Playboy Interview: Masters and Johnson

Twenty-five years ago, the sexual revolution began in America. In St. Louis, a gynecologist by the name of Dr. William Howell Masters received permission from the Washington University School of Medicine to begin a series of pioneering experiments into what was discreetly called "reproductive biology." In Chicago, a young man named Hugh Marston Hefner began to publish Playboy, a magazine that was discreetly labeled "Entertainment for Men." Sex would never again be the same.

Masters was soon joined in the laboratory by psychologist Virginia Eshelman Johnson. Over the next two decades, the two observed 1076 volunteers masturbate, fondle each other, perform oral sex, anal sex and coitus. They analyzed a multitude of orgasms (they stopped counting at over 14,000), treated some 3500 couples for sexual problems and wrote six books that changed the way we think about sex. It has been said that prior to Masters and Johnson, most of us thought the clitoris was a monument in Greece, if we thought about such things at all. Playboy first interviewed the two researchers in May 1968--two years after the publication of "Human Sexual Response," the landmark volume that defined for the first time the physiology of lovemaking. That interview was the beginning of a fruitful association. Over the next ten years, the Playboy Foundation contributed $300,250 to the Masters and Johnson Institute (or, as it was known in those days, the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation). It seemed fitting that we celebrate our silver anniversary together with an update interview.

It was about time. In April, the nation's first family of sex research (Masters and Johnson were married in 1971) published the third volume of the epic inquiry into human sexual response. Like its predecessors, "Homosexuality in Perspective" precipitated a storm of controversy. The New York Times published a front-page story proclaiming "New Treatment For Homosexuals." Newspapers across the country picked up the story, if not the book. Masters and Johnson had taken 67 homosexual men and women who had expressed a desire to function as heterosexuals and after two weeks of intensive therapy had managed to affect a change in all but about 35 percent of the patients. Time and Newsweek ran major stories. The couple appeared on special two-part shows with both Phil Donahue and Dick Cavett.

The controversy, and the resulting publicity, sold a lot of newspapers but did little to advance our knowledge of sex. We had to turn to the source. Upon reading "Homosexuality in Perspective," we discovered that Masters and Johnson's latest book is as much about heterosexuality as homosexuality. It is a gold mine of information about how we learn to be lovers, about the subtlety (or lack of subtlety) in the American way of sex. Like other Masters and Johnson books, it borders on the unreadable, written in a turgid Latinate prose designed to ward off potential charges of sensationalism. Playboy decided to send Senior Staff Writer James R. Petersen to interview the dynamic duo.

For the past six and a half years, Petersen has been the Playboy Advisor, answering all reasonable questions--from fashion, food and drink, stereo and sports cars to dating dilemmas, taste and etiquette, and, of course, kinky sex. This is his report:

"When people ask me what my qualifications were to become the Playboy Advisor, one of America's most read sex experts, I say quite simply: I went to boy-scout camp. My motto is, Be prepared. I have read everything there is to read about sex, in case it ever happens to me. After six and a half years, I have discovered that there are three kinds of sex articles: 'What We Know to Be True,' 'What We Think We Know to Be True' and 'What We Wish Were True.' The first kind were written by Masters and Johnson. The second kind are written by people who have read Masters and Johnson. The third kind are written by people who work for Penthouse. Sex is an area in which everyone has an opinion or an old wives' tale, or a war story, but in which there is almost no legitimate research. Masters was the first person in the history of Western man to take sex into the laboratory, to conduct controlled experiments, to objectively observe the human sex act. He is--above all--a scientist. He knows more about sex than any person in the world and is not afraid to admit what he does not know. In discussion, he limits himself to facts--time and again, I watched him mentally reviewing his findings, deciding whether or not they supported a statement. He refused to theorize, to speculate, to opine. His comments were brief and to the point. At times, I was acutely frustrated--every reporter wants a quotable anecdote to spark an interview. Eventually, my respect for his position grew. You don't want your sex experts showing up on 'Hollywood Squares.' Masters had the courage and the resolve to say, 'No comment.'

"Virginia Johnson is the flip side of Masters: For 23 years, she has been a partner in the research, with equal responsibility. She has had to edit her natural loquaciousness. She is perfectly willing to show anger, to comment on the state of her profession.

"In this research team, Masters is the close-up lens and Johnson the wide-angle. Her commentaries are an endless series of connections and qualifications. She does not want to be misinterpreted or taken out of context. She does not want to add to America's sexual confusion by creating new stereotypes or new pressures to perform. She is wary of the media, tired of their being viewed as the Ma and Pa Kettle of Sex Research.

"The interview took place over several weekends at the Masters and Johnson Institute. The two were seldom in the room at the same time. Johnson would leave to take care of some scheduling disaster. Masters would excuse himself to conduct a physical examination of a patient. When the two were together, I had the sense of watching longtime business partners. They completed sentences for each other, used the same language in each other's absence and always seemed aware of the entity 'Masters and Johnson.' There is great respect, and love, between them.

