The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography Restructuring Brain, Mind & Memory

[Disillusioned]

by Dr. Judith Reisman


THE THREE MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN

The arguments regarding the causal effects of p on the viewer’s brain and behavior are drawn from the fields of “neuropsychology” and “psychopharmacology.” At the core of these theories is the scientifically accepted view of the three main functions of the human brain as outlined below.[4]Three-dimensional computer photographs allow investigators to “map” the “geography” of the brain at rest, in thought or action. This “mapping” documents the differences between right and left brain hemisphere functions as well as evidence of a given stimulus producing endogenous, psychotropic drugs. It will be shown that p imagery is perceived by the brain as reality and stored as part of the brain’s psychopharmacological structure.

It is submitted that pictorial images have a more immediate and profound physical effect on the viewer than verbal or textual information, especially as visual p is designed to excite and stimulate the senses for prurient appeal.[5] This idea of greater impact of depictions was the basis for a new federal law for the protection of children from Internet p and was noted in the brief of Members of Congress to the Supreme Court in Ashcroft vs. ACLU, et al. [6] It will be argued that by its ability to immediately overpower cognition, reason, logic and other literate functions, p-ic imagery nullifies the meaning and spirit of “informed consent,” as well as the brain’s ability to monitor and correct unhealthy conduct, thus undermining the rights of said images to the same legal protections afforded to print information.
DENYING “EFFECT”: THE CELLULAR CONTENT OF IMAGES

P Is Perceived By The Brain As Reality And Stored In The Brain As Memory

One of the acknowledged “fathers” of neuroscience, A.R. Luria, defined the three main goals and objectives of the human brain as:
1) To be alert, awake, aware of reality; 2) Collect and store environmental information; and 3) Monitor and correct our conduct for health and well-being.

It is only under optimal waking conditions that man can receive and analyze information, that the necessary selective systems of connections can be called to mind, his activity programmed, and the course of his mental processes checked, his mistakes corrected, and his activity kept to the proper course.”[7]
Recent technological advances in the brain sciences enable researchers to identify rather precise locations for emotional impulses occurring in a test subject’s brain. [8] In “Making New CorticalMaps” Pasko Rakic suggested that:
[T]he brain can be thought of as a map in which the position of its constituent neurons indicates what they do…[It has] structurally distinct cellular…areas responsible for functions as diverse as sensory perception, motor control, and cognition …”[9] [In fact it is now understood that] over 99% of all synapses in the brain use chemical transmission….[Excitatory] transmission at fast synapses occurs in less than 1/1000 of a second.[10]
The reason such a paper as this is necessary, is due to the international inundation of s-xual and sados-xual images and their direct, often fatal effect upon the conduct of millions of receivers of those images. On point, Sir Kenneth Clark in his A.W. Mellon lectures on the Fine Arts writes in The Nude, that the effect of “desire” caused by viewing n-des “is an aspect of the subject so obvious that I need hardly dwell on it; and yet some wise men have tried to close their eyes to it. [N]o n-de, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling.” Indeed. Then all s-xual images “arouse” responses by viewers, including s-xualized images of children. [11]
Columbia University Art historian David Freedberg also documents images as “causal” in effect. In The Power of Images he explains:
People are s-xually aroused by pictures and sculptures; they break pictures and sculptures; they mutilate them, kiss them, cry before them, and go on journeys to them; they are calmed by them, stirred by them, and incited to revolt. They give thanks by means of them, expect to be elevated by them, and are moved to the highest levels of empathy and fear. They have always responded in these ways; they still do. They do so in societies we call primitive and in modern societies; in East and West, in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe. These are the kinds of response that form the subject of this book, not the intellectual constructions of critic and scholar, or the literate sensitivity of the generally cultured. My concern is with those responses that are subject to repression because they are too embarrassing, too blatant, too rude, and too uncultured; because they make us aware of our kinship with the unlettered, the coarse, the primitive, the undeveloped; and because they have psychological roots that we prefer not to acknowledge. [W]e read in one Italian writer of 1584 that a painting “will cause the beholder to.... desire a beautifull young woman for his wife when he seeth her painted n-ked.”[12]
This paper then extends Freedberg’s discussion of the taboo against facing the cause-effect reality of images into the cellular geography of the brain, finding the unconscious, non-speech effects of n-de and s-xualized imagery. MAPPING THE BRAIN

With the development of brain scanning, “thought” and “emotion” pictures measure ones state of depression, suspicion, anxiety, irritation, joy, fear, hate or other feelings triggered by specific thoughts. This avalanche of knowledge in brain functions has emerged largely due to the technological “imaging” methods that measure and display the brain’s activity—feeling and thinking—as three-dimensional, full color computer graphics. One of the most advanced of these graphic brain-scanning technologies is the SPECT scanner (sample seen at left).
With the advent of the SPECT scientists can finally see what happens in different parts of the brain “when you try to activate them.” The brain-emotion-memory interdependency is clear and measurable via imaging technology. The functional fMRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and PET (positron emission tomography) and now SPECT, allow scientists to “correlate brain functions with abnormal behaviors.”
More to follow

[Disillusioned]

