“But I also survived, in the years after my rescue and well into adulthood, by using my sexuality to structure and confine the extensive psychological damage the years of abuse had inflicted on me. That is, I worked my way through the damage not only with my mind, but also with my body. How could it be otherwise when mind and body are one? Abuse is written on the body as well as on the soul. (Fortunately, so is the abundance of our common humanity; so is love. Who has never felt the offering of another person’s body as a gift of grace?) And however unfit for the parlor, such survival skills ought to be shared. The taboo against writing about one’s personal sexual experience cuts us off from valuable knowledge. In Making Love I share what I learned. You may or may not find the experience comfortable. ‘The loves of flint and iron’—Emerson again—‘are naturally a little rougher than those of the nightingale and the rose.'”
–Richard Rhodes, Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey