Evaluating Masters' and Johnson's

Evaluating Masters’ and Johnson’s
Research on Human Sexuality
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Evaluating Masters’ and Johnson’s Research on Human Sexuality
Human sexuality as a subject matter in public articles, films and academic researches usually obtains upheaval of different reactions and comments from the crowd, especially from those who regard sexuality as a sensitive and conservative matter. In the past centuries, sexuality as a topic in scientific studies was considered to be culturally and morally pervasive (Foucault, 1990). In the academic world, research methods with regards to human sexuality and other behavioral practices were contained in the strict objective measures of scientific framework (Morrow, 2008). Today, studies concerning sexuality are being welcomed by both the academic and the social world. Human sexuality is now being studied in a larger framework considering not only its biological component but also the sociological, cultural, and psychological factors affecting it (Fuhrmann and Buhi, 2009).
In this paper, the need to shift from a purely biological and objective research to a more holistic approach on sexual behavior will be shown by evaluating Masters’ and Johnson’s (1966) studies on human sexuality, its phases and functions.
The works of Masters and Johnson (1966) were on the subject of humans’ physiological state during sexual acts. In summary, Masters and Johnson enumerated four progressive phases which they claimed to be generally experienced by humans during the sexual act such as “the excitement phase, the plateau phase, the orgasmic phase and the resolution phase” (Masters and Johnson, 1966, 4). By observing their research participants who were mostly recruited university staff (see Bancroft, 2009), Masters and Johnson proposed in their book Human Sexual Response (1966) the difference between men and women’s sexuality. The sexual response cycle for both sexes is the same but the duration in terms of approaching orgasmic phase differs as men were concluded to be more capable of finishing the cycle faster than women (Masters and Johnson, 1966). The objective of the research is to examine scientifically these differences and its implication in human conjugal relationships (Masters and Johnson, 1966). Their researches became widespread during the time of its publication not only in the scientific societies but also among the lay readers who some of them later made appointments with Masters and Johnson for sexual practice counseling and related therapies (Bancroft, 2009).
However, due to their groundbreaking conclusions about human sexual response cycle, particularly the emphasis on the sexual differences between men and women, some scholars criticize their research by questioning its methodological implications. ...