Through this new technology, scientists suggest that emotion, awareness, memory and
behavior are so closely connected in the structure of the brain, that each interacts with the other,
a useful concept when addressing emotions triggered by p as behaviorally “causal.”
P will elicit fear, shame, anger and lust in many people. Reed (1990), Coleman
(1988, 1990) Carnes, (1983, 1989, 1990) and others have reported that anxiety commonly
increases what is mislabeled as “s-xual arousal.”14 Lynch points out that sensory input that is
strong enough or repeated often enough produces an electrical impulse in a neuron that
stimulates the release of chemicals that either excite or inhibit other neurons. This Lynch reports
as the pattern of learning and memory.15
In states of s-xual or fear arousal (integral to the p psychopharmacological
experience) Margaret Kemeny reports, “we get an adrenaline rush, our pupils dilate, and our
heart starts to race. That’s adaptive, because it promotes the physiological responses.” 16
Neurobiologist David Felten says.: “when you’re frightened, for example, there’s a huge
outpouring of adrenaline and noradrenaline that form the sympathetic nervous system and the
adrenal glands.”17 But this process is notably anxiety-provoking and maladaptive if it results in
mislabeling fear and shame as a s-xual high.
AVOIDING NEOCORTICAL INTERFERENCE
Seeing an object excites a group of cell assemblies that call to memory the attendant
excitation experienced by the original event. As fear and alarm are a part of p-ic or
s-xual abuse experiences, even inc--tuous memories could trigger unconscious s-xual “arousal”
due to the association with a victim’s fear of powerlessness, personal harm, and humiliation.
Goleman described some of the findings of Joseph LeDoux a neuroscientist, at the Center for
Neural Science at New York University. Says Goleman:
“Anatomically the emotional system can act
independently of the neocortex," LeDoux told me.
"Some emotional reactions and emotional memories
can be formed without any conscious, cognitive
participation at all." The amygdala can house
memories and response repertoires that we enact
without quite realizing why we do so because the
shortcut from thalamus to amygdala completely
bypasses the neocortex. This bypass seems to allow
the amygdala to be a repository for emotional
impressions and memories that we have never known
about in full awareness.”18 (Emphasis added.)
McLean, who first identified the limbic system as the brain’s emotional center, links it to
the “Paranoid Streak in Man:”
Man relies largely on vision to relieve his uncertainty about the nature of
things…Given the seed of suspicion, the human mind is capable of developing
any kind of paranoid hybrid …The emphasis given to the capacity of vision both
to arouse and allay suspicion should not imply an insignificant role of the other
senses in this respect…[There is] an unpleasant feeling of fear attached to
something that cannot be clearly identified.19 (Emphasis added.)
Gary Lynch of the University of California at Irvine points out that a word or sight,
libidinous or spiritual, can immediately alter brain structure: “[I]n a matter of seconds, taking an
incredibly modest signal, a word.... which is in your head as an electrical signal for no more
than a few seconds, can...leave a trace that will last for years.” 20(Emphasis added.)
Indeed, p-ic stimuli create “an unpleasant feeling of fear” attached to
“uncertainty about the nature of things” and paranoid “seeds of suspicion.”21 An example
follows of the “modest signal, a word” which has left a “gut” memory that “switched on” when
one brain damaged patient was asked to describe a violent photograph she had seen.
[A brain damaged subject was presented with] emotionally charged photos --a girl
on fire following a napalm attack or a man with his hand severed and blood
dripping from the wound -- interspersed with bland photos of trees or random
patterns with no particular significance. To measure this "gut" memory, Damasio
looked at changes in skin conductance -- the "sweaty palms" reaction used to
detect changes in emotional state .... the photos elicited enormous changes in skin
resistance....When [the patient was] asked to describe [the emotionally charged
pictures] the skin response would switch on.22 (Emphasis added.)
Remembering an arousing sight or s-xual experience can revisit the original arousal state,
as seen in many war and rape victims as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Restak
explains:
Of all our senses, sight is the most likely to involve recall. And the more bizarre
the visual image the more likely we are to see and remember it....To Aristotle, this
formation of mental images was like tracing with a signet ring on wax.23
(Emphasis added.)
INSTANTLY DECODING PHOTOGRAPHS & NOVELTY
Neurologically, the more novel, bizarre, odd or grotesque an image is,24 the more it
creates confusion, thus anxiety and often fear, the more likely the bizarre stimuli will be stored in
the nervous system first as a “mismatch of schema.” The human need to know and understand
ones surroundings means that bizarre images challenge and attract our brain’s attention and
memory. Fine arts photography Professor, Dr. Richard Zakia, reiterates that even the most
poorly created images automatically cause an arousal, overcoming text:
[P]hotographs are excellent in fulfilling that dimension of language called
arousal, but not in expression or description .... We learn from photographs --
single photographs, photographs in sequence to form a narrative, slides projected
side-by-side...films and video .... Picture[s] are immediately organized in
perception without the need for further cognitive effort or attention.25 (Emphasis
added.)
Ones childhood neurochemical pathways26 are part of our biological memory.27
Educational psychologist Jane Haley notes, "large areas of uncommitted brain tissue can be
molded...to the demands of a particular environment.”28 Again, says MacLean, the brain cannot
distinguish real from false pictures:
When nature gave man the prefrontal neocortex for anticipation and connected it
with his cortical areas, she failed to provide a radar antenna and viewing
screen.29… [Humans, like all animals, believe what the eyes see. Gary Lynch and
his Irvine University team found] biological evidence that learning involves a
physical change in the circuitry of the brain… #####[T]he brain processes a visual
image, the signal from the screen flashes though the eyes and rushes through the
brain in 3/10ths of a second.30 (Emphasis added.)
Any confusing image or experience is processed as “novelty” and the
brain’s response to novelty is attention! All p is experienced as
provocative “novelty” initially. Note the need to change the novelty stimulus
(the “centerfold”) and her surroundings and trappings regularly. Once the
brain adjusts to one provocative stimuli the p-er will substitute
another and another and another.
Unlike the sculptor Pygmalion (left) who carved his personal female
ideal with whom he fell in “love,” (Venus brought her to life as his ideal
creation) recall that p-ic s-xually “provocative” images are created by
other men for mass consumption. Art historian David Finn asks, if “the sight
of a statue, indeed the mere photograph of a statue, can call up the sense of touch and stir up
s-xual desire, what does that say about our connection to art”31 indeed, our connection to
p?
To “provoke” is “to make somebody feel angry or frustrated.” One is not “provoked” to
joy, happiness or love. S-xual images have as their center core of truth, their ability to provoke
to anger, hostility, distrust—and hatred in some more extreme situations.
Mass media is the main source of false imagery—novelty--especially as it relates to
female images. In his classic work, Manwatching, sociologist Desmond Morris observed the
common technique of distortion of illustrations of “beautiful” young women. While most people
are now aware of the airbrushed, if not silicone implanted br--sts in early n-de “centerfold”
“photographs,” Morris points out that pin-up artists typically exaggerated the length of female
legs to create the illusion of teen-as woman. In other p, like Playboy, br--sts have
been systematically drawn onto the body of a small tyke as child-woman in cartoons and in
illustrations to s-xually arouse the confused consumer. Morris writes about "Metasignals":
continued

