libido
Enable an agent to represent libido as sexual desire, distinguish its meanings and expressions, assess reported variation, and support person-defined choices without inferring consent or disorder.
Research draft, second pass
A second pass drafted this model: the structure a model of this thing needs, and what is known about it in the world. The line under this one says how the second half was obtained - researched against sources, or recalled without web access, in which case nothing here was read anywhere and every claim is a lead to verify. Unreviewed either way.
recalled by Codex without web access - no source was read
Researched by: Codex
Purpose and description
Enable an agent to represent libido as sexual desire, distinguish its meanings and expressions, assess reported variation, and support person-defined choices without inferring consent or disorder.
Libido usually denotes sexual desire or motivation, while in psychoanalytic theory it denotes a postulated psychic energy whose scope differs between Freudian and Jungian accounts.
It can be Clarify which meaning of libido a statement uses and preserve unresolved differences between definitions.; Record a person's description of desire while keeping arousal, attraction, behaviour, and consent separate.; Compare reports across time when their methods, contexts, and time windows are sufficiently compatible.; Identify reported contextual associations and formulate follow-up questions without assigning unsupported causes.; Distinguish a person's own concern or goal from expectations attributed to a partner, clinician, or culture.; Support an explicitly requested discussion or information search while limiting access to sensitive libido records..
Distinguishing features
A libido record concerns sexual wanting, interest, or motivation; a record of bodily activation alone concerns arousal.
Sexual activity or its frequency does not establish the presence or intensity of desire; an agent must record the basis for any inference.
Attraction toward someone and desire to engage in sexual activity must be separately recordable.
Reported desire does not establish willingness or consent for a particular act, person, or occasion.
A theoretical claim about libidinal energy must identify its school and meaning before it can be compared with a report or measure of sexual desire.
Scope
+ Everyday and research meanings of libido as sexual desire or motivation
+ Attributed psychoanalytic meanings, including disagreements about the scope of libidinal energy
+ Reported intensity, frequency, direction, and temporal pattern of sexual desire
+ Distinctions between desire, attraction, physiological arousal, sexual behaviour, and consent
+ Person-defined significance, distress, preferences, and goals concerning libido
+ Measurement methods and the limits of comparisons across people and contexts
- Sexual physiology and genital response mechanisms as independently modelled processes
- Sexual orientation and identity as independently modelled concepts
- Diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction or other health conditions
- Medication, endocrine, and reproductive-health management
- Consent decisions and relationship agreements themselves
- The full architecture of psychoanalytic theories of mind
Characteristics
- Conceptual sense
- Everyday sexual desire; research-defined sexual motivation; attributed psychoanalytic sense; other explicitly defined sense Prevents unlike uses of libido from being treated as measurements of one settled construct.
- Reported desire intensity
- Person-described intensity or named instrument score, with scale anchors and recall period; no assumed universal unit Makes the strength of reported desire interpretable without treating scores as interchangeable.
- Reported desire frequency
- Reported episodes or frequency category within an explicit time window, with an episode definition Separates how often desire is experienced from how strong it feels.
- Mode of emergence
- Reported as preceding stimulation; emerging during a welcome interaction or stimulation; mixed; unclear; not recorded Allows different patterns of desire to be represented without making one pattern the default.
- Direction and context
- General, solitary, partner-directed, situation-specific, or unspecified, using the person's terminology Prevents desire in one context from being generalised to all contexts or partners.
- Change relative to personal baseline
- Reported increase; decrease; stable; variable; unknown, with comparison period Supports interpretation of change without imposing a population norm.
- Personal significance
- Welcome; neutral; unwanted; distressing; mixed; unspecified, with the person's explanation Separates the presence or level of desire from whether the person regards it as a concern.
- Evidence basis
- Direct self-report; named questionnaire; diary; third-party attribution; theoretical interpretation; other specified method Makes clear whose perspective supports a claim and how directly desire was assessed.
Where this came from
wikidata · CC0 1.0
Drafted structure
Bundle to layer to finding to question, as the second pass will find it: 6 bundles · 11 layers · 17 findings · 27 questions.
