Education
Giles studied at the University of British Columbia and at the University of Edinburgh.
Giles studied at the University of British Columbia and at the University of Edinburgh.
He has written about personal identity and the self, and has published theories of the reason for human hairlessness and the cause of sexual desire. He lectures in psychology at Roskilde University in Denmark. Giles published his theory of sexual desire in The Nature of Sexual Desire in 2008.
Sexologists usually account for sexual desire either in terms of social constructionism or as a biological characteristic essential to reproduction.
Giles rejects both these views, and attempts to show by a phenomenological approach that sexual desire is an existential need rooted in the human condition, based on a feeling of incompleteness from the experience of one’s own gender as a form of disequilibrium. The theory thus shows similarities to earlier theories such as those of Thomas Nagel on sexual perversion, or of Aristophanes on romantic love in Plato"s Symposium.
Vulnerability and care theory of love
The vulnerability and care theory of love was put forward by Giles in an article entitled "A Theory of Love and Sexual Desire" (1994) and later developed in his book The Nature of Sexual Desire (2004y). Giles" theory has been discussed by scholars Doctor Ruth, in her textbook Human Sexuality: a Psychosocial Perspective (2002), and Doctor Barbara Keesling, in her book Sexual Pleasure: Reaching New Heights of Sexual Arousal (2005).
Giles published his "naked love theory" of human hairlessness in 2010.
According to Giles, naked skin is a precondition for the appearance of romantic love.