From “Making Out” to “Making Love”: Sexual Passions in Late Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood

A “New Approach”

The authors provide a succinct outline of their “new approach,” based on their landmark research project at Columbia, SHIFT (Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation). This project took place over five years and involved more than thirty researchers. ² Hirsch and Khan describe their design as a “deep ethnographic engagement, nested within the work of a large research team [that] has allowed [them] to contextualize and enrich [their] findings, yielding fresh insights” (p. xi). From the late summer of 2015 through January 2017, their team conducted over 150 interviews running at least two hours each. The team also spoke with groups of students in various campus venues; they surveyed “over 1,600 undergraduates’ histories, relationships, and experiences with sex and assault.” In addition, they surveyed “nearly 500 students daily for 60 days, asking them about stress, sleep, socializing, sex, sexual assault, and substance use in the prior twenty-four hours” (pp. x–xi).

A major contribution of this study is its use of the public health “ecological model,” focusing on the social roots of assault. With this approach, Hirsch and Khan consider problematic behavior in the context of students’ “relationships, their pre-college histories, the organizations they are part of, and the cultures that influence them”; this approach—of addressing social roots—contrasts with usual public discussions of assault, in which attention is directed to predators or toxic masculinity, or focus on what to do after an assault occurs (p. xi).

Noting that a student’s pre-college history has important implications for sexual behavior in college, the authors label their approach simply as a focus on the social roots of assault. I might describe their tactic as a “person-centered sociological approach.” Of course, the authors are correct when they argue that a broad social approach would be more effective than helping one person at a time. Yet they go on to explain that they “adopt a ‘life-course perspective,’ which acknowledges people’s multiple, emergent aims over the course of their lives, and examines how future aims and past experiences impact their present and their future” (p. xvi). For example, the authors note that “students who have been assaulted were assaulted, on average, three times” (p. xiii). As analysts we are well aware that there are dynamic reasons for which some people are vulnerable to repeat victimization. The authors accept the challenge of integrating individual development with larger group phenomena. Their attention to the life-course perspective leads them to the concept of an individual’s particular sexual project—that is, the individual reasons “why anyone might seek a particular sexual interaction or experience” (p. xiv).

The second important concept in this book is sexual citizenship. Each person has a right to his or her sexual self-determination, and must appreciate the same right in others. The authors bemoan the fact that students come to college prepared for all kinds of activities but are woefully unprepared in terms of sexual life; thus, they may have little sense of either their own or others’ right to sexual self-determination. The third concept Hirsch and Khan introduce is that of sexual geographies. They note that “far more than many of us realize—and particularly in college settings—sexual outcomes are intimately tied to the physical spaces where they unfold” (p. xix). Throughout the volume, they poignantly describe the importance of the physical spaces in college—dorm rooms, fraternity houses, etc. The comfort upperclassmen feel in the various places they inhabit may give them an emotional advantage over younger students, for example.

Hirsch and Khan note that it is crucial to view the nature of “assaults” within the broader topic of sex. They stress that the contemporary concentration on “affirmative consent” is inadequate to prevent sexual assault. They highlight that even though there are “bad guys” out there, it is inadequate to just think of men as predators and women as passive victims. They end their introductory chapter stressing that there are many positive sexual interactions, and many sexual situations in which when one partner wishes to stop, the other stops. However, many sexual situations are consensual until “they are not” (p. xxxiii). The challenge comes in trying to understand how to help young people navigate that moment when consent shifts to nonconsent, especially when alcohol affects both parties’ judgment.

The authors address the problem of sexual assault, including the role of alcohol, in a way that communicates their empathic approach. They avoid the conundrum of promoting a legalistic approach. They repeat over and over that it is impractical, and perhaps immoral, to view most situations of sexual assault as simple interactions between perpetrator and victim.

Hirsch and Khan devote an entire chapter, “The Toxic Campus Brew,” to the role of alcohol in the lives of college students, which dates back at least to the time of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The authors refer to a report from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the NIH. ³ That report describes “motivational interviewing” as an effective technique with people who suffer from substance abuse. Like psychodynamic treatment, motivational interviewing requires empathy, an understanding of defenses, and an appreciation for the importance of the nature of the interaction between therapist/doctor and patient (Weegmann 2002).

