The story of Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson

[0:00]How is the demand been running? Wonderful. beyond our fondest expectations. When TV was black and white, and attitudes toward sex were too. Their book, human sexual response, detonated rather than just appeared. Masters and Johnson's work was sprung on the world in April of 1966. to a great deal of shock. Dr. Robert Kolodny worked with Masters and Johnson for 30 years. The fact that a physician and his research assistant at that time had been doing laboratory studies of people actually having sex was eye opening. They seem so tame, Dr. Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson, deliberately cooling down a hot topic. If one is looking for pornography, one is going to have a long look. There's nothing of a very exciting nature in this book. Oh, but there was. And to their own story as well. Well, Masters and Johnson dealt with virtually every aspect of human sexuality. Thomas Meyer wrote a biography of Masters and Johnson. Instead of the male being the more powerful of the sexes, what they were clinically showing was that women actually had a greater capacity for sex. They found out that older people can enjoy sex. Meyer's book inspired Masters of Sex on CBS-owned Showtime, which shows in pretty steamy detail how exactly gynecologist Masters began his research in 1954, observing prostitutes. Their studies were conducted in absolute secrecy at Washington University in St. Louis. If I can make the camera small enough, it'll allow the viewer to actually witness it in real time. to discover what happened to a woman during sex. Soon after he hired Johnson, a divorced mother of two, without a college degree, Masters pressured her to have sex with him. Two of us should undertake the research ourselves. As part of their work. She said that she really didn't want to have sex with him, but she didn't want to lose this job. In today's terms, that would be Yes, definitely would be considered sexual harassment. But in 1970, Masters divorced his wife of 29 years and almost immediately married Johnson. By then their names had long been linked professionally, Masters and Johnson, like Proctor and Gamble, a brand. So you would argue that Virginia Johnson deserved the equal billing she got in Masters and Johnson, even though she didn't have a college degree? Absolutely. Her signal contribution to my mind is that she played a very key role in designing the approach to sex therapy that they took. Then the prevailing success rate for treating sexual problems, maybe 15%. They reported an astonishing 80%. The best part, the treatment only took two weeks. They taught couples how to touch one another again, literally how to communicate physically, where it had broken down. Playboy's Hugh Hefner helped bankroll their work. As the national dialogue about sex became more candid, they informed the conversation. You have just done what Masters and Johnson would call a premature ovation. The laughter was good-natured, until the publication of their book on homosexuality in 1979. I assume you consider the key finding, which some people are surprised at and some people seemingly are disagreeing with already, that you can convert people who want to be converted from homosexuality to heterosexuality. Actually, this is true. Masters was ridiculed, his conversion results questioned. Do you, in your heart of hearts, believe that at some level, Dr. Bill Masters exaggerated, fabricated? Oh, at the least exaggerated. And then came the bombshell. The couple who taught other couples about sex was getting a divorce. In 1992, after 21 years of marriage, Masters left Johnson for another woman. Regardless of the tragic way their love story ends, fundamentally, their story is about bringing medicine and science into the discussion of sexuality. Masters died in 2001, Johnson in 2013, their once famous names practically forgotten. These are the names we know now. Premarin vaginal cream treats vaginal changes due to menopause. Ask your doctor about Viagra.