[Disillusioned]

“Many Western artists depict beautiful girls as
having supernormally long legs. This becomes clear
whenever a pin-up drawing is compared with its
original model. [at left]. This …appears to be
[because] as schoolgirls reach s-xual maturity they
undergo dramatic leg-lengthening: and the artists, by
extending this process, make girls seem even more
s-xual and therefore appealing.
Is Morris really unaware that the procedure he discusses,
trains consumers to “feel” schoolgirls as s-xually appealing at the cellular level? Morris adds
that such “Supernormal Stimulus” as these elongated legs are “the basis of most forms of
entertainment.”32 So desiring teen-age girls becomes emotionally entertaining, although “why”
this is so is never cognitively clear to the manipulated consumer.
RELEASING “INHIBITORY” TRANSMITTERS IS A BRAIN “REWARD”
This is not the venue to address the history of misogyny in “elite” art,
except to note that hatred and fear of women and its fallout in mistreatment
of children has a significant heritage among the elite, where “artistes”
associate women with evil, death, impotence, witchery and the like (seen at
left). What is new and of great concern is the mass media marketing and
mainstreaming of p—literally restructuring the national brain to
feel fear and malevolent intent toward women and children.
Neuroscientist Peter M. Milner’s description of the organism’s
response to novelty, lends itself to a fuller understanding of the way one
becomes habituated and then addicted to arousing p-ic and other
fear-inducing what Milner calls “mystery objects.”
In a totally unfamiliar situation, animals respond as they do to an innately
recognized danger signal. As the situation becomes somewhat more familiar,
however, the fear or vigilance is attenuated by habituation, releasing an
underlying attraction to mystery objects. (Emphasis added.)
Consider how Milner’s following explanation of the “effects” of neuronal firing would
apply to p-ic stimuli.
The firing of these neurons has a number of effects. If the stimulus they represent
was followed originally by reinforcement, the neurons acquire associations with
… the reinforcement. If, on the other hand, the neurons represent a stimulus of no
motivational interest, they acquire no motivational associations, and their activity
provides no encouragement to the response being planned, which then may be
abandoned (Emphasis added).
That is, if p stimulates s-xual acts (mb, s-d-my, s-xual int-rc--rse,
etc.) and if we understand that these s-xual acts result in “o-ga-m” (the body’s most powerful
“reinforcement”), than it stands to reason that ones “motivational interest” in viewing
p-ic materials (a billion-dollar industry) leads to the acquisition of “motivational
associations” to o-ga-m. Clearly then the ”rewarding” p-ically triggered o-ga-m,
regularly reinforced by novel new p-ic stimuli, is seldom “abandoned” unless the users
are equally driven by the sensate and cognitive demands of conflicting values and controls.
Milner’s further observations of addiction to novelty are especially applicable to the
response to p-. Simply by releasing inhibitory transmitters, p (or
television, film and other highly evocative media) becomes its own reward so to speak. These
are powerful change agents indeed.
As discussed earlier, release of the response system from inhibition is a
characteristic of reward, so it may be said that unfamiliar stimuli have a
rewarding component. It is even possible to become addicted to novelty and
uncertainty, which may explain why [p-]…and gambling are both multi
billion-dollar industries. Most stimuli become less attractive, however, as they
become familiar and predictable….The rewarding effect of experiencing new
things diminishes as the novelty wears off, but loss of response due to habituation
must, of course, be reversible in case the stimulus should later become important
for the well-being of the animal….Thus, novelty has an effect similar to that of
reward, enabling animals to explore and add to their stock of … relationships.33
(Emphasis added.)
IMAGES AS REAL IN BRAIN-MIND-MEMORY
Consider the child p-, or if you prefer “erotica” you have just studied in the
previous pages. Such imagery is uniquely powerful because, perceived by the brain as a form of
its own reality, its false information and associated disinhibiting neurochemical “rewards” will
often retain lasting effects on memory. During lectures on this issue, after showing slides such
as those in this paper, magazine users have confirmed that they quickly recall “cartoons” and
photographs seen decades ago, when they are seen in context. One Canadian psychologist
insisted there were no child s-x cartoons in P-boy. After viewing 80 such slides in my lecture
to the British Psychological Association, he suddenly recalled most of these child images in his
“reading.” “However,” said the psychologist, “I never realized these were p-ic child
cartoons until you gathered them together in one place! I am appalled.”continued

[Disillusioned]

