Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist by Avodah K. OffitMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The first thing I enjoyed about this book is its title. "Night thoughts" bring to my mind a romanticized vision, perhaps fitting for a Edward Hopper painting. I see the author sitting in an over stuffed chair in the library of her Upper East Side brownstone home. Dark paneled walls and lovely floor to ceiling book shelves are dimly lit from a banker’s desk lamp with traditional green glass shade from across the room. Barber’s Adagio for Strings softly plays on the stereo. Dr. Offit holds a Perrier in her hand, while outside a gentle autumn rain lightly taps on the window. She stares off into the dimly lit room, while thoughts of the larger meaning of her work goes through her mind:
At night, questions become more abstract. I try not to let them get out of hand. I know I can’t answer the larger ones. I simply ask why we behave as we do. Why, for example, do some people thrash about miserably in the chains of their unreleased passion while others feel grateful to be undisturbed by any sexual emotion? What accounts for the patterns of difference I detect between the desires and expectations of men and those of women? Are the differences chemical or cultural? How can people change their sexual attitudes --and should they be asked to?
Offit, Avodah K. Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 64-68). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition.
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| Cover Image: Henri Rousseau, The Snake Charmer, 1907 Image Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Rousseau |
The essays often don’t go the way you would expect. For instance she starts the essay Morning Sex:
I ASSOCIATE MORNING sex with camping. Although I have never gone camping, I own a pair of new summer hiking shoes. I fantasize backpacking as a romantic experience the way some people dream of New York: gourmet restaurants, vintage e me wines, a box at the opera, a carriage ride through Central Park have at midnight, and love between silken sheets at the St. Regis. The best part of camping must be to open your eyes in the morning, that. see the sunrise, the sky, and the trees--and feel the warmth of a lover there with you in your double sleeping bag.
Offit, Avodah K. Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 92-96). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition.
Offit then discusses her observations of her patients reactions to morning sex, it's controversial...men like it, women often don't...exceptions abound.
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Image Credit: Sidney Offit and The Avodah K. Offit Papers,
Archives & Special Collections, Hunter College Libraries,
Hunter College of The City University of New York.
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I was happy to see that Offit did not continue the extensive cataloguing of the various personality types and the particular sexual neurosis that each type exhibited with each of the other types as she did in The Sexual Self: How Character Shapes Sexual Experience. This smacked too much of a Viennese purple velvet analytical chaise with Freud stroking his goatee while asking me questions regarding my mother's emotional rejection of every girl in which I had showed any interest, strongly paralleled to questions regarding premature ejaculation. While I take a certain level of pride in being a somewhat neurotic INFJ, or a Negotiator/Director in Helen Fisher's personality types, and even a Mature Soul in the Scholar role in my unicorn riding, New Age flakery, for the life of me I couldn't determine if I was a passive, a passive aggressive, schizoid, paranoid, or a compulsive. I was pretty sure that I was neither a histrionic or narcissist. Blue collar slob, didn't seem to be one of the personality types.
One area she discussed that I was quite taken with was Postcoital Feelings. Most books I have read on sex have a few sentences on the afterglow or a paragraph on postcoital pillow talk. Dr. Offit devotes an entire essay to the subject and she mentions the difference between men and women. She offered this observation with a bit of humor:
The troubles people have during sex cause them to flounder about the bed after sex in various degrees of unrest. Many couples fail to discuss their immediate reactions to sexual dilemmas. While these need not be dissected immediately like a cadaver on the postcoital bed, they can be touched on delicately. In any case, it's well to discuss them sometime between one lovemaking experience and the next.
Offit, Avodah K. Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 2662-2665). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition.
Also in Postcoital Feeling Offit discusses a phenomena that I have never heard of and yet have suffered in a minor way. So it was with great interest that I read the following passage:
After sex, women more than men tend to be in touch with "postcoital tristesse, " feeling sad without precisely assigning a reason. In therapy, women most often trace this sadness to feelings of loss and separation. The closeness of intercourse is over. When a person feels sad about one parting, all other separations and losses seem to join the procession. People who have lost a significant relative, friend, teacher, or even another lover often mourn this loss after sexual intimacy. The reduction of boundaries when naked bodies merge may release conscious or unconscious memories. Some people are perfectly aware that they are remembering a grandmother's caress or a parent's tenderness; others are bewildered by the mystery and do not know what they are lamenting. The French expression for orgasm is "the little death." And after such a death we have the opportunity to mourn at our own gravesites. Resentment or depression can result when a lover ignores these feelings, runs away from them, negates them as "irrational," or tries to be cheery in the face of our penchant for grief.
Offit, Avodah K. Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 2764-2772). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition.
