Masters and Johnson, the gurus of a sexual revolution.

The 60's of the last century were an era of upheaval, no doubt about it. Rebellious as rarely before, the masses (particularly the young) were opposed to almost everything that took the form of an obligation imposed by the state or its corporate partners. One of their "trademarks" was the work of the sexologist couple Masters and Johnson, clear guides to human sexual response.

Hippiedom, the rock of those times (already far from its first manifestations, such as Elvis Presley or Bill Haley and launched into the fiercest experimentation), hallucinogenic drugs, the rejection of the Vietnam War, the danger of the "cold war", the assassination of John F. Kennedy and other revulsive events, configured a panorama of "before and after".

Sexual behaviour, by the way, was not left out, and had its own revolution. In addition to the enormous relaxation of love-making habits promoted by the youth movements, there was the popularisation of the contraceptive pill. Created in 1956 and which 10 years later had several million users throughout America.

Every revolution has its guides

The couple William Masters y Virginia Johnson have undoubtedly been the most popular sexologists of the past century, due to their research on the human sexual response. His books were bestsellers and had a visibility comparable to that of rock stars. And a similar ability to shock the establishment.

One of the main findings of this study was the discovery of the fundamental role of the clitoris in the female orgasm. Until then, the Freudian idea of the "vaginal orgasm" as the ideal of the female orgasm had predominated. orgasm. Research by Masters and Johnson, the gurus of a revolution in its heyday, showed that vaginal stimulation was not very relevant to female orgasm.

Thus they "valorised" an organ that had been discovered by the anatomist and surgeon Mateo Renaldo Colombo, in 16th century Italy. This earned him inquisitorial persecution, because he said that this appendix had no other use than to provoke pleasure.

In fact, its "discovery", so to speak, is also attributed to two other anatomists of the time. And a historian contemporary to these scientists states that the clitoris has actually been known since the 2nd century.

However, they were William Masters y Virginia Johnson who made it popular, using the mass media of the time. Another of their contributions was to be the fathers of the sex therapies and sexological counselling as we know them today. That is why they are considered "the gurus of the sexual revolution".

"The human sexual response

Such was the title of the book that changed the vision of sex in the West. And as they never stood still, at an advanced age (in 1994) they published another volume that 28 years after the first one gave it another approach. "Heterosexualitygiving his work a vision from a more "affective" point of view and contemplating emotions. Something very different from the very physiological of his most famous work.

At its core, Masters and Johnson's model of sex therapy divided the human sexual response into 4 major phases: excitation phase, plateau phase, orgasmic phase and resolution phase. They were differentiated by the method of Alfred Kinsey, the father of sexual research. This scientist, in the 1940s and 1950s, published reports on human sexual behaviour, based solely on interviews he conducted with dozens of people.

Masters and Johnson did something completely different. To the scandal of many, this couple of gurus of the sexual revolution (she a psychologist, he a gynaecologist) went much further: they took notes of the reactions of the volunteers who agreed to be analysed in the middle of the sexual act. They recorded the times. They attached electrodes to pairs of lovers to better monitor them while they were having sex in a laboratory. They used electrocardiographs, vibrators, cameras, etc.

For these methods (which earned them the nickname of perverts, voyeurs and worse) and for the conclusions they drew, Masters and Johnson were a hinge in the research on sex and its perception in the Western world.

THE LEGACY

In addition to their best known work, "The Human Sexual Response" (1966), these gurus of the sexual revolution published "Human Sexual Incompatibility" (1970), "The Pleasure Bond" (1975), and the aforementioned "Heterosexuality" (1994). All were fundamental works of sexology and major bestsellers.

"I simply want to answer one question: what happens in the body during sex?"said Virginia Johnson. They answered that and also debunked myths, educated and improved people's sex livesall against the prejudices of the time. Not only because of a moral taboo: the scientific community did not consider sex as a very valid or interesting object of study, until they came along. As it was well said, "they took sex out of the bedroom and put it in the laboratory".

Today, when almost all the prejudices have fallen away and so much of the independent escorts as women of all professions give and receive sexual pleasure without major problems, it is good to remember those who did so much to make it possible.

William Masters died in 2001, at the age of 85, and Virginia Johnson in 2013, with 88.