Drs. Restak, Edward Sheridan, MacLean34 and other specialists, agree that the scholarly
data find no apparatus to distinguish real images from media fantasy. The brain processes as
real the bizarre images that the eyes see. Hence, measurable states of arousal registered as lust,
shame, fear and the like will obtain, whether one sees a “virtual” or a real p-ic image.
Says Paul McLean, when ethologists use a dummy animal, a decoy in their experiments in the
field or laboratory, the dummy, or even just a fragment of a dummy, triggers others of the species
to engage in "an instinctual form of (s-xual)
behavior by the animal… Indeed, a mere phantom
is sometimes sufficient to trigger the entire
cop-lat-ry act” 35
In his investigation of animal responses to brain
stimuli, E. Roy John confirmed MacLean’s
findings, citing scores of brain studies which find
the connection "between the senses and memory
in each region: the more [and earlier] a brain
region senses an event, the more it remembers
it."36
Electrical stimulation of specific areas of the cerebral cortex "conjures up images of
scenes witnessed… in the past." Restak observes that the close proximity of the language, vision
and hearing association areas (seen here) have interlocking "pathways for the storage and
retrieval of memories that include several types of stimuli”37 with adjacent cortical areas
controlling both aggression and s-xuality.
Learning and remembering, are brain behaviors that create and extend neurochemical
pathways, changing brain circuitry, thought and memory. By 1889 scientists understood that:
“[F]eeling is a stimulus to muscular action....ideas act as motors....[and] It may
be laid down as a rule, that, if any two mental states be called up together, or in
succession, with due frequency and vividness, the subsequent production of the
one of them will suffice to call up the other, and that whether we desire it or
not.”38 (Emphasis added MILLISECONDS TO COMPREHEND AND DECIDE
The psychopharmacological evidence of image processing is not altered by the
imprudent claim that one can “turn off the TV switch” if one is offended by the violence and/or
sados-xual “teaser” images flashing by on the screen. Says Goleman:
Other research has shown that in the first few milliseconds of our perceiving
something we not only unconsciously comprehend what it is, but decide whether
we like it or not; the "cognitive unconscious" presents our awareness with not just
the identity of what we see, but an opinion about it. Our emotions have a mind of
their own, one which can hold views quite independently of our rational mind…
Those unconscious opinions are emotional memories; their storehouse is the
amygdala ….the very same neurochemical alerting systems that prime the body to
react to life-threatening emergencies by fighting or fleeing also stamp the moment
in memory with vividness …The more intense the amygdala arousal, the stronger
the imprint; the experiences that scare or thrill us the most in life are among our
most indelible memories. This means that, in effect, the brain has two memory
systems, one for ordinary facts and one for emotionally charged ones.39
(Emphasis added.)
Without exception, ones dominant memories are emotional, not cognitive.
P’S EFFECT ON THE DEVELOPING BRAIN
This theory has particular application in the context of children’s exposure to
p. If the brain has two memory systems, “one for ordinary facts and one for
emotionally charged ones,” what is the legal significance of a “back alley” to imprinting
children’s brains-minds-memories with visual p-ic stimuli--especially when the child
can barely read and cogitate?
[The amygdala] matures very quickly in the infant’s brain…long before other
brain structures [like] the hippocampus, which is crucial for “information” and
narrative memories, and the neocortex, seat of rational thought.40 …[The
amygdala often] frantically commands that we react to the present in ways that
were imprinted long ago…[based on] a few spare elements of the [long past]
situation.41 (Emphasis added.)
LeDoux’s work informs the legal issues surrounding ”speech” versus children’s exposure
to p in the child’s home or, of late, in public libraries and on mainstream television.
[M]emories are stored in the amygdala as rough, wordless blueprints for
emotional life. Since these earliest emotional memories are established at a time
before infants have words for their experience, when these emotional memories
are triggered in later life there is no matching set of articulated thoughts about the
response that takes us over.42 (Emphasis added.)
If the undeveloped child brain is psychopharmacologically altered by p-ic
stimuli during waking and sleeping, this would violate claims of informed consent as it
structurally alters the neurochemistry of the child’s brain, the child’s sense of self and of reality.
Fear is a necessary
reaction by the normal child organism to s-xual
stimuli, for their immaturity leaves the child
completely without the cognitive or emotional tools to
respond.
So, how is the developing child’s brain restructured
by the p-ic release of inhibitory transmitters as well as its vision of reality? Such states
of s-xual or fear arousal (a child’s response to a flash of p-ic stimuli), says
neuropsychologist Margaret Kemeny, trigger alarm and an “an adrenaline rush, our pupils dilate,
and our heart starts to race.”
It would be critical to society to eliminate those media that are subversive of child welfare.
Children and others who cannot read can still instantly decode, “feel” and experience images
(e.g.: ice cream, cake, people, animals, perhaps s-xual acts). Such largely right hemisphere visual
and non-speech stimuli are decoded in any language, entered into long-term conscious or
unconscious memory and replayed later by young and old alike. For, while children cannot
choose for themselves their level of p-ic exposure
(sometimes reenacted as nightmares) waking experiences. In sleep, “the brain
cements connections between a day’s events and stored memories,” especially pictures. 49
Evidence supports a role for sleep in the consolidation of an array of learning and
memory tasks….It is 200 years since David Hartley first suggested that dreaming
might alter the strength of associative memories.…Recent developments in molecular
genetics, neurophysiology, and the cognitive neurosciences have produced a striking
body of research that provides converging evidence for an important role of sleep in
learning and the reprocessing of memories.50 (to be continued)
44

[Disillusioned]

