The Masters & Johnson's Reports: Gender and the Sexual Psychotherapy Practices as of the 1970s

Abstract

This work is the result of an analysis on the Masters & Johnson's Reports, originally published in 1966 (Human Sexual Response) and 1970 (The Human Sexual Inadequacy). The reports investigated, produced in the United States and spread worldwide, were prepared based on a careful, scientific investigation of the physiologic and anatomic responses of male and female sexuality. The authors used the results to formulate techniques and treatment in sexual therapy, which are so far in use by professionals in the clinical area. The Masters & Johnson's reports came with the proposal of filling the medical, physiological and psychological gaps left by the behaviorist statistics research by Alfred Kinsey (1948 and 1953). M&J's work defends openly the heterosexual monogamist marriage, with elaborations mingled with gender questions. From the theoretical tools by Michel Foucault, it is possible to observe that they are examples of the scientia sexualis practice, which tries to institute a truth in sex and of sex. © 2010 by Revista Estudos Feministas.