be hurt and jealous?” one of the women asked him. “Wouldn’t you feel that way if she slept with someone?”

  “No,” Peter answered. “As a matter of fact, I’ve encouraged Carla to do just that. Both so that she might realize my position—that I can love her and still be interested in others—and so that we might eventually get into some sort of communal arrangement. But she’s not interested. All she does is try to make me feel guilty.”

  To see if they might gain more appreciation of each other I had them switch roles and continue their dialogue. When Peter acted as Carla he was really vicious, twisting his face into a grotesque caricature of
her sadness—whimpering, simpering, and slobbering. I felt sorry for Carla. For, while I understood Peter’s attitude concerning sexual freedom in marriage, I nonetheless appreciated his wife’s difficulty in doing likewise. And I felt it unfair and ungenerous that he could not allow her her hurt.

  Next Ben—one of the attorneys—sat in the center of the group with Neila, a woman he had been living with for several years. He, too, confessed an infidelity. This was with an actress friend of Neila’s—a woman fifteen years Neila’s junior and apparently quite beautiful to boot. Neila didn’t bat an eye. She just asked:

  “Was it worthwhile?”

  “No,” Ben said, squirming on the floor.

  “So that’s the end of it.”

  A pause. “Do you have any secrets from Ben?” I asked.

  “No. I’ve nothing to hide from him.”

  “Aren’t you upset?” someone asked Neila.

  “No. Why should I be?” she answered stiffly.

  “I think you’re lying,” came another voice.

  “You’re entitled to your opinion.”

  At that point Peggy began play-acting at flirting with Ben. When Neila looked at them she was asked “How do you feel now?”

  “If you mean am I jealous, the answer is, ‘No. It’s just an act.’” Then to Ben: “What made you do it?”

  “I thought you didn’t care,” I said.

  “I don’t. I’m just curious.”

  “I wonder. I’ll tell you—just to put you to the test and to avoid play-acting—I’d like everyone here to pick out the person he is most attracted to and go off somewhere and get to know that person as fully as you can within the next half hour. Then we’ll reassemble and talk about it.”