More from Dr. Judith Reisman

It is largely accepted by neurologists that the brain
can only process few of the millions of messages it receives
each moment. “The law of strength” means that the most
intense arousal will be ‘paper-clipped’ to its stimuli and
emotion and then filed away in our brain’s memory
database. 51 Adolph Hitler aimed his messages to the right
brain; “propaganda must be addressed to the emotions and
not to the intelligence … vicious and gruesome, with lurid
photographs… s-xual and physical…the masses need…a
thrill of horror.”52
Dr. Daniel Goleman’s groundbreaking book,
Emotional Intelligence, from which the diagram here is
taken, describes the electrical and chemical route taken by images to reach the brain.
A visual signal first goes from the retina to the
thalamus, before it is translated into the language of the
brain. Most of the message then goes to the visual
cortex, where it is analyzed and assessed for meaning
and appropriate response; if that response is emotional,
a signal goes to the amygdala to activate the emotional
centers…But a smaller portion of the original signal
goes straight from the thalamus to the amygdala in a
quicker transmission… of an…emotional response
before the cortical centers have fully understood what is happening.53
Goleman reports that strong memories will take “precedence over other strands of
thought.”54 Sensory signals from eye or ear reach the amygdala for response long before the
neocortex is alerted. ************************************************** **************[LeDoux] was the first to work out neural pathways for feelings that bypass the
neocortex. Those feelings that take the direct route through the amygdala include
our most primitive and potent; this circuit does much to explain the power of
emotion to overwhelm rationality… [LeDoux discovered]...something like a
neural back alley—[that] allows the amygdala to receive some direct inputs from
the senses and start a response before they are fully registered by the neocortex
...The amygdala can have us spring to action while the slightly slower…neocortex
unfolds its more refined plan for reaction …LeDoux overturned the prevailing
wisdom about the pathways traveled by emotions through his research on fear.55
Neuroscientists commonly define the neocortex as “the thinking brain.” “The neocortex
is the seat of thought; it contains the centers that put together and comprehend what the senses
perceive.”56 It is reported as our abstract “command center,” differentiating us from all other
mammals. Its role is largely to maintain mental balance and to inhibit and control psyche and
conduct.57 Says Daniel Goleman:
Limbic structures generate feelings of pleasure
and s-xual desire--the emotions that feed sexual
passion. But the addition of the neo-cortex and its
connections to the limbic system allowed for the
mother-child bond that is the basis of the family
unit and the long-term commitment to
childrearing that makes human development
possible. Species that have no neocortex such as
reptiles, lack maternal affection; when their
young hatch, newborns must hide to avoid being
cannibalized.58
Goleman explains, “in crucial matters of the
heart--and most especially in emotional emergencies" the neocortex "can be said to defer to the
limbic system.” Neuroscientist Jack Fincher adds that the limbic structures house “memory,
pleasure, pain and the brain’s ability to balance the extremes of emotion.” Implicitly, pictorial
s-x stimuli obey “the law of strength”59 and dominate the limbic system in “s-xual desire…
memory, pleasure, pain…its seat of thought.”60 Fincher adds that the “[c]onnections between
the limbic system and the cerebrum [that] permit an interplay between reason and emotion” are
“easily upset.”
The limbic system can become so highly activated that it overwhelms rational
thought, making a person speechless with fury or joy. Through conscious
[neocortical] control, a person can resist the urge to eat or drink, fight back tears
or suppress s-xual desire.61
Sally Springer and Georg Deutsch of State University of New York at Stony Brook note
in Left Brain, Right Brain,” 62 “the bodily reactions induced by the right hemisphere” in a splitbrain
damaged patient:
When a split-brain damaged patient was
asked to fixate on the dot on the screen a
picture of a nude woman is flashed to the
left of the dot. N.G.’s face blushes a
little, and she begins to giggle. She is
asked what she saw. She says, "Nothing,
just a flash of light," and giggles again,
covering her mouth with her hand. "Why
are you laughing, then?" the investigator
inquires. "Oh, doctor, you have some
machine,” she replies.”63
N.G.’s right brain emotionally
responded—blushed, giggled, covers mouth—embarrassed by the n-de photo despite the fact
that her left brain had lost the cognitive ability to explain her embarrassment at viewing the
millisecond n-de image. Addressing hemispheric specialization measurement, Restak notes
genetics and environment impact our brain structure.
In a review of Joseph LeDoux’s The Emotional Brain:
The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life,” that emotion can occur without
cognitive processing in the cortex. As LeDoux explains, the learning of fear is
based on a different system from that of learning to identify people, objects and
situations. Fear learning is implicit. It depends on the amygdala. But being able
consciously to identify what causes the fear depends on explicit learning, which
needs intact hippocampal regions and temporal lobes of the brain.
Ordinarily if we are frightened we feel the fear implicitly and know explicitly
what has caused it. …[But] fear can be learned without consciousness--we can
feel fearful but without knowing why….Although anxieties are easy to acquire,
once their brain circuits are established they are difficult or impossible to
delete…..The brain also begins to initiate physical responses (heart palpitations,
sweaty palms, muscle tension) before we become aware of an associated feeling
of fear. Conscious feelings, says LeDoux, are somewhat irrelevant to the way The
Emotional Brain works. He points out that emotional responses are hard-wired
into the brain’s circuitry…Unlike conscious feelings, emotions originate in the
brain at a much deeper level, says LeDoux.If, as the brain research documents,
emotionally threatening/stimulating media bypass the
neocortex and rational thought,65 then strong, right hemisphere pictures will
psychopharmacologically overwhelm weaker left hemisphere speech
information. How are the child s-x signals unconsciously imbedded in
brain, mind, emotion, memory impacting their consumers/ Neurologist
Richard Restak stresses the conflicting, even warring roles of the left
and right hemispheres in learning in his book, The Brain Has a Mind
of Its Own:
[U]nder conditions of extreme duress the limbic system
is capable of overwhelming the cerebral cortex…where interpretation, judgment,
and restraint are formulated.66
LeDoux describes how this emotional stimulus interferes with rationality, wisdom, and
the ability to make healthy decisions.
[T]he amygdala can take control over what we do
even as the thinking brain, the neocortex is still
coming to a decision…when impulsive feeling
overrides the rational… Fear sends urgent messages
to every major part of the brain: it triggers the
secretion of the body’s fight-or-flight hormones [e.g.:
endogenous drugs]…centers for movement… the
cardiovascular system, muscles and the gut.67
“The amygdala can react in a delirium of rage or fear
before the cortex knows what is going on because
such raw emotion is triggered independent of, and prior to, thought…”
“The connections between the amygdala (and related limbic structures) and the
neocortex are the hub of the battles or cooperative treaties struck between head
and heart, thought and feeling. This circuitry explains why emotion is so crucial
to effective thought, both in making wise decisions and in simply allowing us to
think clearly.” 68
On point, while cognition appears to be subject to some genetic controls, a summary of
the anatomical workings of the limbic brain finds neither native intelligence nor education works
often to protect the individual from the influence of constantly repeated false, anxiety provoking,
confusing stimulation. Says Goleman:
But circuits from the limbic brain to the prefrontal lobes mean that the signals of
strong emotion--anxiety, anger, and the like--can create neural static, sabotaging
the ability of the prefrontal lobe to maintain working memory. That is why when
we are emotionally upset we say we "just can’t think straight"…The emotional
brain, quite separate from those cortical areas tapped by IQ tests, controls rage
and compassion alike. These emotional circuits are sculpted by experience
throughout childhood--and we leave those experiences utterly to chance at our
peril.69 (Emphasis added) to be continued...

