THE PIONEERS IN SEXOLOGY

The pioneers in sexology field, the interdisciplinary scientific study of sex has been an integral component to the study of humanity. 

Notable sexologists include Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), a German medical researcher, who opened the world’s first Institute for the study of sexology called (Institute of Sexual Science) in 1919 in Berlin, Germany.

In 1908, Magnus Hirschfeld launched the first specialised publication on sexology, in which Sigmund Freud wrote the article “Hysterical Fantasy and Its Relation to Bisexuality”. He had an almost missionary enthusiasm to bring everyone the “truth” about sexuality.

Although Hirschfeld started out as a political propagandist for homosexuality, he eventually became a significant researcher within human sexuality. From him we can highlight his theory of the third sex, between male and female. He became interested in the study of a wide variety of sexual and erotic needs at a time when the naming of sexual identities was still in the making.

According to Hirschfeld, most people were originally bisexual, but in the course of their natural development, they lost their desire for members of the same sex. These people were heterosexuals who loved members of the opposite sex.

The second category of individuals was constituted by psycho-hermaphrodites. Men and women whose sexual organs had developed normally but whose feeling centers for either sex were imperfect. As a result, these people could love individuals of both sexes.

The third category consisted of those individuals whose sexual organs developed normally. However, his desire was directed at individuals of the same sex. The result was men who loved men and women who loved women.

KINSEY’S CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE FIELD OF SEXOLOGY

After World War II, sexology underwent a resurgence in the United States thanks to the efforts of Alfred C. Kinsey, culminating the reference so-called report in sexology “Kinsey Reports”, “Sexual behaviour in men” of 1948 and “Sexual behaviour in the woman “of 1953. Kinsey meant a new advance in sex research aside from that carried out in medical fields.

The “Kinsey Report” is a reference in sexology. It was conducted by interviewing more than 20,000 men and women with a system of complete confidentiality, who answered an anonymous questionnaire. A database was created that described sexual behaviour in humans. It included behaviours that until then had remained in the strictest privacy, both for the scientific community and for society. Behaviours that until then were considered marginal, or even immoral, such as masturbation, homosexuality and bisexuality or the early age of sexual initiation.

What has had the most impact to date is the “Kinsey Scale”, a 7-degree division of the sexual tendency. Degrees ranging from absolute heterosexuality to complete homosexuality, through five degrees of bisexuality. The study concluded that a large part of the population was bisexual to some degree.

THE MASTERS & JOHNSONS HUMAN SEXUAL RESPONSE

During the second half of the 20th century, another referent of sexuality were gynechologist William H. Masters and his assistant and wife Virginia Johnson were also pioneers in the field in sexology with their studies “Human Sexual Response” in 1966 and “Human Sexual Inadequacy” in 1970, publications that constitute the basis of modern sex therapy.

Masters and Johnson are responsible for the most important study on the physiology of sexual response, or the set of physical and hormonal changes that human beings experience when faced with sexual stimulation. They divided them into four phases, which they named: arousal, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. To do this, they evaluated in their laboratory hundreds of responses, both psychological and physiological, of men and women to sexual stimulation. One of the most prominent conclusions of one of his studies is that women were less prone to sexual failure than men.