La sensación de que en lo sexual no avanzamos me provoca una gran tristeza e inquietud. El estudio de la sexualidad, que nos rodea en la actualidad, sigue siendo muy necesario. Como también sigue siendo muy necesario el estudio de lxs grandes sexólogxs que aportaron grandes descubrimientos como Masters y Johnson.
Los descubrimientos de Masters y Johnson nos permiten desmitificar falsas creencias como por ej: Es necesario que la gente conozca que no hay una dualidad, Orgasmo Vaginal vs Orgasmo Clitoreideo, estas eran las teorías, hoy más que obsoletas, de Freud, que, desgraciadamente, aún hoy persisten. Teorías que muestran una falsa realidad sobre el orgasmo de la mujer (el orgasmo clitoreideo es inmaduro y el orgasmo vaginal lo tienen las mujeres maduras sexualmente), no existen dos tipos de orgasmo como bien demostraron Masters y Johnson y esta es la información que hay que estudiar, difundir y transmitir”
Trás el éxito de la serie Master of Sex, son muchas las personas que se han interesado por los libros de Masters y Johnson, aunque también son muchas las personas que ni siquiera saben que es una serie basada en hechos reales.
Tengo la suerte de haberme hecho con una primera edición de su primer libro, Human Sexual Response, que fue el resultado de una investigación pionera de casi una década.
Hoy comparto con todxs vosotrxs el Prólogo de este magnífico ejemplar en, versión original, inglés.
In view of the pervicacious gonadal urge in human beings, it is not a little corious that science develops its sole timidity about the pivotal point of the physiology of sex. Perhaps this avoidance… not of the bizarre and the extreme, the abnormal and the diseased, but of the normal usages and medial standards of mankind… perhaps this shyness is begotten by the certainty that such study cannot be freed from the warp of personal experience, the bias of inidividual prejudice, and, above all, from the implication of prurience. and yet a certain mesasure of opprobrium would not be too great a price to pay in order to rid ourselves of many phallic fallagraphic pseudoscience lose foree unless we ourselves issue succinct statistics and physiologic summaries of what we finde to be average and believe to be normal, and unless we offer in place of the prolix mush of much sex literature the few pages necessary for a satnadard of instruction covering sex education. considering the incorrigilbe marriage habit of the race, it is not unreasonable to demand of preventive medicine a placer for a littele section of conjugal hygiene that might do its par to invest with dignity certain processes of love an begetting.
forty years ago Dickinson issued this challegne in the pages of the Journal of the American Medical Association, an for foty years medicine steadfastly has refused to accept the callenge. Sicencie´s “sole timidity” has not gone unnoticed either withini or withoiut the profession. golden has called attention to the esults of medicine´s refusal to accept its responsibility: “Dosse,omatopm pf sexiañ omfpr,atopm bu ñau aitjprotoes jas beem empr,pisñu ñicratove- Tje ñire of pornography serves to emphasize the tremendous need for sexual details of the most basic type”.
If the current tentative approach to sex education is to achieve the widespread popular support it deserves, there must be physilogic fact rather than phallic fallacy to teach. During the past five years, Lief has highlighted repeatedly the consistent refusal of medical schools in this country to instructu in human sexual physiology, and, in doing so, he personally has been responsible for the most sweeping change in medical curriculum developed in the last two decades. Calderone has taken a pioneer step in sex education at both lay and professional levels with the debelopment of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States. Both of these physicians habe given positive support to the growing demad that medicine accept its responsibility and educate its own, young and old alike. as in all things, there must be some way to teach the teachers.
nor have the behavioral sciences failed to note and to reject sciences´s sole timidity. freud was well aware that his hypotheses lacked fundamental physiologic support when he wrote “It should be made quite clear that the uncertainty of our speculation has been greatly increased by the necessity of borrowing from the Science of Biologý. Biology is truly a land of unlimited possibilities. We may expect it to five us the most surprising information and we cannot guess what answers it will return in a few dozen years to the questions we have put to it. They may be a kind which will blow away the whole of our artificial structure of hypothesis.”
If problems in the complex field of human sexual behavior are to be attacked successfully, psychologic theory and sociologic concept must at times finde support in psychologic fact. Without adequate support from basic sexual physiology, much of pshychologic teory will remain theory and much of sociologic concept will remain concept.
There is every evidence from rapidly increasing individual and community-oriented pleas for aid, directe to all counseling resources, that the greatest sinfle cause for family-unit destruction and divorce in this country is a fundamental sexual inadequancy within the marital unit. kirkendall has stated that “if traditional morality no longer serves as a curb, neither does fear of consequence.” How can biologist, behaviorists, theologians, and educators insist in good conscience upon the continued existence of a massive state of ignorance of human sexual response, to the detriment of the well-being of millions of indiciduals? Why must the basics of human sexual physiology create such hig levels of personal discomfort amnog the very men and women who are responsible for guiding our culture? Theere is no man or woman who does not face in his or her lifetime the concerns of sexual tensions. can that one facet of our lives affecting more people in more ways tan any other physiologic esponse other tan those necessary to our very existence, be allowed to continue without benefit of objective, scientific analysis?
Why then must science and scientist continue to be governed by fear-fear of public opinion, fer of social consequence, fear of religious intolerance, fear of political pressure, and , above al, fear of bigotry and prejudice-as much within as without the profesional world?
van de velde and Dickinson first dared to investigate and to write of sexual physiology. yet they were forcet to wair until the twilinght of their professional careers before challenging public and professional opinion. Obviously, the were shocked when, aside from the expected opprobrium and implication of prurience, the biologic and behavioral sciences emphatically, shut the door of investigative objectivity. Possibly history will record as Kinsey´senabled him to put his foor firmly in this door despite counterpressures that would have destroyed a lesser man.
This text represents the first step, a faltering step at best, but al least a first step toward an open door policy. the door of investigative objectivity must not be closed again.
W.H.M.
V.E.J.
ST. Louis
By Galocha