[Disillusioned]

CHRISTINE’S BRAIN
If fear, anxiety, anger and the like flood the speech hemisphere responsible for cognition
with “neural static,” then society should reconsider such automatic neuroanatomical conduct
when considering the free speech privileges it now legally affords to p-ic imagery. A
young colleague turned her attention to
how the brain is impacted by early trauma, read a draft of this paper and remarked:
It would be clearer and more profound than “neural static” if you explained that
p-ic imagery makes a fear feedback loop that allows the amygdala to form memories in
its primitive brain with responses that are far faster than higher cognitive process. That fear feedback
loop hijacks the individual’s “choice” to control his/her brain, hormones, chemistry,
thought and memory.
If you want to write about Christine’s brain, say it’s been traumatized by
p-ically triggered assault, and not allowed to heal because I
live in a culture where this industry likes to recruit those with the
lowest self-esteem to be their actors? People like me. And, now,
today, they can recruit “performers” brought up in homes where p is accepted.
The false information with which society has been indoctrinated--that p
is a harmless, nourishing s-xual stimulus--is detrimental to human health and
welfare since the human person depends on truth in order to maintain a healthy
immune system and neural networks.
People who have integrated p-ic (emotional) lies within their neural
networks are not like those who have integrated political (cognitive) lies, the latter
being highly susceptible to corrective information. Cults, terrorists,
and p-ers deceitfully mislabel emotions. Suggestion has the same power
to shape thought and action as do well documented placebos.
Our whole culture is trying to accommodate the p industry; the bre-st implants,
enlarging the pen-s; viagra, abortion on demand, vaccinating kids for teen s-x …
Visual imagery either makes a new fear feedback loop or rides the wave of an
existing one. You know, I think of a kid I saw viewing p at the library. Sitting
there with his er-cti-n--all the women and little children that he would see then
within his vision at the library… creepy!!
We have our brains ’touched’ by what we see. The ’eye touch’ are the photons and
the mind reacts. Our whole being reacts because it is how a human is made. We
are truth seekers, for our health and preservation. Novelty stimuli, curiosity, all
make humans susceptible to manipulation by negative imagery.
No wonder kids are messed up. Their parents are! Women have lost their power in
the home to shape their beloved children’s brain and nervous system. Women are at
war with the very culture they exist in. There is a campaign out there by countless
manipulators for the minds of their children. The billion dollar p industry is
growing an ever-fresh supply of disposible, malleable actors and actresses.
ORGANICALLY QUANTIFIABLE P--IC “ADDICTION”
#######It takes 3/10ths of a second for a p-ic picture or
symbol to flood the organ known as the “brain” with sensory
experiences that trigger a network of memories that have been
misdiagnosed as “s-xual” or as “lust” or even, as in Pygmalion,
“love.” These p-ic stimuli will commonly, if
unconsciously, replay prior p-ic and associated s-xual
or sados-xual experiences.
######Dr. Patrick Carnes, writing in Out of the Shadows, explained s-x addiction as "a
pathological relationship with a mood-altering experience."71 By definition, all p
viewing is s-xual conduct, behavior that engenders a "mood-altering experience." Or, as
Christine says, a fear feedback loop.
For, this always confusing “mood altering experience,” by its nature, generates states of
lust, undergirded by anxiety which always produces levels of fear, anger and shame. Such is the
quality of the mood altering response to provoking s-x stimuli, labeled by the individual as
s-xual arousal. This means the hypothalamus is at “red alert,” activated to “flight or flight.
Eyes open wider...heart beats faster, fuel and defenses pump more quickly to muscles.”72
In Reinventing Perversion: S-x Addiction and Cultural Anxieties (1997), the authors state:
[A]ddiction experts challenge s-xologists on their enthusiasm for the unrestricted
use of fantasy and p, for their encouragement of mb, and for
their celebration of virtually any s-xual activity between consenting adults. [sic]
S-x addicts, they claim, may need to practice celibacy and eliminate fantasy and
s-xually explicit material "in order to attain and maintain sobriety," and s-x
therapists may simply retraumatize them or facilitate a relapse by the espousal of
s-xual freedom.
In its images and metaphors, s-x addiction is a condensation of anxieties about
lust, victimization, and the uncontrollable power of s-xuality. S-x addiction
claimants condemn what they see as manifestations of dangerous s-xuality, such
as mb, nonmonogamy, p, sad-masoch-sm, and, for some in
the more restrictive groups, lesbian and gay s-xuality….P, s-x without
love, and multiple partners are all condemned. Within the s-x addiction field,
retropurity terms have reemerged, such as "promiscuity," "nymphomania," and
"womanizer."
Under the rubric of health, [psychologist Charlotte] Kasl and other feminist
claimants advocate a women’s s-xuality that is spiritually and relationally oriented
and eschews casual s-x, the use of p, and engaging in sadom-soch-stic
practices as symptomatic of illness. A very particular feminist se-xual politic has
profoundly infused the concept of s-x addiction.73
IF PERCEIVED AS REALITY, THEN STORED AS MEMORY
Jack Fincher’s work supports the “s-x addiction” findings. Fincher reports that at first signs
of danger the body systems reach "red-alert," with the cortex releasing the hypothalamus from
inhibitory control, blood pressure increases, muscles tense, sensory perception increases, pupils
dilate, pain awareness is reduced, the skin flushes, the hands become clammy, and the heart beats
wildly in states of high s-xual/ fear, p-ally induced, arousal. As a s-xual or fearbased
org-sm memory is awakened during p-induced-anxiety, people imagine they
are being “s-xually” aroused by the trigger sights. One is commonly aroused by a biological
org-sm memory, fused with fear, shame, and the like. Psychologist, M. Douglas Reed discussed
the addictive nature of varied kinds of arousal and their self-medicating properties:
Arousal dependence may be compared to biochemical alterations related to excessive
amphetamine use. Satiation effects may be compared to those related to opiate use.
Fantasy behaviors can be related to such neurotransmitters as dopamine,
norepinephrine, or serotonin, all of which are chemically similar to the main
psychedelic drugs such as LSD. 74
Reed notes: "addiction could exist within the body’s own chemistry” and "any activity
that produces salient alterations in mood (which are always accompanied by changes in
neurotransmission) can lead to compulsion, loss of control and progressively disturbed
functioning." As a doctoral student, I employed the Glvanic Skin Response in one study of
responses to p images. We found a dramatic conflict between the non-verbal and
verbal claims of arousal toward p-ic pictures shown to female student volunteers. The
GSR printouts recorded high arousal/anxiety while the students had verbally claimed low
arousal, that they were bored and indifferent to the p-ic slides.
EXOGENOUS AND INDOGENOUS DRUGS
Science concludes, therefore rightly, that research on “learning and memory may
eventually be the key to figuring out how an often pleasurable experience” that includes the use
of exogenously obtained drugs or p-ally induced endogenous drugs, “can change from
a somewhat self-destructive hobby to a life-threatening compulsion.”75
A p-ic psychopharmacological flood yields
epinephrine (adrenaline), testosterone, (an endogenous
steroid, men’s "fight or fight" hormone), endorphins
(“endogenous morphine”), oxytocin (a bonding peptide
strongly associated with feelings of love), dopamine,
serotonin, phenylethylamine,76 and other pharmacological
stimuli. In her book published by the Institute of Medicine,
National Academy of Sciences, Sandra Ackerman notes that
epinephrine (adrenaline) alone gets the "vertebrate brain"
"high" on its own self produced morphine or heroin.77
P, designed to alert the procreation instinct to the
need to immediately respond, would be especially likely to
cause users to self-medicate, kick-starting these endogenous LSD, adrenaline/ norepinephrine,
morphine like neurochemicals for a hormonal flood, a "rush" allegedly analogous to the rush
attained using various street drugs. Science provides additional support for p-ic
autoerotism as a brain change agent that activates endogenous drug production at the cellular
level via normal and abnormal environmental s-xual cues—Raggedy Ann dolls, pigtails, pouts,
food, drinks, etc. The following come from memory researchers, including Steven Hyman,
director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. "[T]he clinical issue
that matters, [is]…how associative memories are laid down that …create deeply ingrained
behavioral responses to those cues.”78 Says Terry Robinson of the University of Michigan:
Memory researchers divide memories into those you consciously remember and
those you generally don’t. Consciously, people may remember a past drug nduced
burst of euphoria and seek out the drug [generating activity] again.79
Robinson points to the “associational memories,” the ‘trigger sights’ that reactivate the
urge or lust for, say, the given drug of choice.
(continued)