Sexual Geographies

There are many places, including college students’ rooms, where sexual activities occur. The ease of access to others’ rooms in colleges is a product of the end of the twentieth century. For the greater part of that century, colleges saw themselves in loco parentis, in place of the parents. Their assumption of this role was often considered to be a restrictive force to control emerging adults, but it also developed as a way to care for young people away from home for the first time (Loss 2014). After the student rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s, colleges gradually relinquished the parental role. Where student dorms were segregated by gender, coeducational living conditions gradually emerged (Willoughby et al. 2009). The decline of parental function and the promotion of coed living went hand in hand. Of course, sexual assaults did occur during that silent era (Kirkpatrick and Kanin 1957), and sexual activities went on sub rosa. Yet the predominant memory of that generation’s sexual exuberance is, to our contemporary eyes, symbolized by the very tame “panty raids” of the 1950s.

Certainly the sexual geography of contemporary college students is much broader than that of mid-twentieth-century students. Given the brain and psychological limitations of self-control during adolescence and emerging adulthood and the ready availability of alcohol, present-day sexual geographies may be conducive to sexual offenses. In contrast, for a significant number of college students, the structure provided by an observant religious life provides an external control, channeling sexual development within the standards of a particular community (p. 101).

Sexual Projects and Sexual Citizenship

Hirsch and Khan propose two major goals. First, they suggest that by the time people reach adolescence and emerging adulthood, they should have had experiences in which sex is discussed not from a moralistic stance, simply stressing the dangers, but in an open-minded way, communicating the pleasures that can occur with another individual. Second, they suggest the importance of promoting the attitude that a person should acknowledge not just his or her own desires, but also the desires of a partner.

The authors note that in their interviews “almost no one related an experience where an adult sat them down and conveyed that sex would be an important and joyful part of their life, and so they should think about what they wanted from sex, and how to realize those desires with other people in a respectful way” (p. xv). This is a crucial point, which the authors address throughout the volume. It can be summarized as “if only” students were taught about sexual matters as they are taught about language, math, science, sports, and other activities.

Narratives

Throughout the volume Hirsch and Khan present in meticulous detail the narratives of the many students they interviewed. Many of these students’ stories are quite poignant. Some anecdotes describe situations in which the intent of one person attempting to overpower the other is quite clear. Hirsch and Khan describe Adam, who never talked to his boyfriend about how pushy and forceful he was about sex, even after his boyfriend came home one evening after a long night of drinking and “basically raped” him. They describe Michaela, a queer black woman who refused to accept as normal being touched, brushed up against, and grabbed on a dance floor—experiences that heterosexual women (and some heterosexual men) see as an expectable part of being in those spaces. They interviewed women like Luci, who was raped by Scott, a senior, when she was a freshman and a virgin. As Scott took off Luci’s pants, she exclaimed, “No! Don’t!” His response was, “It’s okay” (pp. ix–x).

Other situations, like that of Austin, are less clear. Austin described an unusually empathic, loving sexual interaction with his current girlfriend, during the summer of his junior year. At some point during the interview, though, he described an episode early in his freshman year, when he assaulted a girl while both were drunk. Austin differentiated assault from rape and felt very guilty about what had happened.

All of these narratives are similar to the clinical material that as analysts we hear from young people in our offices. To my mind, the case of Austin is the most complex and important vignette in this book. In my view, his story exemplifies a psychological dynamic leading to many—perhaps most—problematic sexual entanglements among adolescents, late adolescents, and emerging adults. On one hand, Austin was very attentive to his girlfriend’s pleasure; yet he had assaulted a woman he barely knew when both were drunk.

Austin is a specimen case of someone who has been able to move from “making out” to “making love,” that is, eventually integrating the sensual and affiliative/affectionate currents of his desire. As I discuss throughout this essay, a development in Austin’s psychological attitude and behavior toward women resulted in two very different approaches to sexually enticing situations. Austin’s differing attitudes illustrate the difficulty all of us have in integrating our affectionate and sensual longings. This difficulty was first noted by Freud (1905) and continues to plague men and women alike. Note, for example, the pervasiveness of prostitution (the oldest profession, dating back to 2400 b.c. in Sumer); of pornography; of affairs; and, an important topic of this volume, drunken sex. One could conjecture that as a freshman Austin allowed sensual current to overflow its boundaries, as superego controls were diminished by alcohol; then he could only “make out” with a relative stranger. Later—with a girlfriend—he was able to integrate affection and sexual desire and, so, to “make love.”