Meanings of libido Establishes which construct a libido claim concerns and which neighbouring concepts it excludes.
Libido can name experienced sexual desire or a theoretical construct, so its meaning cannot be assumed from the word alone.
Definitions and schools
Records definitions and the people, traditions, or instruments that use them.
Attributed libido definition
Represent each definition with its attribution, including whether it concerns sexual desire specifically or a broader theoretical notion of psychic energy.
- Does libido here mean experienced sexual desire, sexual motivation, or a school-specific theoretical construct? definition
- Which author, research tradition, instrument, or speaker supplies this meaning, and where is it stated? provenance
Neighbouring sexual concepts
Tests whether a statement actually concerns desire rather than something associated with it.
Desire boundary test
Keep evidence of sexual wanting separate from evidence of attraction, arousal, activity, willingness, or consent.
- What in this report establishes sexual wanting rather than bodily arousal, attraction, or observed behaviour alone? boundary
- Which associated concepts need separate records so that a libido claim does not imply consent, orientation, or sexual activity? boundary
Experienced desire Captures how sexual desire is described, directed, and experienced over an episode.
A single high-or-low label loses differences between intensity, frequency, direction, and the emergence of desire.
Felt interest and wanting
Records the person's language for sexual interest and how it relates to wanting an activity.
Self-described sexual wanting
Represent intensity, frequency, and the content of reported desire without assuming that sexual thoughts are necessarily wanted or motivating.
- How does the person distinguish sexual interest, fantasy, unwanted sexual thoughts, and wanting sexual activity? definition
- How strong and how frequent is the reported desire within the stated period, and how were those dimensions elicited? measurement
Emergence and direction
Records when desire appears and whether it is general or directed toward a particular context.
Situated desire pattern
Describe desire that precedes or emerges during a welcome experience, together with its solitary, interpersonal, or unspecified direction.
- Is desire reported before stimulation or interaction, during a welcome experience, in both patterns, or with no clear pattern? measurement
- Does the report concern general sexual interest, solitary activity, a particular partner, or a particular situation? boundary
Variation and context Represents libido across time and circumstances while separating reported associations from explanations.
An agent must distinguish a brief episode, a sustained change, and a context-specific pattern before interpreting a libido report.
Personal time course
Places reports against an explicit personal comparison period.
Baseline and change
Record the onset, duration, variability, and person's interpretation of a change without assuming a required level of libido.
- What period represents the person's comparison baseline, and what specifically has changed in desire? measurement
- Is the reported pattern brief, recurring, sustained, or too sparsely observed to classify? measurement
Contextual associations
Records circumstances that the person or a source associates with variation.
Association without causal assumption
Link reported changes to relevant circumstances while retaining who proposed the connection and what evidence supports it.
- Which changes in sleep, stress, relationships, health, medication, privacy, or opportunity does the person associate with changes in desire? provenance
- What evidence supports a causal interpretation rather than coincidence, retrospective attribution, or a change in reporting? boundary
Operationalisation and evidence Makes libido assessments interpretable and exposes limits in the evidence.
Measures may operationalise different aspects of desire, and behavioural proxies can obscure the construct being assessed.
Assessment method
Records how a report or score was produced and what it claims to measure.
Measure-to-construct fit
Attach the method, wording or instrument version, recall window, and scoring interpretation to each assessment.
- Does the method assess desire intensity, frequency, solitary or interpersonal desire, distress, or a composite of these? measurement
- What source documents the instrument's intended construct, scoring, and evidence for use in this population and language? provenance
Comparison and inference
Controls comparisons and distinguishes absent evidence from reported absence of desire.
Limits of libido inference
Keep unknown desire, reported absent desire, and unobserved sexual activity distinct; preserve disagreements between sources.
- Is low or absent desire directly reported, or inferred from sexual inactivity, limited opportunity, or another person's account? provenance
- Are the definitions, methods, time windows, and contexts compatible enough for the proposed comparison? measurement
Significance and agency Connects a libido report to the person's interpretation and authorised next steps.