[Disillusioned]

Robinson says:
[C]rack pipes, syringes, the sound of ice tinkling in a glass full of scotch--can act
as cues that induce craving much like the sound of a bell caused Pavlov’s dogs to
salivate. Even though addicts can become conscious of the relationship between
some drug-related cues and their cravings…, they might not recognize that a
certain place or smell wakens a hunger for the drug. 80
These cues "can goad an individual to drug seeking in the absence of conscious
awareness," says Robinson. While briefly addressing “s-xual addictions,” both Science and the
brain research did not address s-xual trigger sights and associated memories.
When former addicts see videos evocative of drug use, they report craving and
show signs of stress, such as increased heart rate, says psychiatrist Charles
O’Brien of the University of Pennsylvania…Positron emission tomography (PET)
shows that parts of the reward system are unusually active when people
experience craving….[There is] hyperactivation of the orbitofrontal cortex when
recovered addicts see cues that induce craving for cocaine. This part of the brain
is closely connected to reward pathways and is disrupted in people with
obsessive-compulsive disorder.81 (Emphasis added).

A REWARD IS A REWARD IS A REWARD
Sensitization, in an environment where one has learned to expect a drug “high,” "renders
brain circuitry hypersensitive to drugs and drug- associated paraphernalia." Says Robinson:
Long-term abuse can wear out these pathways, reducing the number of
receptors that respond to dopamine. Some of Volkow’s more chilling PET scan
images show the brains of former methamphetamine users: Some have been
drug free for months but their dopamine systems are still not firing on all
cylinders. Dopamine fuels motivation and pleasure, [and] it’s also crucial for
learning and movement.82
In “Behavioral’ Addictions: Do They Exist?” Science says, aided by the new “brain
imaging advances, scientists are looking for evidence that compulsive nondrug behaviors lead to
long-term changes (“neuroadaption.”) in reward circuitry.”83 Science reports that the
“superrefined brain scan technology” provides new information on “the brain’s reward system.”
[A]s far as the brain is concerned, a reward’s a reward, regardless of whether it
comes from a chemical or an experience. And where there’s a reward, there’s the
risk of the vulnerable brain getting trapped in a compulsion.84
Howard Shaffer, head of Harvard’s Division on Addictions says:
I had great difficulty with my own colleagues when I suggested that a lot of
addiction is the result of experience ... repetitive, high-emotion, high-frequency
experience… But it’s become clear that neuroadaptation--that is, changes in neural
circuitry that help perpetuate the behavior--occurs even in the absence of drug taking.
85 (Emphasis added).
Anna Rose Childress, a University of Pennsylvania brain image researcher states
that s-x addicts and cocaine addicts lose their inhibitions and appear to have an
“inhibitory circuitry" defect. Vanderbilt University psychiatrist Peter Martin’s
research on “normal subjects” finds the brain activity experienced in s-xual
arousal of his normal subjects “looks like that accompanying drug
consumption.”86 (Emphasis added).
P is not like a drug, it is an endogenously processed poly drug providing
intense, although misleading, sensory rewards. Harvard’s Shaffer team found that when a
“reward is powerful enough, it can retrain those circuits in a vulnerable person.”87 And, in
“Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” neuroscientist Eric Nestler of the University of Texas notes
brain studies find a "convergence between changes caused by drugs of addiction in reward
circuits and changes in other brain regions mediating memory."88 Nestler writes, “both learning
and drug exposure resculpt synapses, initiate cascades of molecular signals that turn on genes,
and change behavior in persistent ways.”89
Lust, that is s-xual arousal, toward a real or media image, when experienced in the body
(in street terms, “brain candy”) as a drug high, poses significant danger, especially for those with
an already delicate psyche. For, such chemical flooding of the brain would too often override
ones cognitive thought and interfere with rational decisions to protect themselves and others.
Neuropsychiatrist, Richard Restak is enthusiastic about scientific confirmation that “we
can change how our brain operates” saying, “we can literally change our brain for the better as a
result of new interests and the development of new talents.” “[B]rain research is confirming a
long cherished and valued belief that when it comes to our mind and its development ” says
Restak, “we retain a gratifying measure of control after all.”90 Science reports:
84 Science
Once the brain becomes less sensitive to dopamine, it “becomes less sensitive to
natural reinforcers," Volkow says, such as the "pleasure of seeing a friend,
watching a movie, the curiosity that drives exploration." The only stimuli still
strong enough to activate the sputtering motivation circuit, she says, are drugs.91
(Emphasis added).
GETTING THE BRAIN’S ATTENTION
However, the foregoing observation applies to both changing the brain for the better--or
for the worse via exogenous and endogenous drug production. In “Getting the Brain’s
Attention,” Science reports that dopamine appears to highlight and aid addiction to biologically
significant stimuli, even when the rewards are long since past (in this case, read p,
