Sexual sensation is absolutely central to both our shared human experience and our individual quirks and kinks. It’s exactly the sort of topic that has traditionally had lots of behavioural observation and theorising attached to it (including by psychoanalysts). There’s no question that sexual sensation is sculpted by early life experience. Yet it’s also embedded in a biological matrix, with brain regions and nerve bundles and special molecular machines specialised to transduce pressure on the skin into what is, ultimately, erotic sensation. It’s one of many places where psychology and biology meet.
…
Early experiences encoded by the plastic brain are, of course, central to the particulars of sexual sensation in adulthood, but the lowly nerve endings of the skin, and their person-to-person variation, are also likely to have an important role in creating our sexual individuality.
