The Couples Laboratory and the Penis-Camera: Seeking the Source of Orgasm

Abstract

The laboratory, machines, and research of William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, are discussed. Masters, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Washington University specializing in infertility, began a research project on sexual physiology in the 1950s as a means to understanding better the relationship between sexual behavior and fertility. With the assistance of Johnson and laboratory technicians, Masters conducted research into the anatomy and physiology of human sexual response by using multiple machines in, on, and around the bodies of single subjects or couples. Those machines included a penis-camera, which filmed inside a woman’s vagina as she masturbated with it. Masters and Johnson published their results in academic journals before publishing a compilation of them in Human Sexual Response (1966). Their best-known finding was the four-stage response cycle, outlining the four steps that women’s and men’s bodies went through in a sexual experience: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. The main difference they found between men and women was that women could have multiple orgasms without resolution, and men could not. Masters and Johnson used their machine-based results as evidence to argue that heterosexual married couples could aim for parity in their sexual gratification. However, homosexual men and women, along with radical feminists, read their work as evidence for sexual liberation and satisfaction outside of marriage as well. More conservative commentators objected that Masters and Johnson’s research took the mystery out of sex. Human Sexual Response cemented the importance of using machines in sex research.