As analysts and therapists we help people—especially those in emerging adulthood, both women and men—as they struggle to integrate sexual and affiliative feelings. The progression from “making out” to “making love” can result from therapeutic experience, but that does not seem to have been the case with Austin. Hirsch and Khan note that “it had taken Austin several years to grow into who he was when we interviewed him. The Austin who was so attentive to his girlfriend . . . hardly seemed like the Austin in the story from freshman orientation” (p. 60). It seems clear that the drunken state of both participants during freshman orientation contributed to what Austin realized during his interview: that his drunken interaction with a woman in his freshman class had been a sexual assault.

The authors note that Austin’s actions during orientation week are typical of many sexual assaults. “Austin was desperate to accrue sexual experience; anxious about being behind his peers. Intoxication clouded his judgment. People know that being drunk is associated with an increased risk of being assaulted, but less remarked upon are the ways in which heavy drinking raises the risk of assaulting someone” (p. 61).

Sexual Projects, Sexual Citizenship, Sexual Geographies: Psychoanalytic Reflections

As a psychoanalyst considering Hirsch and Khan’s contribution, I have several questions.

Early Development: “If Only” Students Were Taught About Sexual Matters

Hirsch and Khan bemoan the fact that most college students have not had experience discussing sexual matters with an adult, other than from a moralistic perspective. There is no question that most parents have a difficult time discussing sex with their children. They have such difficulty because they were themselves raised by caretakers who had difficulty discussing sexual matters in an open-minded way. Anxieties and prohibitions regarding masturbation contribute to the difficulty parents and children encounter in talking about sexual activities. This is especially true in discussions with girls (Lerner 1976; Hoffman 1999). By the onset of adolescence, most young people are inhibited in discussing these matters with their parents and most other adults.

Peter Fonagy (2008) has proposed an elegant and novel perspective on the evolving nature of sexual desires and feelings in the individual within the context of familial interactions. Fonagy notes that “emotion regulation arises out of the mirroring of affect by a primary caregiver and sexual feelings are unique in that they are systematically ignored and left unmirrored by caregivers; sexual feelings remain fundamentally dysregulated in all of us. Adult sexual experience serves as a way of coming to organize the psychosexual” (p. 11).

Mirroring by the maternal figure involves a variety of communications by the adult, including a special vocal tone called “motherese” (Allison and Fonagy 2016). For example, if a toddler falls down and bumps his knee, he starts to cry. Most mothers would rush over and speak with that special vocal tone, addressing the pain and comforting the child, rubbing the boo-boo, etc. The caregiver “marks” or highlights the child’s emotion. The caregiver acknowledges the presence of the child’s emotions while at the same time communicating that the emotion does not have to be overwhelming. This pattern helps the child regulate the emotion and go on playing. By mirroring an exaggerated version of the child’s unpleasant affects (negative emotion), the mother communicates to her child that she really is not upset.

This “markedness” of affect has an “as if” quality and communicates to the child that the mirrored affect is not real but pretend, and that the mother does not experience the negative emotion herself. This process allows the child to develop a differentiation between himself and the mother. The child feels soothed, and negative emotions subside. In other words, mothers do not function as blank mirrors, simply reflecting their children’s affects, but rather help their children modulate and contain negative emotions.

Similarly, if a child has a pleasurable experience—e.g., eating ice cream—the mother uses that same vocal tone to accentuate the child’s pleasure. Over time the child develops self-regulation and can soothe himself with regard to painful emotions and/or not become overexcited by positive emotions. In sharp contrast, if a little boy rubs his penis or a little girl rubs her vulva, most mothers would not use motherese to accentuate either the pleasure or the pain the child is experiencing. Sexual feelings are usually ignored. Fonagy’s observation that sexual feelings are not “marked” by parents is a unique contribution to developmental theory and parenting. The prospect of a parent marking a child’s sexual pleasure in this way immediately strikes us as wrong, for it evokes the incest taboo. As Fonagy hypothesizes, “this is evolutionarily a highly desirable state of affairs. It will ensure that for full psychosexual enjoyment a partner must be found” (p. 24).

