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BY SUSIE WILSON
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
SEX MATTERS
History informs, and so I recommend the new biography, "Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, The Couple Who Taught America How to Love," by Thomas Maier (Basic Books, 2009) for a good summer read. This is a book about sex-lots and lots of it-but the sex is not prurient or pornographic. Rather, it's used primarily as a scientific tool to study the phenomenon of human sexuality in order to help us better understand and enjoy the sexual aspects of our lives.
"Masters of Sex" tells the story of the lives of two pioneer sex researchers, Masters and Johnson, who took the physiological aspect of human sexuality out of the dark ages of the Victorian era and into the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and modern times. Masters and Johnson authored a series of best-selling books-including "Human Sexual Response," "Human Sexual Inadequacy," "The Pleasure Bond," and "Crisis: Heterosexual Behavior in the Age of AIDS" — that catapulted them to fame. They may have done more for sex than any two people since Adam and Eve.
Together, they studied the human sexual response cycle-particularly the female sexual response-by observing more than 10,000 orgasms at their clinic in St. Louis, MO. They created the sexual science of sexology and developed a two-week sex therapy regime based on "sensate touch," for couples who experienced an array of sexual marital problems, for which they claimed an "80-percent cure rate." They also came under attack for developing another two-week program to help gay people "convert" to heterosexuality, which has since been discredited, and for sounding a too-loud alarm bell about the HIV/AIDS crisis, including publishing incorrect information about transmission of the virus.
Masters and Johnson said little about sex education other than that they believed it should be grounded in sound scientific research. So I asked Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D., a respected sex therapist and professor of sexuality at the University of Washington, for her views about "Masters of Sex," the value of Masters and Johnson's legacy, and how parents can talk to their own children about sex.Susie Wilson: The author of "Masters of Sex," Thomas Maier, says that Masters and Johnson "revolutionized the way sex is studied, taught, and enjoyed in America." Do you agree? And what specifically do you consider their greatest achievements?
Dr. Pepper Schwartz: The statement is more or less true, although as time goes on, some newer members of the sex education community may not realize their indebtedness to Masters and Johnson. They were the impetus to studying the body and its sexual abilities or disabilities, and they spurred research on context, emotions, etc., even if they themselves were overly biological and mechanistic.
They definitely created a climate where the right to sexual pleasure became a more common feeling among the general public-and they should be celebrated for this accomplishment over and above their specific contributions.
We now teach modifications of their human sexual response cycle, but they were the ones to give us the architecture to build on. They created the field of sexual therapy as a distinct specialization rather than as a part of some larger behavioral science or psychiatric practice. They gave us new information and new tools. Their contributions way overshadow their mistakes or shortcomings.
SW: Is the book for a general audience or a more a specialized one, such as sex therapists and educators?
PS: I think it is for a general audience, but especially for people who enjoy the history of science — finding out how knowledge is attained, who the people were who did pioneer work, and what that tells us about how the work was conceptually framed and measured. This book can help you figure out what to admire and what to doubt in terms of the highly influential work of Masters and Johnson.
Sex researchers will be particularly engaged, particularly people like me who knew Bill and Gini, but never knew about their private life and how it affected what they studied, how they interpreted it, and how the team influenced the methodologies and findings. The key points for sex education teachers would be to look at the evolution of the interviews, the construction, limits, and uses of [the therapy] sensate focus, and the methodologies of the original data collection.
SW: Masters and Johnson's first and groundbreaking book, Human Sexual Response, was published in 1966. Do you think most Americans understand and value Masters and Johnson's contributions to the sexual revolution and present-day sexual behavior? Do most people understand the various stages of orgasm that Masters and Johnson discovered?
PS: Much of their contribution to the sexual revolution is confined to people over 40, so this book can enlighten a whole new population. The various stages of orgasm is probably the most common discovery of their research included in college sexuality courses, so it is more integrated into public knowledge-but only for people who have taken such a course sometime in their lives.
SW: In your praise for the book that appears on the back cover, you say that Masters and Johnson made "a real contribution to the history of science." Some of their critics said that their work was nothing more than "voyeuristic." Will you elaborate on what you mean by their contributions to science?
PS: The "voyeuristic" charge is humorous. In order to understand how human sexual response actually occurred, they had to look at how it began, how it proceeded, and how it ended. This charge is akin to accusing anatomy researchers of body mutilation, because they dissected bodies in order to study internal organs.
