The neighbors of Mathis have exhibitionist tendencies: they do not hesitate to take advantage of their neighborhood's sexual intercourse, by opening the curtains and even the windows at night. This behavior causes a certain discomfort in this Europe 1 listener. The sexologist and psychoanalyst in Paris Catherine Blanc answers this problem in the program Sans Rendez-vous on Europe 1, Friday.
Mathis' question
"My neighbors tend to make love with the curtains open and at night they make love with the window open. They make the whole neighborhood enjoy it. In your opinion, is this considered exhibitionism? should I tell them something? "
Catherine Blanc's response
"The fact that some people need to show their sexual performance is part of their excitement, of imagining that others are in desire of something, that they cannot live it when you live it yourself. is a way of saying to yourself that 'I live something, I prove that I live something that others may not be living'. 'I show you how much I live because in addition, I dramatize it. It’s downright exhibitionism.
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What is interesting is to tell yourself that this desire to exhibit your sexuality is to reassure yourself about its power. It is to hinder the other and thus have a double power: it is the power of what I do and the power to bring in the other without his knowledge. It is typically the exhibitionism of the public garden, it is the idea that I can excite them and the idea that I can disturb them, which gives me supreme power. It is a way of making them return, against their will, within the framework of my private life and my sexuality. "
Can this be compared to taking pictures of your dishes to show them to others? Some kind of victory over his neighbor?
"It is either to show that I eat what you do not eat, or to reassure myself that I eat something extraordinary. There can be an extremely perverse side since it is reducing the other to the state object, that is to say that the other is no longer subject to the situation, unless you invite him so that he is subject and has the desire to be. Otherwise, the person was sleeping and all of a sudden they are with a sexual story, a pornographic story, if any in their head. So suddenly they are forced to see even what they don't not see, since she hears it.
It's the same for children, as we often hear in the context of psychiatric consultations. There are adults who have been greatly disturbed by a great demonstration of a power of one over the other, often of the man on the woman, which makes the child try to not hear so as not to participate. From a psychic point of view, the child has the feeling of having participated in parental sexuality, of having taken part in it and it is extremely traumatic. It is not an incestuous appearance, but incestual, that is to say that he really has the feeling of having participated in a sexuality. "
Can Mathis send them a message or call the police?
"First, if it bothers him, it's interesting to know why it bothers him. We all have a degree of acceptance of the other's presence. Why is he the one who has to barricade himself and close his windows? At the level of the law, this must be on the same side as the attack on modesty. We just disturb the modesty of the other, but we have the right to be modest: it is not because we are in a society where we talk about sexuality, where we laugh about sexuality that we are all in the duty to be at this level, to speak, to see, to hear the sexuality of our neighbor. The best thing is to go tell your neighbor it's enough. And if not, you have to go and file a complaint. "