| Advances in the fields of biology, developmental psychology, psychoanalysis, evolutionary science, neuroscience, and sexology support the need for new female sexuality theory. A new theory of incorporative female sexuality informed by psychoanalytic drive theory and recent advances in the biological sciences is outlined to better represent the active, flexible, and adaptive features of female sexuality; to describe and explain women's sexual motivations independent of male sexual drive paradigms; and to integrate physiology and neuropsychology models that link sexual and relational motivation and behavior. Incorporative sexuality refers to the feminine drive to take in and make others a part of a woman's physical, sensual, sexual, and relational life. Incorporative sexuality theory expands the theoretical work of Therese Benedek (1960, 1968) who proposed an adaptive female sexual drive theory to replace the classic psychoanalytic theory (Freud, 1905, 1933) of female sexuality. The incorporative theoretical paradigm emphasizes sexual motivational processes that are fueled by estrogen, oxytocin, and estrogen-oxytocin interactions; and the integration of the female sexual drive across biological, sexual, and relational levels of human functioning. Because of underlying biological striations in hormone and neurochemical systems supporting the sexual motivation system in women, the incorporative sexual drive is expected to fluctuate and vacillate adaptively to accommodate functional shifts in sexual aims across the life cycle. The capacity to maintain self-integrity and cohesion while responding to internal and external incorporative sexuality demands is viewed as an integral component of psychosexual health within incorporative sexuality theory. The incorporative sexuality theory provides new models for female sexual development and health, new research paradigms for the study of women's sexuality, and new ways of conceptualizing psychopathology and the clinical treatment of women. |
