Carnal critiques: promiscuity, politics, imagination, spirituality and hypocrisy

Abstract

The author explains the political, psychological and ethical reasons for writing about promiscuity. His previous work on what is ‘more‐than‐personal’ embraced politics and spirituality in the context of psychotherapy. He sets this inquiry in the historical context of the fortieth anniversary of the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s, reviewing critically the debate as to whether there was or was not a revolution. The manifold connections between sexual promiscuity and political critique are explored. This sets the scene for the location of promiscuous phenomena within a spiritual or transpersonal domain. Promiscuities (in the plural) rather than monolithic promiscuity are surveyed in terms of sex and sexual diversity. Promiscuity is reviewed in terms of imaginative process. Finally, the hypocritical attitudes towards promiscuity on the part of many (but not all) psychotherapists are explored with the intention of discovering the reasons for this phenomenon.