Human Sexual Inadequacy

The innovative program described in this book revolutionizes the the treatment of sexual dysfunction. During eleven years of daily clinical work, more than five hundred couples have been treated at Masters and Johnson's Reproductive Biology Research Foundation in St. Louis. Here the relationship itself is the patient. The authors stress that there is no uninvolved partner when sex is a problem. Therefore they treat the partners even if only one appears to be sexually dysfunctional. And their therapy techniques have proven successful in 80 percent of all cases treated. The key to this unprecedented record is the role of the dual therapy team. Masters and Johnson have found that it takes both a man and a woman therapist to treat a couple effectively. The dual therapy team acts as a catalyst, encouraging communication between partners when none has existed before. They use psychological and psychological methods of treating impotence, ejaculatory incompetence, premature ejaculation, orgasmic dysfunction in women, vaginismus, and painful intercourse. Basic to all treatment techniques is the premise that attitudes and ignorance rather than any mental or physical illness are responsible for most sexual problems. The two-week rapid therapy program developed by Masters and Johnson includes both counseling and specific instructions for patients to follow in privacy. All results of success or failure reported in Human Sexual Inadequacy Are substantiated by a unique five-year patient follow up program.

William H. Masters was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 27, 1915. He was a member of Alpha Delta Phi, and became a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis. Masters met Johnson in 1957 when he hired her as a research assistant to undertake a comprehensive study of human sexuality. Masters divorced his first wife to marry Johnson in 1971. They divorced two decades later, largely bringing their joint research to an end. Masters died in Tucson, Arizona on February 16, 2001.