The burning pain of cystitis has to be experienced to be believed. If there is blood in the urine it is wise to have it analysed, since discharge of blood can have sinister overtones. Although the medical answer is antibiotics, what do you do when it becomes a chronic condition?

     We prefer to look at the whole person not just the symptom. Firstly, have your pelvic structure checked out for any misalignment. If the nerve supply to the bladder is affected, removing the cause can solve the problem.

     Homoeopathy is then my choice for treatment:

Aconite               if you can catch the symptoms early.

Cantharis         for all the classical signs, this is IT.

Staphysagria  for ‘honeymoon’ cystitis. Too much, too soon.

Dulcamara      use to prevent the problem.

A homoeopathic for the infection is given at this time.

     Acupuncture is used then to boost the immune system and sedate the pain. We use ear acupuncture for the bladder meridian, although we sometimes go directly to the bladder points near the spine. There is so much that natural therapy can do.

     Helping yourself: Go vegetarian. Drink barley water (boil 100g/4oz barley in enough water to cover it. Strain and pour cold water over the barley. Add a little lemon rind. Simmer till the barley softens. Cool. Strain. Add honey and drink at least six times a day). My usual recommendation is to add barley to all your vegetable soups. Use chamomile as a herbal drink. Have two days on vegetables and boiled rice only, to relieve acute symptoms.

     See your chemist for a mixture to alkalinise your urine. Or if you have access to a herbalist they may recommend yarrow, marshmallow leaves, bearberry, sage and horsetail to be made up into a tea infusion. Or some prefer alfalfa and corn silk teas.

     A bicarbonate of soda hip bath is very soothing; garlic and calcium ascorbate are also recommended. Ferrum phosphate and sodium phosphate cell salts are the minerals naturopaths recommend.

     Marian’s Honeymoon-Marian didn’t realise cystitis would go along with her on her honeymoon. It was a second marriage though she was only thirty-two. The burning pain started after only three days on their island paradise, and it was excruciating to urinate.

     As luck would have it, there was a homoeopath close by on the mainland from whom she obtained some cantharis and staphysagria. She applied some hot water bottles to her back and just apologised to her new husband. He was very concerned and had the hotel make up the barley water with lemon as the naturopath recommended. The hotel pharmacy sold them some powder that considerably eased the pain of urination, but it seemed soaking in the bath was the most exciting thing she wanted to do. Oh well, at least the sun was shining . . .

     On a different tack, a drug for arthritis has been found by a Newcastle hospital to cause severe cystitis in the elderly. If bacterial infection is not found to be the cause of your cystitis, it is wise to check any medication you are taking.

*99\19\2*

In The Odd Couple, Felix (the control freak) is always chastising Oscar (the slob), telling him to pick up after himself, wash his dishes, clean his room, eat better foods (not junk foods), and generally act more mannerly. Felix not only gets to order Oscar around, he also continually assumes and expresses moral outrage at Oscar’s slovenly ways. Oscar, meanwhile, continually foils Felix’s attempts to control him and shrugs off his companion’s moral outrage. If Felix picks up after Oscar and gives him a lecture, Oscar almost immediately—and not always absentmindedly—drops something else. Hence he defeats all of Felix’s attempts to control him and ends up infuriating his tormentor. In fact, the two are playing out the role of the scolding parent and the recalcitrant child.

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The husband may have to continue this game for days— even weeks. Sometimes his “headaches” will occur with respect to small matters, such as emptying the trash, and sometimes with regard to bigger things.

“Why aren’t you getting dressed?” the wife asks.

“I’m sorry. Going to the theater gives me a headache.”

“You never got headaches when we went to the theater before.”

“That’s true, but I’m getting them now.”

“You know, this game of yours is no longer amusing.”

He places his hands on his temples and looks as if he is about to faint. “And I’m getting sick and tired of you not taking my headaches seriously. You think I’m faking, don’t you, because I want to get out of going to the theater? I wish you could respect my feelings just once. Is that too much to ask? All you think about is your own needs—never mine!” (This little speech should be an imitation of one of her repetitious tirades brought on when he formerly approached her for sex.)

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He licks in circles around each of her breasts and asks, “Is that all right?” If so, he continues. He licks each of the nipples, and bites each one gently. Then he runs his tongue down to her belly button and licks around it—then slides down to her vagina. He licks around her vagina and asks, “Is that all right?” If so, he continues. He licks her inner thighs, then bites each knee, and then each elbow.