"If Masters confessed that the major fringe benefit of his research had been coming into contact with a woman as intelligent as Johnson, Johnson said that Masters had been an early liberated man who refused to let her take the traditional woman's role of support troop. Their life together had been a great intellectual adventure. Since much of that adventure had taken place in the lab, watching research subjects in the act of love, I decided to start the interview there."

[Q] Playboy: We'll be discussing in some detail your new study, Homosexuality in Perspective, which has as much to say about the sex lives of heterosexuals as about those of homosexuals. But first let's sketch in some background. As America's foremost sex researchers, you've been the focus of a lot of controversy because of your work and methods over the past 25 years. Just how do you study human sexuality in a laboratory?

[A] Johnson: Well, we haven't actually observed any subjects since 1970, and the information in our studies is based on research conducted at least ten years ago. We had a series of laboratories over the years. Some of the equipment was changed, but the basic routine didn't vary: First we had small rooms outfitted as soundproof offices, which were located in places at the hospital or the institute that would protect the anonymity of our subjects. That's where we would first talk with them, make them relax and trust us.

[A] We would introduce them to the "environment"--the places where sexual activity would take place--gradually. We would explain the particular activity we would want to study, then leave them alone in the room. We would then close the door and go away for a designated period of time--perhaps an hour--and leave them to do what they were being asked to do later, all by themselves, without observation. They would just let themselves out when they were through.

[Q] Playboy: Did you watch from behind a one-way mirror?

[A] Johnson: In one of the environments at the medical center, there was a mirror, but we rarely used it. We found it didn't make a difference. We would show people where the mirror was and how they could lock it from the inside so there was no chance of our tricking them. But we found that what was more important was getting them to trust us and being honest with them. If they had thought we might be behind a one-way mirror, it would have been just as distracting as if we really had been there.

[A] After an initial session alone, we introduced a distraction factor: We would sit and work in an adjacent room, with the door ajar, after giving the couple our assurance that we would neither observe them nor enter their room. They thus became accustomed to having other people around. Next, we would tell them that occasionally we might enter their room and for them to simply continue with their activity. Finally, we would start our actual observations, but only when the people were comfortable with our occasional entrances and exits.

[Q] Playboy: How many observers were there at any one time?

[A] Johnson: Always at least two of us. As the couple became more comfortable, we would introduce the physiologists who monitored the EKG or the polygraph or who ran the cameras for the department of illustration. You must understand that we weren't there to watch sexual activity as a psychologist, or even a casual observer, might. We were trying to define what occurred in certain parts of the body. If we were measuring, say, lubrication at certain intervals, we might not even stay in the room the whole time. On other occasions, we would sit and stare for an hour at a four-inch-square patch of skin, trying to determine significant color changes.

[Q] Playboy: There's one question that you must have been asked over and over again: How did you prevent your personal emotions from intruding as you watched hundreds of people having sex? Didn't you ever feel astonishment or awe?

[A] Johnson: I never felt awe in a laboratory setting. I have one kind of commitment in my personal life, when I have the freedom to feel awe, but a vastly different commitment to maintain professional objectivity in a research environment.

[A] Masters: There's an old secret to this work: You have to achieve as much objectivity as you can and then maintain it. It has never been a problem for us. But there are many people who shouldn't work in this field simply because they cannot separate personal and professional requirements.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever consider lowering your overhead and moving the entire operation to Plato's Retreat?

[A] Johnson: Plato's Retreat?

[Q] Playboy: It's a public-sex place in New York City where you can see several hundred couples making love in front of you. Or perhaps watch several acres of skin undergoing significant color changes.

[A] Johnson: Oh, yes, I know of the place. It might make a nice busman's holiday for a sex researcher, but we like our own recreation to be private.

[Q] Playboy: OK. Thirteen years after the publication of Human Sexual Response, here you are, embroiled in yet more controversy. Why should heterosexuals be interested in the findings in your latest book--Homosexuality in Perspective? What is there to learn?

[A] Masters: The book is as much about how heterosexuals make love as about how homosexuals make love. That's why I added In Perspective to the title.

[Q] Playboy: In a nutshell, what were the most interesting findings in your study?

[A] Masters: One of the most striking features of the findings was the fact that homosexuals and heterosexuals demonstrated so little difference in ability to respond to noncoital sexual stimulation. Homosexuals and heterosexuals, male or female, were able to respond to masturbation, partner manipulation or fellatio/ cunnilingus. We observed many hundreds of orgasm cycles, and less than one percent of the time was there failure to achieve orgasm.

[Q] Playboy: That may be what you find most interesting, but Time magazine, in its cover story on your book, drew the conclusion that gays are better in bed. Your findings seem to suggest that if we make love like homosexuals, our sex lives will improve.

[A] Masters: Let's put it this way: The greatest mistake is to say that you make love like anybody. Because that isn't what you're doing. You're doing what you want to do, and, it's hoped, what your partner would like to enjoy. If a partner enjoys it with you, it's a partnership. If the partner merely makes herself available, it's servicing, no matter what the technique. We have little concern with technique. We are most concerned with attitude, with the ability to communicate. In presenting our findings on homosexuality, we want to show the wealth of variation that is possible, so that it doesn't become threatening. Inevitably, we are a little anxious about those things we don't understand or aren't familiar with.

