Sexual Schema
Over the years, the emphasis on sex as a mean of predicting the emergence of neurosis has shifted to finding the developmental influence that sex has on personality. This new focus is on the balance between the capacity for sexual pleasure and the establishment of intimate relationships. The assumption here is that to the extent that an individual uses sexuality, one’s sexual nature will be experienced as more or less central to one’s identity.
Schemas can be viewed as a cognitive framework that organizes the relationship between external social stimuli and one’s behavioral reactions. Thus, there are cognitive representations of the self that become active within specific contexts. Sexual schema is defined as a cognitive generalization about the sexual aspects of the self. This view is derived from past experience, manifested in current experience, influential in the processing of sexually relevant social information, and gives guidance for sexual behavior. Women and men experience sexual self-schema in their own ways.
Women’s sexual schema is composed of two positive aspects: the romantic-passionate and the open-direct self-views, and one negative aspect: embarrassment or conservative self-view. Women with a positive sexual schema tend to view themselves as: emotionally romantic or passionate, open to romantic and sexual relationships and experiences, liberal in their sexual attitudes and free of social inhibitions, evaluate sexual behavior more positively, more likely to engage in uncommitted sex and (one-night) sexual encounters, and more likely to anticipate more sexual partners in the future. Although they might seem very unrestricted, they also are more likely to have romantic ties or partners, and more likely to value romantic, loving, intimate attachments. On the other hand, women with negative sexual self-schema tend to view themselves as emotionally cold and unromantic, behaviorally inhibited in their sexual and romantic relationships, very conservative, and not confident in a variety of social and sexual contexts.
Men’s sexual schema can be described along a spectrum from being schematic to aschematic. Schematic men tend to view themselves as powerful and aggressive, open minded and liberal in their sexual attitudes, unquestionably more sexually experienced, and they tend to have a high frequency of sexual relationships, a lot of which occurs without any commitment. In the same way as a woman with a positive sexual schema, these men are capable of feeling romantic love and passion. They are more likely to be in a relationship and to fall in love. Being single is usually just a temporary occurrence. On the other hand, aschematic men have a narrower range of sexual activities, they are most likely to be single, and the majority believes that situation will not change in the near future.
Both men and women believe that a sexual person is someone who is sexual, but who can also display romantic, passionate, arousable, and loving qualities in order to establish intimate relationships.
Read more about this topic: Self-schema