He then takes the ice bag and runs it slowly about her body. He circles her breasts, then grazes each nipple. He runs the bag up her neck and around her right temple, over her forehead, down her left temple, very lightly across her lips, down her chin, around the rims of both ears, around her breasts again, down each inner arm, across each palm, then down to the belly button, around it, then down to the pubic hair, around it, down to the vagina, around it, then gently across it, then down the inner thighs, inner calves, and over the top of each foot.

Next he takes the hot washrag and follows the same route.

Next he takes the feather duster and follows the same roate:

Next he kisses her, following the same route. Next he covers her with a comforter and gently rubs her all over.

Next he lies on top of her, holding her hands, and rubs his body against her. Then he kisses her softly on the lips. Then he asks, “Is it all right?”

If so, he asks, “Would you like an inner massage now, madam?”

If the answer is no, he stops the massage right there. If the answer is yes, he proceeds to fondle her, making sure she is wet, and then enters her. Looking at her and keeping her hands in his, he begins to have intercourse. He says, “It’s very important to have an inner massage every so often. Try to think only of the inner massage now—but if you do think of something else, then gently return to the inner massage and think of that again. If you start thinking of how glum life is, then go ahead and think about how glum life is but then return to the inner massage and think of that. If you start thinking about how meaningless your existence is, then go ahead and think about the meaningless of existence and then return to the inner massage and think of that. Are you thinking about the inner massage now? Is it all right? Are you feeling better and better? It’s all right if you want to come. I will protect you while you come.”

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Players: Passive wife and aggressive husband.

Activist: Husband, without wife’s knowledge or cooperation.

Setting: Bedroom.

Aim: Resolve the defensive posture of the wife by “killing with kindness,” and change the husband by having him give up his tendency to guilt-trip or threaten.

Game Plan: This game is for the passive-aggressive couple in which the wife is the passive and the husband is the aggressive, and their sexual relations are epitomized by the “Not tonight, dear, I’ve got a headache” syndrome. Couples who get stuck in this syndrome are invariably locked in a particular kind of impasse. In this fix, the wife appears to be a kind, giving person who takes care of the husband and children—and, indeed, often treats her husband as if he were one of the kids. But when it comes to adult sexuality, she avoids it. The husband likes being pampered by the wife and feels guilty about wanting more sex. His response to being sexually frustrated is to beg, guilt-trip, and threaten his wife: “Please, I need it!” he may say—or, “I don’t know why I put up with a wife like you”—or, “Maybe I’ll have an affair.”

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It can take months—even years—of therapy for such couples to break through these resistances. However, through erotic games, the wishes, fantasies, and feelings will often be prodded loose rather more swiftly as a by-product of play. The spontaneity associated with sexual play undermines rigid character defenses and hastens confrontations that would otherwise continue to fester.

Following are five games to be used by bored couples. Games 1 and 2, “Seduction Surprise (by the Wife)” and “Seduction Surprise (by the Husband),” are variations of the same game. These would be excellent starting games for the husband and wife described above. Which game should be played first depends upon who is “boring” and who is “bored.” In the case just discussed, it would probably be the husband who would be the game activist, since he would feel most sexually deprived and therefore eager to try something new. In cases where it is the wife who is feeling frustrated sexually (or otherwise), and therefore most bored, she would be the game activist.

*23/196/1*

Although the irrelevance of intrapsychic considerations to the treatment of disturbed sexual behaviors that are now blind habits is especially clear, this same behavioral perspective may be applied to all sexual disturbances. Many behavioral therapists take any sexual problem, break it down into its component behaviors, and systematically change each behavior in turn. With this approach they have achieved some excellent results.

Barlow, Reynolds, and Agras, for example, have used just such a behavior-by-behavior approach in the successful treatment of a transsexual young man, an area generally considered to be highly refractory to any kind of treatment. First the patient was trained in “masculine” motor and social behaviors. He was taught to sit, stand, and walk in a male-appropriate (as determined by community standards) role, to deepen his voice, and to converse appropriately. Next, using sexual fantasies combined with social reinforcers, he was trained to identify himself as male rather than as female. Finally, a classical conditioning method known as fading was used to establish heterosexual arousal, and aversive methods were used to decrease homosexual arousal. Through the sequential, successful modification of these component behaviors, the patient changed from a person desiring sex transformation surgery to one on the brink of leading a full heterosexual life. The power and limits of such a completely behavioral approach to complex sexual problems, what it can and cannot do, has not yet been fully tested, but it does have great promise.

