Orgasm, Psychosis and Death

This paper attempts to make psychoanalytic sense of the phenomenon of orgasm. It is a peak experience that has not received much attention in psychoanalysis, and which simultaneously carries with it not only bliss and pleasure, but also the horror of death, and the flair of madness. The connection between death and sexuality has been familiar to us since Ancient Greece, if not longer. They are united by aspects such as loss of control, fear, transformation, the death of the old and the birth of the new. Orgasm is also linked to death through waste - whether of male semen, strength or tension - and through the principle of nirvana, a state to which, according to Freud's second theory of urges, we aspire and which we can reach after orgasm. In our practice we often encounter fear, and while the fear of death or insanity is more or less clear to us all, the fear of a pleasurable sexual climax raises questions. We can look at the same situation from another perspective - if orgasm is like death, what motivates millions of people every day to "go to the death"? Can an orgasm drive you insane? Can a psychotic experience be orgasmic? This paper was born as an attempt to answer these questions. In an orgasm, time stops, boundaries are erased, there are only the rhythms of the body - it is similar to the experience of a baby in the womb. An orgasm can also have a tinge of religious ecstasy, which refers us to the oceanic feeling of being one with the world. In addition, an orgasm is also certainly a sense of oneness with a partner, but only for a second - it is followed by an encounter with one's loneliness, following on from the impossibility of oneness. We all intuitively understand that there must be a difference between male and female orgasm, stemming from fundamental differences in sexuality. For a long time, female sexuality was suppressed, women were expected to fit into the male model of sexuality, and if they failed to achieve pleasure within it, they were declared frigid and subjected to all kinds of punishment. We believe that this is related, among other things, to men's fear of female sexuality, of this "dark continent", which is very deep, multi-layered, mysterious and sometimes frightening even to women themselves. Orgasm and psychosis share such traits as psychic extravagance, achieving heights and timelessness, losing control, soaring upwards and feeling endlessly downwards. All this makes orgasm both desirable and frightening for anyone. This paper suggests that orgasm can be particularly frightening for someone with psychotic levels of functioning, reinforcing their fears of disintegration, fusion, annihilation. When the capacity for symbolisation is not developed, a "little death" from metaphorical to literal, very real death, and the madness that a "healthy" person will encounter only for a second at the peak can remain with the psychotic subject forever.