D.E. Stafford – “TURNED ON: Intimacy in a pornized society”

D.E. Stafford, a psychotherapist and author located in Cambridge UK, recently published his first book, TURNED ON: Intimacy in a pornized society, and was kind enough to send me a review copy. Here’s a short description from the back cover of the book:

Written in three parts, TURNED ON allows the reader to inhabit the internal mindset of three people: Marc, a highly educated professional man who is a heavy user of pornography and telephone sexlines; his therapist, who facilitates the unfolding of Marc’s personal social history and the process of recovery; and Louise, the bright but lifetime disadvantaged telephone sexline worker whose story illuminates aspects of the wider effects of a pornized society, especially on women.

I’ll get to the point: this is a damn good book. The characters of Marc and Louise felt like real people to me. I cared about them, and I wanted to know what was going to happen to them. I also admired and enjoyed what I would call the “slightly shuffled” structure of the timeline of events in the book, which kept me a little off balance and disoriented as a reader, but in a good way that actually drew me more deeply into the experience of the book.

Another positive aspect of TURNED ON is well-articulated by therapist Patricia Mills, who said in her review of the book, “Refreshingly, the male isn’t demonised with only the woman being seen as victim. The gender issues raised were based on fact rather than emotion.” I would agree. I felt the presentation of gender roles and dynamics in the book was as skillfully balanced as it could possibly be.

In my review of TURNED ON at Amazon UK, I said, in part:

“Turned On” is a dark journey, to be sure, and not for the faint of heart or those who may be offended or disturbed by a frank presentation of the shadow side of human sexual experience. But more importantly, in my view, it is a journey of awakening to the possibilities of healing and positive change that can only come with a fully felt awareness of the truths of oneself, one’s history, and one’s life. And that is a journey well-taken.

Reading this book is a “stand in the fire” type of experience, and as such, is not for everyone. Some will find the subject matter and strong language used by the characters, not to mention their behavior (sexual and otherwise), objectionable. Others who are deeply sensitive and/or have a history of trauma may find that there are too many triggers. And some folks simply don’t want to know about these things, period. But for those who want to know, who need to know, and who understand that a walk through the darkness can lead to a deeper, more expansive experience of the light, this is a great and illuminating book.

For additional information or to order a copy of TURNED ON, visit wittingpress.wordpress.com.

The D.E. Stafford – “TURNED ON: Intimacy in a pornized society” by Rick Belden, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.