In clinical practice, however, there are times when the exploration of intrapsychic processes seems necessary to identify the target behaviors. Even under these conditions, behavioral technology may be used to bring about the actual change. To illustrate this approach, we will describe the treatment of a twenty-four-year-old homosexual man who complained of compulsive masochistic sexual behavior. He was not attracted to lovers who would show him tenderness and consideration but rather to “bastards” who would mistreat and even physically abuse him. He received no pleasure from this and experienced only disgust with himself and a feeling of intense frustration. He rather quickly broke off each such relationship, only to be caught up again just as quickly in a similar one. A variety of behavioral methods was attempted unsuccessfully: desensitization to tenderness, assertive training, aversion to “bastards,” and various behavioral assignments.

A series of sessions using quasi-free association methods revealed that he had experienced similar feelings of self-disgust and frustration as a child in relation to his father. The memories of specific incidents, however, were sparse and vague and the feelings were almost conjectural. A nonsystematic desensitization (Fensterheim) to the vague memories was attempted. The first result of this procedure was more vivid memories and a heightening of the disturbed reaction to them. Eventually the disturbed reactions diminished and then disappeared. At that point, without any further behavioral recommendations or treatment, the masochistic pattern was replaced by a series of more satisfactory relationships. An almost two-year follow-up (he returned to discuss an unrelated career problem) showed this adaptive change to persist.

These illustrations have stressed the importance of identifying target behaviors. It must also be noted that the behavior therapist, as a clinician, is well aware that the sexual problem may not be primary but may derive from other problems. Depression, poor inter-personal relations, a generally high level of anxiety, physiological malfunctions – all may influence sexual behavior.

In these instances, even though the person has a sexual problem, nonsexual target behaviors may have to be selected for change. Many times the modification of these nonsexual behaviors will relieve the sexual problem; other times, further and more sexually-oriented treatment is necessary to resolve the problem.

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Transvestism means cross-dressing, that is, dressing in the clothes of the other sex. On the stage, it may be done as a dramatic device, as in a play by Shakespeare. For Halloween, it may be done as a gag or joke. A professional impersonator may cross-dress for a living, but such a person is likely to have more than a salaried interest in dressing up. He may be a drag queen, or she may be a butch lesbian, or either may be a would-be transsexual. In the case of the male, he may be a clinically diagnosed transvestite; clinical transvestism has not yet been recorded in the female.

As clinically defined, tranvestism is a condition in which a male has a sexual obsession for or addiction to women’s clothes, such that he episodically experiences intolerable psychic stress if he does not dress up. In addition, he is handicapped in getting erotically aroused and performing sexually, regardless of being either heterosexual or homosexual in partnership, unless he is wearing female garments, as though wearing a fetish, or at least imagining himself as doing so. Some transvestites discover their proclivity at puberty by discovering that they can masturbate to orgasm only if wearing or handling some article or articles of female apparel. Many eventually try to find or educate a partner with whom to practice their transvestism. A few, especially as they advance in age, are erotically inert, but cross-dress permanently or as often as expediently possible. They do not request transsexual surgery, but they may take female hormones. The typical transvestite, however, wants no female hormones and no feminizing surgery. He simply dresses and wears makeup episodically as a female, and then returns to his male garb, until irritability, restlessness, and inner agitation demand relief again by impersonating a female and having an orgasm. Almost all transvestites have a female name to go with the female wardrobe. There is also a female personality. Like the male personality, it is in the literal sense unwholesome. The two personalities, if they can be put together, would make a whole. The female personality by itself is a travesty of a conventionally stereotypic woman and likewise the masculine personality.

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Paternalistic legislation might seem to reach a justification of sorts in cases of rape. Although paternalism is not absent from rape legislation, the actual process of prosecuting alleged rapists and the concomitant treatment of rape victims is typically paternalism’s nemesis turned against the victim herself.

Rape often has been viewed as an almost unique crime. Among crimes of sex, it is one which is decidedly not victimless. The legal definitions of rape, interpretations of relevant statutes, and indeed the entire criminal process pursuant to a rape charge, are a myriad of practical and theoretical conundrums.

