La petite mort
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La petite mort, French for "the little death", is a metaphor for orgasm.
More widely, it can refer to the spiritual release that comes with orgasm, or a short period of melancholy or transcendence, as a result of the expenditure of the "life force". Literary critic Roland Barthes spoke of la petite mort as the chief objective of reading literature. He metaphorically used the concept to describe the feeling one should get when experiencing any great literature.
A recent study of brain activation patterns using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) give some support to the experience of a small death:
"To some degree, the present results seem to be in accordance with this notion, because female orgasm is associated with decreased blood flow in the orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is crucial for behavioural control."[1]
The term 'la petite mort' or 'the small death' does not always apply to sexual experiences. It can also be used when some undesired thing has happened to a person and has affected them so much that 'a part of them dies inside'. A literary example of this is found in Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' when he uses the phrase to describe how Tess feels after she comes across a particularly gruesome omen and meeting with her own rapist:
"She felt the petite mort at this unexpectedly gruesome information, and left the solitary man behind her."
'La petite mort' has been referenced in other art forms as well. In 1993 Jake and Dinos Chapman created a piece called 'Little Death Machine (Castrated)'. The sculpture is part of an installation at the Tate Britain gallery in London, which explores some of the overtly sexual views of the Surrealist movement. Surrealists such as Salvador Dali explored the links between sex and death through their art.
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- "Psychobiology of altered states of consciousness". Psychological Bulletin 131 (1): 98-127. 2005.
- "Orgasmic aura originates from the right hemisphere". Neurology (58): 302-304. 2002.
- "Electroencephalographic laterality changes during human sexual orgasm". Archives of Sexual Behavior (Springer Netherlands) 5 (3). May 1976. http://www.springerlink.com/content/w580x14k0h15p38q/. "Left and right parietal EEGs were recorded while seven subjects experienced sexual climax through self-stimulation.".
- "EEG during masturbation and ejaculation". Archives of Sexual Behavior (Springer Netherlands) 14 (6). December 1985. "...Examination of the literature shows little agreement among reported results of studies of EEG changes during orgasm.".
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