The old idea that sexuality is a smouldering, animalistic force within us, desperate for release yet restrained by social forces, has little to support it. Bodies are not just sticks that make fire when you rub them together, and the pain, heartache, and regret that can accompany the highs of sexual excitement show us that much more is at stake. So what are really thinking about when we think about sex? And what are were really doing when we do it?

Oscar Wild said “ Everything in the world is about sex, except sex”.  Acclaimed psychoanalyst Darian Leader explores the organs of desire, Love, lust and consent and the meaning we ascribe to sexual encounters. It is never “just sex”  but an expression of love and fantasy; cult and anxiety, violence and revenge.

Sex ia an analgesic porn usage peaks on Sunday night. People are not ruled by am animalistic sex drive “desperate for release yet restrained by social forces that shape desire. We pick sexual scripts from our families and the culture, which is not immune to trends. Is it Ever Just Sex?, makes passing references to Stormy and Naked Attraction, and Leader relies on 20th century sexology,  “ Perhaps all of us equate” sex and reproduction, what about non-hero, non-penetrative or post menopausal sex?

One Instagram user ethused, “for breaking the ice on planes, trains and Tubes”. Consent has become the buzzword in our culture conversation about sex. 

Is it Ever Just Sex? By Darian Leader, Hamish Hamilton £18.99, 288 pages.