Never one to miss an opportunity to feel a lovely dose of melancholy, I have over the years often felt, while entwined with my wife in a postcoital bliss, the cool wind of mortality blow across my bare and sweat beaded behind. “One day, all this will be taken from you. Either you or she will survive the parting of the other, and lie in this bed alone.” To counter this postcoital tristesse I at times have a fantasy of the furnace exploding right at the moment of a mutual orgasm when she is 100, and I am 104, our bodies melted together and orgasm faces forever branded on to our countenances.
Dr. Offit strikes me as though she was a very private person, most likely an introvert. That coupled with a non-emotional professional air of stoic impassivity while discussing topics highly fraught with emotional and cultural expectations and norms, one could expect a certain level of clinical detachment to her writing. Yet I found a high level of warmth and humanity to her writing. She at times would give us an entertaining overt glimpse of Avodah (verses Dr. Offit) such as this description of one of her patient's perfume:
A third [patient] wears a preparation whose molecules are so arranged that they inspire me to want to don the high heels that I never wear except as a sexual indulgence. I haven't asked her the name of her mixture. It might be dangerous.
Offit, Avodah K. Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 1882-1884). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition.
Another time she tells us of a postcoital dispute that she and her husband had when they were first married:
He would sometimes accuse me of being heartless. "You actually roll over and go to sleep!" he would say. "Just like the legendary man." Imagine--I, who had been with him for the past forty-eight hours, and doing unspeakable female things! "I need to close my eyes and think for a while, that's all," I would reply. "Besides, I like to be held while I'm sleeping. That's not like a man.”
Offit, Avodah K. Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist (Avodah Offit Memorial Series Book 1) (Kindle Locations 2653-2656). Beckham Publications Group. Kindle Edition.
I immediately thought of the narrator’s wish in the The Grapes of Wrath regarding the sins alluded to in a revival meeting, “Wisht I knowed what all the ‘unspeakable female things’ was, so I could ask for ’em" (adapted from quote on page 388).
At other times, her revelations are more covert. Every now and again I would detect a certain wistfulness in her more explicit descriptions. I could almost hear her sigh, rub her eyes, and long to set down the pen, wake her husband, and gloriously do what she had just been writing about.
There are three negative things which I think should be mentioned regarding this book. The first is that the Kindle edition does have some formatting and typographical errors. You can see some in the quotes I provided. I don’t get my knickers in knot over such errors but if you do, you may find it better to buy a paperback copy of the book (although I can't vouch for the fact they may not have the same errors). The second thing is that one must remember that books are always victims of the culture and social norms of the era in which they are published. When reading this book if you find ideas that may seem dated or a little less enlightened than current thought, think back to how you felt in 1981 when the book was first published or when she revised it in 1995. Almost a quarter century has passed since Offit expressed her “night thoughts,” as such one may have to exercise some tolerance when reading this. The last thought that occurs to me is that I don’t imagine the Dr. Offit found many plumbers or waitresses from Queens among her patients. If there is a certain “first world” aspect to some of her patient’s problems, I think it may be in the nature of the type of people who are inclined and can afford to go see a sex therapist.
I immensely enjoyed this book and as such, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Dr. Stephen Snyder who mentioned and quoted Avodah Offit's books in his excellent book Love Worth Making: How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Long-Lasting Relationship. Had I not read Snyder's book, I may very well had never heard about Offit's books. Both Snyder and Offit have done much to enrich my understanding of love and sex.
In probably what amounts to a classic case of therapist/reader transference, when I completed this book several days ago, I fell into a bit of a depression. I finished Night Thoughts, now what? I could read her third book, the novel Virtual Love. But no I wanted more Night Thoughts. I felt like I had lost a friend. I moped about the house and found myself being dragged back to reread certain passages. Years ago a reviewer in the The New Republic called her the Montaigne of human sexuality. I agree but to me Avodah Offit is something far beyond an accomplished essayist. I have read that sex is God's joke on humanity. Perhaps Avodah Offit through not only her work but also her writing was something of a Divine Comedian. Knowledge and understanding are the underpinnings of wisdom. Perhaps Offit was able through that wisdom and her faith in love, in some small way, turn that joke back around on God. I imagine them now, God and Avodah, having a drink in some Bohemian dive out on the seedier edge of Heaven, well away from the righteous, laughing like hell about male frustration over multiple female orgasm. Then God in an unusual display of humility asks with a glint in his eye "So Avodah, what were those unspeakable female things?"
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Dr. Avodah K. Offit passed away in January of 2015, here is her obituary that appeared in the New York Times: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=avodah-offit&pid=174000565&fhid=2086
Image URLs:
Cover Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/HENRI_ROUSSEAU_-_La_Encantadora_de_Serpientes_%28Museo_de_Orsay%2C_Par%C3%ADs%2C_1907._Óleo_sobre_lienzo%2C_169_x_189.5_cm%29.jpg
Dr. Avodah K. Offit: https://library.hunter.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/documents/archives/finding_aids/Avodah_K_Offit_Papers.pdf
