Human Sexology | Book Chapter Summaries
Chapter 3 | Intimate Relationships
Historical Perspective
Sexual pioneers
Prior to the 1960s, the definitive published work on the sexual behaviour of humans
consisted primarily of large-scale surveys, most notably those by Alfred Kinsey in the late
1940s and early 1950s. The renowned “Kinsey Reports” offered a rare glimpse into the sexual
activities of humans. As the 1960s began, the United States launched into what has become
known as the sexual revolution, a time of sweeping social changes marked by the introduction
of the contraceptive pill, a greater openness about sexuality, and the “free love” movement.
Theories of Sexual Response
Biology, Psychology, and Human Sexual Response
For most nonhuman mammals, sexual behaviour is governed primarily, or in most
cases exclusively, by the biological forces of mating and reproduction. Our willingness or
desire to engage in mating behaviour is not clearly linked to the female’s fertility cycle to
ensure reproduction, and in gay and lesbian sexual interactions, this consideration is virtually
nonexistent.
Masters and Johnson: The Excitement-Plateau-Orgasm-Resolution (EPOR) Model
To facilitate explanations of how our bodies change during sexual stimulation, Masters
and Johnson (1966) divided the process into four phases of sexual response—excitement,
plateau, orgasm, and resolution—called the EPOR model.
Arousal: The First Two Stages
Masters and Johnson referred to the beginning stage of the sexual response cycle as
the excitement phase. This, they suggested, was followed by a stage they referred to as the
plateau phase. Later, however, other researchers have argued convincingly that the plateau
phase was probably an unnecessary delineation and could be more accurately described as an
extension of excitement. Today, the excitement and plateau stages are seen as accounting for a
unified event that might be called “sexual arousal”.
Throughout history, one of the most persistent and widely held beliefs about sexual
response has been that certain chemicals, fragrances, foods, or other substances can produce
feelings of sexual desire and arousal in humans. These substances are called aphrodisiacs.
However, science has yet to provide any evidence that true aphrodisiacs exist; in other words,
aphrodisiacs, no matter what you have heard, are a myth.
During the excitement stage for both sexes, blood begins to circulate into erectile
structures throughout the body, causing them to expand and enlarge, in a process called
vasocongestion. A sex flush or reddening of the skin of the chest and abdomen may occur in
some people, the nipples become erect, breathing becomes heavier and faster, heart rate
increases, and voluntary muscles tense in a process called myotonia. The inner two-thirds of
the vagina continue to expand in a process called tenting. In addition to accommodating the
erect penis (if intercourse occurs), many researchers suspect that tenting creates a place for
semen to pool directly under the cervix helping the sperm to pass through the cervix and into
the uterus on their journey to the fallopian tubes.
Orgasm
The climax of sexual arousal is the orgasm. Women are capable of additional orgasms
with continued stimulation without a refractory period; referred to as multiple orgasms. This
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,is more difficult for most men. Those who have never experienced an orgasm in their lifetime
are referred to as preorgasmic, and although this is relatively uncommon overall, it is more
common among women than men.
For men, orgasm also involves pelvic contractions and also usually includes
ejaculation. The first stage, emission, is when semen builds up in the urethral bulb, creating
the subjective sensation that ejaculation has begun and nothing can stop it. This sensation of
having reached the “point of no return” is called the moment of ejaculatory inevitability
because once the semen has collected in the urethral bulb, the rest of the ejaculatory process is
reflexive and cannot be controlled voluntarily. Immediately after emission, the prostate gland,
urethra, and muscles at the base of the penis contract at the same intervals as with women,
every 0.8 seconds, pushing the semen through the urethra and out of the penis in the second
stage of ejaculation, called expulsion.
Orgasms not only provide great physical and emotional pleasure but may actually
enhance biological and psychological health as well. Focusing on orgasm as the main
objective of lovemaking may detract, rather than enhance, the intimate experience.
The G-Spot Controversy
Researchers have described the G-spot (Grafenberg spot) as a slightly raised area
about the size of a dime that increases in size during sexual stimulation. However, it is
anatomically hard to find so there is no confirmation of the existence of the area yet.
The Female Ejaculation Debate
Some research indicates that female ejaculate may be comprised mostly of a fluid
secreted by two paraurethral glands that lie on either side of the female urethra, known as
Skene’s glands. These glands were once thought to be very small and nonfunctional in
humans. More recent findings suggest that they may be larger, running along the length of the
urethra, and are quite active in some women. Other researchers have suggested, however, that
the fluid secreted by the Skene’s glands may serve a reproductive function by inhibiting the
growth of bacteria that cause urinary tract infections, or UTIs.
