#express it except the passive aggressive tendencies i learned throughout my childhood. and when i apologize for that he says he didnt

[catgirlwizard]

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[dew-line]

Americans and the straw – a messy love story

Oral fixation is a condition whereas a person have an unconscious obsession with his or her mouth. Often the person feel the need to suck or chew on something all the time. It might take the expression of nail biting and other related habits; like excessive use of straws whilst drinking beverages.

 In Freudian psychoanalysis; psychosexual development is a central element of the psychoanalytic sexual drive theory, that human beings, from birth possess an instinctual libido – or sexual energy – that develops in five stages: the oral, the anal, the phallic, the latent, and the genital. Each stage is characterized by the erogenous zone that is the source of the libidinal drive. Freud proposed that if the child experienced sexual frustration in relation to any psychosexual developmental stage, he or she would experience anxiety that would persist into adulthood as neurosis, a functional mental disorder. He argued that adult neurosis is often rooted in childhood sexual fantasy and desire. That is because human beings are born “polymorphous perverse”, infants can derive sexual pleasure from any part of their bodies, and that socialisation directs the instinctual libidinal drives into adult heterosexuality.

The first stage of the psychosexual development is the oral stage, spanning from birth until the age of one year, wherein the infant’s mouth is the focus of libidinal gratification derived from the pleasure of feeding at the mother’s breast, and from the oral exploration of his or her environment, i.e. the tendency to place objects in the mouth. The id (the disorganized part of the personality structure that contains a human's basic, instinctual drives. Id is the only component of personality that is present from birth.) dominates, because neither the ego nor the super ego is yet fully developed, and, since the infant has no personality (identity), every action is based upon the pleasure principle. Nonetheless, the infantile ego is forming during the oral stage; two factors contribute to its formation: (i) in developing a body image, he or she is discrete from the external world, e.g. the child understands pain when it is applied to his or her body, thus identifying the physical boundaries between body and environment; (ii) experiencing delayed gratification leads to understanding that specific behaviors satisfy some need, e.g. crying gratifies certain needs.

Weaning is the key experience in the infant’s oral stage of psychosexual development, his or her first  feelings of loss consequent to losing the physical intimacy of feeding at mother’s breast. Yet, weaning increases the infant’s self-awareness that he or she does not control the environment, and thus learns of delayed gratification, which leads to the formation of the capacities for independence (awareness of the limits of the self) and trust (behaviors leading to gratification). Yet, thwarting of the oral-stage – too much or too little gratification of desire – might lead to an oral-stage fixation, characterized by passivity, gullibility, immaturity, unrealistic optimism, which is manifested into a manipulative personality consequent to ego malformation. In case of too much gratification, the child does not learn that he or she does not control the environment, and that gratification is not always immediate, thereby forming an immature personality. In the case of to little gratification, the infant might become passive upon learning that gratification is not forthcoming, despite having produced the gratifying behaviour. In short: The consequences of an oral psychological fixation may be, (i) orally aggressive: chewing gum and the ends of pencils, etc., (ii) orally passive: smoking, eating, kissing, oral sexual practices. Oral stage fixation might result in a passive, gullible, immature, manipulative personality.

This, naturally, bring us to the subject of straws.

Marvin Stone, the inventor of the modern straw, is said to have got his idea for the modern straw as he sat on his porch drinking a mint julep through a stalk of rye grass in an attempt to avoid getting mint leafs stuck in his teeth. Irritated by the grainy residue of the deteriorating plant stem he started experimenting with wrapping paper around a pencil and glueing it together. Today his invention, patented in 1888, is used in great number: approximately 500 million straws are used throughout the USA every day. The straw represent many things ��� a personal preference, a modicum of control – but in the realm of conscious thought it is mostly nothing, which is what makes it such a tough habit to break: You never even remember picking it up in the first place. Naturally there must be an explanations for this; such as laziness, clumsiness, mysophobia – or the innate need of sexual gratification. The American society has a strong oral fixation; from insult to the action, the mouth is ever present as proven by the innumerable variations of the expletive “suck my dick” as the insult of choice for a vast number of Americans. The fascination for oral sex is ever present in both pornography; as can be seen, for example, in “Mark’s Head Bobbers and Hand Jobbers,” a very popular – or so I have been told – pornographic franchise, and in everyday life – to the extent that oral sex is not considered by many American teenagers to be sex at all. That this view is shared by adults is proven by the:“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, miss Lewinsky” defense as put forward by then president Bill Clinton in 1998. The reason for this obsession with the male member can surely be found in religion. Infants brought up in a society dominated by the social taboos connected to sex in the Christian faith, and especially so  in the mentality of the Lutheran/Protestant variations of Christianity that have an inherent emotional detachment and a greater social stigma regarding sex than Catholicism. Catholicism do regulate sex, make no mistake about that, but the traditional homelands of Catholicism; read the latin countries, have a weather more suited to frivolous behavior and gayeties of mind than the dark and dreary parts of Europe that gave birth to Protestantism. The exception to the rule would be the Irish Catholics that balance out the dreary weather of the Emerald Isle with other means of merriment. But I digress. As the avid reader remembers Freud mentioned the possible neurosis associated with a possible oral psychological fixation as either orally aggressive or orally passive. Among the orally aggressive neurosis mentioned are included “chewing on pencils” and, as many know, the users of straws often chew on the straws during drinking and indeed after the beverage is consumed. The use of straws can equally be seen as a projection to the orally passive neurosis i.e. as a socially acceptable substitute for oral sex, a practice that is often frowned upon when conducted in public. If we then look at the different personalities associated with oral stage fixation; namely passive, gullible, immature, and manipulative personalties we see that these traits are fairly common expressed individually. On rare occasions several or all of the traits can be seen in one person – a relevant example would be the current president of the United States, Donald Trump.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the American psyche, part from the excessive use of straws, is the “jock” mentality; the need for men to be men and that those men that don’t conform to this group-imposed stereotype is chided for being “gay” – indicating that a homosexual man would be “less than a man” This accusation, when seen in the Freudian light of straws in the greater American orally fixated tradition, is so much funnier when considering that the homophobe every-time he orders a a drink and uses a straw nimbly sucks on a long, slender, pneumatically operated, throbbing – metaphorical – cock.