Evidence-based sexology: the human sexual response and its dysfunctions

Abstract

Knowledge about the processes that arise during the human sexual response was limited to inaccurate descriptions, the first approaches to the study of sexual response are attributed to Havelock Ellis, Wilhelm Reich and Alfred Kinsey. During the decade of the 1960s, a great interest arose in knowing and contextualizing the understanding of the physiological events that occur during the sexual response. The discoveries and advances on the subject were attributed to the research carried out by William H. Masters and Virginia Johnson, who in 1966 published the book: The human sexual response, describing in detail the sequence of the process. In this work, the systematization of Modifications at the genital and extragenital level in both genders, resulting in a sexual response model that included four phases: arousal, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. There are other functional models that explain the sexual response; Reich model, Bancroft pentaphasic model, Helen Kaplan triphasic model, Basson model and Álzate model. Starting in 1986, Juan Luis Álvarez-Gayou Jurgenson implements two more phases to the original Master and Johnson model; effective sexual stimulation and refractory period, respectively, known as the Hexaphasic Model of the human sexual response, which includes a sequence of neuroendocrine and psychological events that give certainty to the process and to the identification of the alterations that occur in each phase, including a model of intervention that addresses the pharmacological, systemic, psychodynamic and behavioral aspects, constituting a valuable tool for medical and sexological praxis.