Resolution or Post-Arousal
Following excitement and orgasm, the body returns to its prearousal physical state.
Masters and Johnson called this the resolution phase. Typically, this process happens fairly
rapidly following orgasm but takes somewhat longer if orgasm has not occurred.
Questions about Masters and Johnson’s EPOR Model
Various questions have been raised such as (a) Masters and Johnson neglect key
emotional and psychological components of sexuality, especially desire, (b) can any valid
model of sexual response emerge from purely physical reactions without considering
psychological factors, and (c) is the EPOR model was far too androcentric—that is, it relies
too heavily on a one-size-fits-all male sexual response pattern and fails to acknowledge many
fundamental differences in female sexuality?
Too many- or Too Few- Stages
Kaplan and others have suggested that Masters and Johnson omitted a crucial stage in
sexual responding: sexual desire. Roy Levin has proposed that two types of desire are needed
to add this stage accurately: one type of desire that occurs spontaneously and then leads to
sexual excitement, and another that stems from sexual stimulation, leading to excitement.
Alternatives to Masters and Johnson’s Four-Stage Model
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, Kaplan proposed a more fluid model consisting of desire, excitement, and orgasm that
is known as Kaplan’s Three-Stage Model. By contrast, difficulties with sexual desire, called
inhibited or hypoactive sexual desire, are extremely common.
According to Kaplan, among the many factors that may interfere with sexual desire are
stress, fatigue, depression, pain, fear, prescribed medication, recreational drugs, negative past
sexual experiences, power and control issues in a relationship, loss of interest in a partner, low
self-image, and hormonal influences. By adding desire at the beginning of the stages and
streamlining the sexual response cycle, Kaplan’s Three-Stage Model became a popular
alternative approach to Masters and Johnson’s EPOR model for understanding, evaluating,
and treating problems with sexual responding.
Reed’s Erotic Stimulus Pathway Theory
In the 1990s, psychiatrist David Reed took the popular theories of Masters and
Johnson and Kaplan and reinterpreted them from a more psychological and interpersonal
perspective that he called the Erotic Stimulus Pathway Theory. He labelled his four stages
using the more psychological terms seduction, sensations, surrender, and reflection. His first
stage, seduction, corresponds to Kaplan’s desire stage, but in Reed’s model, desire is created
by the behaviours people engage in that they believe will attract another person and make
themselves sexually attractive to others.
The seduction behaviours then move into the sensation phase, when sexual behaviour
and sexual arousal begin (akin to excitement and plateau in the EPOR model). Reed suggests
that during this phase, our heightened senses, fantasy, and imagination combine to feed the
arousal and motivate us to make it continue. Reed conceptualized the peak of sexual arousal,
orgasm, as a giving over of oneself, mentally and physically—a surrender, as he called it—to
the culmination of sexual intimacy. Finally, Reed proposed that the after-orgasm phase is a
time when both partners reflect on the experience and bring meaning to it. The importance of
the reflection phase is that it provides an opportunity for partners to interpret the sexual
encounter in positive or negative terms, and this helps us make choices about whether or not
to engage in the activity again, under the same circumstances or with the same partner.
Janssen and Bancroft’s Dual Control Theory
In 2000, sexuality researchers Erika Janssen and John Bancroft proposed a model to
explain sexual arousal. Janssen and Bancroft theorized that sexual responding is dependent on
two opposing psychological and physiological processes: a sexual excitation system (SES)
and a sexual inhibition (SIS) system. This theory is called the Dual Control Model of Sexual
Response. The dual control model argues that individuals vary in the relative influence of
sexual excitation and sexual inhibition.
A New View of Women’s Sexual Response
In 2000, a new approach to understanding female sexual response was proposed by a
group of women scientists, researchers, and clinicians, which they termed “new view of
women’s sexual problems”. The “new view” research team felt an urgency to differentiate
between male and female sexual response and stated that “women’s accounts do not fit neatly
into the Masters and Johnson model. They went on to discuss what they considered to be the
most serious flaws in applying the traditional response models to women:
1. The incorrect assumption that male and female sexuality are fundamentally the same.
As you may remember from our earlier discussion in this chapter, the four-stage model
assumes many similarities between men’s and women’s responses, so sex therapists
and researchers have tended to assume that their sexual problems must be similar as
well.
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, 2. An exaggerated focus on the physiology of sexual response to the exclusion of the
relationship context in which it occurs. This focus has led to assumptions that sexual
response can be understood and enhanced without regard for the larger issues of the
interpersonal sexual relationship.
3. The minimization of individual differences in sexual response among women. The
working group proposed that women vary more than men do in their sexual responses
and therefore do not fit neatly into the desire-arousal-plateau-orgasm pattern.
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