Sexology on the Defensive

By Guy D. Garcia

New questions about the research of the pioneers

It might have been a scene from a TV courtroom drama. At the Sixth World Congress of Sexology in Washington, pioneering Sex Therapists William Masters and Virginia Johnson called a press conference to defend themselves against charges that their sex research is cryptic, slipshod and so vaguely defined that other experts cannot tell how many patients have actually been cured of their sexual woes. Have the two ever revealed their criteria for successful sex therapy? asked a reporter. "Innumerable times," answered an exasperated Masters. Did he ever reveal--sotto voce in a San Francisco bar--that a woman who has one orgasm in five years is cured of anorgasm? "I never said it," he snapped.

The press conference followed the second attack in three years on Masters and Johnson by Psychologist Bernie Zilbergeld. In a 1980 article in Psychology Today, Zilbergeld and Psychologist Michael Evans charged that the phenomenal success rate claimed by sexology's first family is bogus. In the June issue of the sex magazine Forum, Zilbergeld repeats his critique. He also claims that Masters met him in a San Francisco bar and disclosed his lax standard for successfully treating lack of orgasm in females: one orgasm during the two-week intensive therapy treatment at the Masters & Johnson Institute in St. Louis and one more orgasm at any time during the next five years. To record such minimal performance as a success flabbergasted Zilbergeld: "I was so floored that I didn't say anything more."

Questions about the credibility of Masters and Johnson's impressive clinical cures have led some sexologists to view their once hallowed work with increasing skepticism. "The foundations of sex therapy, as designed by Masters and Johnson, are shaken," says Forum Editor Philip Nobile. "The field can no longer look with certainty at the bible. The whole thrust of human sexual inadequacy is in question."

That bible is, of course, Masters and Johnson's Human Sexual Inadequacy. Published in 1970, the book revolutionized the fledgling discipline of sexual therapy with its unprecedented clinical prescriptions for treating frigidity, impotence and premature ejaculation. Faultfinders contend that both Human Sexual Inadequacy and a subsequent Masters and Johnson study of homosexuality are marred by vague language and fail to provide basic criteria and measures to assess the actual number of patient failures and relapses. In cases of low sexual desire, for example, M & J report a "nonfailure" rate of 80% without explaining precisely what that means. By contrast, other sexual therapists report a success rate of less than 50% for the disorder.

Why did it take a decade for experts to find fault with the M & J data? Says Psychiatrist Raul Schiavi, director of the Mount Sinai Hospital Human Sexuality Program in New York City: "Masters was the prototypical godlike figure that people hesitated to challenge. And people were so taken by the initial optimism about sex therapy that they did not actually look at the long-term outcome data as carefully as they should have." M & J's defenders stress the debt that all sex therapists owe to their early efforts. "A midget can see farther than a giant if he's standing on the shoulders of a giant," insists Wardell Pomeroy, academic dean at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. "Masters and Johnson are giants in their field."

Some sexologists fear that the current debate over the Masters and Johnson research will be used by "enemies" to discredit the whole arena of sexual inquiry. "The public wants to find us bad, and that includes some of the media," says Mary Calderone, a noted expert on family planning and sex education. "There is a tendency to snigger. They report that we go around telling each other about our sex lives. We don't do that. None of us are voyeurs. This is a serious business. We've been serious about it for years." Lewis Durham, executive director of the Association of Sexologists in San Francisco, is more worried about his colleagues: "We think sexology is a science, but it remains a debatable issue. Psychologists might look down on sexology and say they can handle sexual problems. And there's also the factor of professional jealousy."

More damaging, perhaps, has been sexology's seeming inability to shake its association with what is widely perceived as pornography. Editor Nobile's interview with Zilbergeld in Forum, which is published by Penthouse, appears along with sexual-aid ads and letters from readers describing their steamy sex fantasies. Another article in the issue argues that the relationship between Batman and Robin is probably homosexual. Nobile considers Masters' claim that Forum is an inappropriate place to debate Zilbergeld's charges to be "the last refuge of a scoundrel. Dr. Masters' work has appeared in Forum as recently as last December, and he offered through his spokesman to be interviewed by Forum for $3,000, and I didn't take him up on it." Johnson last week flatly denied that either she or Masters sought payment for an interview.

If Masters refused to answer his critics in Forum, he was much more forthcoming at the congress. At a panel meeting an hour before the press conference, Masters and Johnson released a printed version, perhaps the first, of criteria for their studies. Among the standards for successful treatment: three erections in every four attempts in cases of impotence; two orgasms in every four tries for anorgasmic women. Said Zilbergeld derisively: "After 13 years and all this pressure, their standards are finally on the record."

--By Guy D. Garcia. Reported by June Morrall/San Francisco and Jack E. White/New York

With reporting by June Morrall, Jack E. White This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.