autoerotic activity) rather than merely signaling pleasure as previously thought.
“[T]he neurotransmitter dopamine may
contribute to addiction…Dopamine release
within the brain highlights, or draws attention to,
certain significant or surprising events [not just]
consuming a tasty morsel of food or engaging in
s-xual activity, but also events that predict
rewards, and stimuli, like loud noises and
flashing lights, that are simply startling. By
underscoring such events, say these researchers,
the dopamine signal helps the animal learn to
recognize them--and in some cases, to repeat
them.”92 (Emphasis added).
Neurobiologist Candace Pert describes the body as a “psychosomatic communication
network,” with “brain chemicals found throughout the body, directly affecting the health of the
immune system.”93 Fearing “soul” or “spirit,” the scientific world denied the obvious, says Dr.
Pert, that our brain-mind-memories directly affect our physical well-being and ghettoized
emotions. Pert supports the findings of Amen, Goleman, Restak, LeDoux, Kemmeny, Felten and
others:
[M]any emotional messages…don’t percolate up to your level of knowing them.
Even so, they are used to run everything in your body…. Emotions might actually be
the link between mind and body. …The old barriers between brain and body are
breaking down…. If …the mind is not just in the brain but …part of a communication
network throughout the brain and body, then you can start to see how physiology
can affect mental functioning on a moment-to-moment, hour by-by-hour, day-today
basis.
CAUSE-EFFECT: WHAT WE FEEL EFFECTS HEALTH
So, what is the cause-effect nature of pictorial p on public health? University
of Rochester neuroscientist, Dr. David Felten mused that until recently, “it was almost dogma
that the immune system is autonomous and doesn’t have any outside controls.” 95 Leading
professionals looking right at depression and excitation, insisted that "there was no connection,
[that] the brain and the immune system couldn’t talk to each other.96 Kemeny explains that
scientists finally agree that ones emotions "impact on the immune system."97
For thousands of years it has been said that our thoughts and feelings can make us
sick or well. Now, scientists are putting that folk wisdom to the test......For
centuries we have separated mind from body [but]… [a]lthough it seems
intangible, anytime we feel anything, anytime we think anything, anytime we
imagine anything, there is activity in the brain that is taking place in the body at
that time. That activity can then lead to a cascade of changes in the body that
have an impact on health.98
Karen Olness, Professor of Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University and a
specialist in mind regulation and conditioning, reveals the causal effects of media in shaping our
personal/national health. She addresses the habitual images in the entertainment medium that
reach the right hemisphere, triggering a cascade of neurochemical activity, dominate the brain
and affect public health.99
“[U]ltimately we will be understanding how images are constructed and how they
impact a neurotransmitter ….[W]hatever energy is associated with the
construction of images and the process of thinking transmits a message to a
cascade of body processes…. in fact, changing images does affect physiology. I
have no doubt about that any longer…. Images can be wonderful. They can
obviously also be frightening if we have negative images.”100
[I]mages and the minute energy associated with images that connects with
neurotransmitters or information-transmitting molecules is where the mind and
body meet…we must continue with the research. I think it’s as important as any
other area of health science research…[M]any of us have been in the habit of
inadvertently conditioning ourselves negatively. It would help if we simply knew
how to reverse that, if we knew what habitual images were not in our best health
interests. That in itself would be a great advance in our understanding of this area
[of conditioning].101 (Emphasis added.) (continued)

[Disillusioned]

To my fellows at TTF,
I am discontinuing this article at this point due to a further discourse that is not suitable for this forum. There is discussion about images, cartoons, etc. in men's so-called "soft core" (?) magazines which seems to surprise regular readers. In fact, readers were asked about this content and denied its existence until a large collection of this offensive material was presented in one manuscript. It just demonstrates again, how we become desensitized to material we see all the time that should set off loud alarms of protest and commentary. If you would like to read the full paper, see the many pictures and graphs demonstrating statistics the author has collected or wish to see the credit the author gave to many other contributors to the article, please view the original paper.
It is by Dr. Judith Reisman and is called "Psychopharmacology of Pictorial P; Restructuring Brain, Mind and Memory and Subverting
Freedom of Speech."
I apologize to the entire group for any boundaries that I have crossed in the interest of representing the article in its entirety. I meant no harm, hope that nothing I noted caused any discomfort, hope I have not violated any agreements that might endanger the site.
I wish all well who come here. I hope for each to recover from this modern plague that is p. I pray for the restoration and better communication of couples who come here seeking help.
Most sincerely,
disillusioned