Female Sexuality

In his introduction Marcel Heiman stated that the panel was set up to give psychoanalysts an opportunity to discuss two important publications on female sexuality, Human Sexual Response by W. H. Masters and V. E. Johnson,1 and a paper by Mary Jane Sherfey entitled "The Evolution and Nature of Female Sexuality in Relation to Psychoanalytic Theory."2 He expressed the hope that discussions at this panel meeting would result in the selection of a few topics within this complex subject matter for later study. Heiman pointed out that Masters and Johnson's description of the anatomy and physiology of the "sexual response cycle" is stripped of psychological matters to a degree neither attempted nor felt possible till now. This means that the description of the sexual response is incomplete, certainly for the human female. However, he went on to say that the exact observations of the physiological sexual process are as important as those having to do with salivation, mastication, glutition, and other body functions. He acknowledged that a great many eyebrows have been raised regarding the study of Masters and Johnson. Some objections are quite legitimate—for example, those to the effect that the presence of an experimenter modifies the results of the experiment. He deplored the fact that, on the other hand, many objections were not raised from the scientific point of view, but were made in a tone of moral indignation. Heiman said he could not, of course, predict the extent to which the findings of Masters and Johnson will be validated, but asserted emphatically that sex is a legitimate subject matter for scientific investigation on the anatomic-physiological level as well as on the psychological level. He expressed the belief that this was the first time that a panel had been organized to attempt to close the gap between psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalytic observations on the one hand and basic sciences such as anatomy