An agent needs to know whose concern is being represented and must not turn desire into an obligation or an automatic problem.
Personal appraisal
Separates desire level from distress, identity, relationship expectations, and preferences for change.
Whose concern and goal
Record whether the person wants understanding, acceptance, change, or no intervention, and distinguish their appraisal from others' expectations.
- Does the person experience their libido as welcome, neutral, unwanted, distressing, or mixed, and what makes it so? measurement
- Is the proposed concern the person's own, a mismatch in desired sexual frequency, or an expectation imposed by someone else? boundary
Authorised response
Defines appropriate support and handling of sensitive desire information.
Person-directed next steps
Tie any discussion, tracking, sharing, or request for specialist input to the person's stated goal and permission.
- What response does the person want: clarification, private tracking, communication support, professional input, or no further action? action
- What permission governs collecting or sharing this libido information, and how will any inference of sexual obligation or consent be prevented? action
Evidence and external alignment What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.
A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.
Reported evidence
Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.
Check these first
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- No sense is recorded; the primary interpretation here is sexual desire, with the psychoanalytic sense explicitly distinguished.
- Freudian libido is associated with sexual drives; Jung broadened the term to general psychic energy. Neither usage should be silently substituted for contemporary sexual-desire measures.
- The listed varieties are overlapping distinctions rather than an exhaustive taxonomy; questionnaire versions and scoring should be checked before use.
- Which of these check these first hold for the sense of libido this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Kinds and varieties
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Spontaneous sexual desire
- Responsive sexual desire
- Dyadic desire, directed toward sexual activity with another person
- Solitary desire, directed toward sexual activity alone
- Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of libido this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Real-world use
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Discussing sexual interests and changes in desire in sexual-health care and relationship counselling.
- Studying associations between sexual desire, health, medication, mood and relationship context.
- Representing motivational processes within psychoanalytic theories.
- Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of libido this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Typical measurements
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Self-reported sexual desire, including dyadic and solitary dimensions - Instrument-dependent; no universal normal range - Questionnaire score, for example on the Sexual Desire Inventory
- Which of these typical measurements hold for the sense of libido this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Failure modes and hazards
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Treating low desire or asexuality as inherently pathological without considering personal distress and context.
- Equating desire with physiological arousal, sexual behaviour or consent.
- Inferring libido directly from a hormone concentration.
- Using one partner's preferred level of sexual activity as the standard for another.
- Treating psychoanalytic psychic energy as an established measurable biological quantity.
- Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of libido this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Regional variation
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Cultural and religious norms influence how sexual desire is expressed, reported and judged.
- Translated questionnaires require validation because wording and social expectations can affect responses.
- Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of libido this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Sexual arousal - Arousal concerns subjective excitement and physiological activation; desire concerns motivation, and the two can occur separately.
- Sexual attraction - Attraction concerns being sexually drawn to someone; libido can exist without a particular target.
- Sexual behaviour - Behaviour is an action; desire need not lead to action, and action does not establish desire.
- Consent - Consent is voluntary agreement to a particular activity; libido does not establish that agreement.
- Asexuality - Asexuality generally concerns little or no sexual attraction; it does not necessarily imply absent libido.
- Sexual desire disorder - A disorder requires assessment under clinical criteria; a low level of desire alone is insufficient.
- Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of libido this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
What the second pass must settle
- Which reference works and research traditions should anchor the working definition, and which disagreements between desire, drive, motivation, and libidinal energy must remain explicit?
- Which assessment instruments adequately distinguish intensity, frequency, solitary desire, interpersonal desire, and distress, and for which populations and languages is their use supported?
- How should responsive or context-emergent desire be represented without treating the absence of initial desire as permission to initiate sexual contact?
- What evidence is sufficient to distinguish sustained personal change from ordinary variability, context changes, and measurement effects?
- How should the model represent asexual-spectrum experiences and culturally different accounts of desire without conflating identity, libido level, and distress?