Only in a minority of cases do rape victims report the crime; rape has a bizarre “halo” effect, bestowing on the victim a sense of degradation and often an implied responsibility for the crime. Although the FBI reports 55,000 rape cases per year (Gager and Schurr) that figure—of reported rapes—is estimated to represent between five percent and twenty percent of actual rapes. Furthermore, a relatively high proportion of rapes reported to the police have been classified as false reports, as “unfounded.”

However rape may be defined in a specific, legal sense, understandings of the crime and its implications have shifted through the ages. In Biblical, as in early English law, rape was comprehended as an act akin to theft, robbing a woman’s male guardian of her virginity. Earlier assumptions and ambiguities “as to whether the crime was a crime against [a man's] own estate” (Brownmiller) have not vanished totally. The laws of rape continue to be linked with those of marriage. In most states of the United States, though not in other countries (e.g., Sweden, Denmark, the U.S.S.R.), rape by legal definition cannot occur between spouses; a woman cannot be raped by her husband, for in establishing the marital bond, she effectively gives up the legal right to withhold consent from what otherwise might be deemed rape.

The law’s and the wider society’s suppositions about what constitutes the crime of rape may be revealed in comparing rape laws with other statutes. In particular, rape bears certain similarities to incest; that comparison becomes especially striking when comparing statutory rape (rape with a victim below a specified age) to incest committed by a father or legal guardian with his young daughter. In a different sense, rape can be compared with robbery. The first comparison, between rape and incest, becomes significant in regard to dissimilar penalties tending to be exacted from the victimizer; the second comparison, between rape and theft, is important in light of differential treatment typically accorded the respective victims by police and in the courts. What is or should be implied by the victims’ consent, crucial to rape trials, and by the rapist’s use of “force” becomes the crux of the matter in both comparisons.

Consent by a rape victim is a defense to a prosecution for rape. Consent, however, is irrelevant—being legally impossible to grant or to refuse—when the victim is below a certain age (set at ten in the Model Penal Code) or is incompetent. Penalties for statutory rape of a girl presumed too young to be able to offer reasonable consent are among the severest handed down in cases of convictions of rape. In contrast, a man charged with “raping” his young daughter (termed incest) tends to be treated with more leniency by the courts than is the convicted rapist. In this regard, the effect of the law, if not its explicit intent, would seem to have a protracted history. The codes of Hammurabi, which condemned a man to death for raping a betrothed virgin, dealt with one found to have committed incest with his daughter by simply expelling him beyond the city walls (Brownmiller).

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STUDIES ON COGNITIVE STYLES -I

There is a vast area of cognitive style that has been studied since Witkin’s and others’ pioneer study of adults’ field-dependent versus field-independent patterns of scanning. Studies on stable cognitive styles among individuals have been extended to children. The concept of cognitive style also has been widened to include not only field dependence-independence, but also reflection versus impulsivity (Kagan and others; Kagan and Messer), breadth of categorization (Gardner), and style of conceptualization (Kagan and others). The results of research on the nature of sex-type differences in cognitive styles among children are promising but not conclusive, for a number of reasons. First of all, children are not as verbal as adults—especially very young children. In addition, most studies on children’s cognitive styles lack methodological sophistication and therefore are usually the reflection of the investigators’ individual differences rather than the children’s.

Children are required to respond to certain limited stimuli provided by the investigator, rather than to behave autonomously and spontaneously, and except for a very few (Block and Block), most of these studies are carried out in research laboratories and do not take into consideration the actual performance of children in classrooms. Nevertheless, a general survey of the literature (Kogan) provides convincing information about the cognitive style differences among sexes. In one study Coates (as reported by Kogan) using the Articulation of the Body Concept (ABC) Test, based on the child’s ability to articulate an embedded figure, found that girls scored higher than did boys. It was concluded, with some misgivings, that not only field independence, but other cognitive styles appear earlier in females (four to five-year-olds) than in the control group of boys. In Oltman’s study, based on the responses of one hundred males and one hundred females between four and thirteen years of age to the Portable Rod and Frame Test, there was a significant increase in the field-independent functioning for both sexes as they became older. Within the preschool population of children, similar studies have detected a difference between the sexes in the developmental pattern of field-independent perceptual ability. It seems that girls are ahead of boys in this ability up to age four to five years, but boys surpass girls by the age of five to six years (Coates; Dermen and Meisner). This stability of field-independent function in boys over a period of time, as compared with its discontinuity in girls, is puzzling. It might have some relation to other variables, such as girls’ tendency to be more socially oriented and boys’ tendency to be more task-oriented, as suggested by some investigators (Coates and others).

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