How can we as a society reach a point where sexual matters can be discussed with children—and, later on, adolescents—in an open, nonjudgmental, and matter-of-fact manner, without overstimulation and a crossing of familial and generational boundaries? What happens when extreme excitement (overtly sexual or otherwise) gets reinforced by parents? We all have seen situations of oversexualized, overexcited, or sexually abused children. Parents will always struggle between “civilizing” their children and allowing freedom for the expression of children’s desires.

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud (1930) recognized this when he discussed the conflict between the social needs of a community and the regulation of sexual desires.

Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood

An old shepherd in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1623) wishes “there were no age between ten and / Three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the / Rest, for there is nothing in the between but getting / Wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, / Fighting . . .” (3.3.65–69).

Certainly in the descriptions of college students in this volume, the passions, very often unbridled, are very much in evidence. Why are adolescents and emerging adults like that? On one hand, there is an imbalance in the development of the prefrontal cortex, in contrast with the development of the limbic system, particularly the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex does not fully develop until the twenties, in contrast to the earlier development of the emotional areas of the brain. This imbalance leads to a lack of cognitive control over intense emotional desires (Sapolsky 2017, pp. 154–173). Early in adolescence / emerging adulthood, there is an increased awareness of sexual desires, as well as a shift in primary focus from families to peers and non-family adults. For these reasons adolescents can act impulsively, at times in ways that are maladaptive—particularly when in the company of peers, and particularly when alcohol impairs their judgment. Understandably their actions can cause great consternation in parents (Hoffman 2000, 2018) and among substitute parents in college settings.

Development of Sexual Citizens: Integration of Sensual and Affiliative/Affectionate Currents

By his junior year in college, Austin seemed to have been able to integrate his sensual and his affiliative/affectionate currents. How did he get there, and how can we promote this development when we work with youth? To my mind this is the most vexing psychological dimension to address when thinking how to address the problem of sexual assault.

From a psychological perspective there is a significant shift in adolescence, as the youngster tries to master powerfully intense inner desires. The early relationships are mainly narcissistic; that is, the adolescent’s early sexual activities are mainly to gratify his or her own sexual desires and not the partner’s needs: they begin to “make out”; they don’t “make love.” When two people are making out, trying to fulfill their own sexual gratifications, signals may be crossed, especially when both are inebriated. One person may overpower the other. Only when, over time, the young person comes to care about the other person and his or her desires does a mutually gratifying experience occur. Can more people become like Austin, for whom gratifying the needs of the partner—not just his own needs—becomes important?

Hirsch and Khan are very sober about the stumbling blocks in reaching such a goal. They clearly spell this out in their conclusions. My only criticism of their approach is that it seems to be mainly educational. For example, they note that “schools’ prevention work [in terms of sexual matters] should be integrated into their core mission of education, in both skills and critical thinking” (p. 256). ⁴ How to help youth—as a group—master the powerful emotions during this vulnerable period when cognitive functions may not be able to master emotional demands will be an ongoing challenge. The old shepherd’s comment about the “age between ten and three-and-twenty” still needs to be addressed.

The authors conclude their long volume with a very astute paragraph:

We end where we began: with a reminder about empathy. Campus sexual assault has been successfully transformed into a public problem that demands a policy response. But this very success has entailed mobilizing a notion of assaulters that leaves out some stories. Yes, there are predators out there, and they need to be confronted. But we can have the biggest impact by addressing the assaults that happen because of sexual projects that only have one’s own goals in mind, combined with a lack of attention to other people’s sexual citizenship. Most young people, it seems fair to say, do not attain adulthood in geographies of equality, feeling clear about their sexual projects, supported in their own sexual citizenship and recognizing other people’s. Our society is failing them. Yet we have charted a new path forward. The challenge is to join together to build communities in which all young people can become fully formed sexual citizens” [p. 273].