[Q] Playboy: Nonetheless, your book suggests that homosexuals of both sexes know more about their partners' needs and showed more interest in variety, which translates--to us--as saying they're better at sex than heterosexuals.

[A] Johnson: Well, they work at it a little more. They invest more of themselves in sex; therefore, they probably get a little more back. They don't have more orgasms, mind you. They just seem more involved. But I want to stress that this is not strictly homosexual. The same thing could be learned from heterosexual couples who communicate well.

[Q] Playboy: Let's examine your findings one at a time. Were there differences in the way homosexual couples and heterosexual couples stimulated each other in heavy petting?

[A] Masters: The homosexual couples took their time. Generally, they preferred a deliberately slow approach to the entire stimulative process. They moved deliberately through excitement to linger at the plateau stage. Each step was something to be appreciated. The approach to stimulation generally was free-flowing rather than directive in character, and usually less forceful. In contrast, the heterosexuals created the impression that they were in it just to get the job done, to produce the orgasm in the shortest time possible.

[Q] Playboy: What differences did you notice in the ways heterosexuals and homosexuals masturbate?

[A] Masters: The primary differences related to gender and not to sexual preference.

[Q] Playboy: How did women masturbate?

[A] Masters: Approximately four out of five of the women masturbated while lying on their backs. They were generally less direct in their approach to the clitoris than were men in approaching the penis. Some women touched their breasts, others stroked the lower abdomen or the thighs. Most women tended to touch the glans directly only at the onset of the clitoral stimulation, if at all. But as sexual tensions elevated, they moved from the glans to the stimulation of the clitoral shaft. When they got tired or lost the thread of their response, they slowed the pace. Far more often than men, women deliberately varied the rate and pressure of genital stroking, at times even stopping and starting clitoral manipulation--as though teasing themselves.

[A] Johnson: Or re-establishing contact with their level of excitement.

[Q] Playboy: How did men masturbate?

[A] Masters: Men moved immediately to the penis. Approximately three out of five masturbated while lying on their backs; the rest did so standing, sitting or lying face down. The force and rapidity of the stroking increased as excitement increased. For the most part, men concentrated on the shaft. At orgasm, most men slowed, or even stopped stroking. In contrast, the women usually kept stroking or massaging through orgasm.

[Q] Playboy: How do you account for the differences?

[A] Johnson: They not only were accommodating their anatomy, they also were doing what made it individually work for them. We are dealing with two different groups--in this case, men and women. Each has grown up with a different level of permission, not only to masturbate but to express themselves sexually. Through subliminal messages or deliberate teachings, most men in our culture are given permission to be sexual, to explore and experiment with their sexuality. This makes possible less guiltridden masturbation, or at least a more practical, more pragmatic approach to sexual activity and to masturbation per se.

[Q] Playboy: And the women were more tentative?

[A] Johnson: Not really, but they were drawing upon a wider range of erotic stimuli and fulfilling a more complex set of requirements to achieve orgasm. Generally, this "complexity" evolved earlier in their lives as they coped with the "Can I?" or "Can't I?" the "Should I?" or "Shouldn't I?" right-or-wrong feelings about sex. Of course, there were women who apparently were troubled very little, if at all, by this cultural baggage and they tended to recognize and accept their sexual needs in a fashion generally attributed to men.

[A] Masters: Women actually tended to be more sexually responsive, moving from one orgasmic experience to the next, while the men almost universally had one orgasmic experience during the session and that was it.

[Q] Playboy: How did gay women act in bed?

[A] Masters: There was holding, kissing and caressing of the entire body area before any specific approach was made to the breasts or genitals. Only six out of 76 of the lesbians we studied moved directly to breast stimulation and only one woman approached her partner's genitals at the onset of sexplay.

[Q] Playboy: That slight delay sounds like the pattern women developed during masturbation. Or is that a coincidence?

[A] Masters: I think one of the truly fascinating things we observed was that when there was not good communication between a couple, they tended to approach each other as if they were masturbating themselves. The male would approach the female in the same way that he approached himself, where that technique might not be of any real interest to her at all. It is a variation of the golden rule: They did unto others as they did unto themselves.

[A] Johnson: Men, having heard that the clitoris is the first line of stimulation, would often move directly to clitoral fingering. It is rare in our experience, in the lab or in the subjective histories that women have given, that they can tolerate direct, intense stimulation of the clitoral glans. One reason is its acute sensitivity. Manipulation can very rapidly become irritating. The best way I've ever heard it described was "too much sensation too soon." It is the rare woman, in stimulating herself, or given the opportunity to direct the stimulation as she wishes, who will want the clitoral glans directly stimulated. Those we have found in the laboratory who do stimulate the clitoral glans use a lubricant that tends to diminish sensitivity.

[Q] Playboy: Obviously, a woman would know that about another woman. But how does a man progress if his partner doesn't tell him?

[A] Johnson: Let's return to what Bill said. They do unto others as they have done unto themselves, and that's not always what a woman can respond to. Quite often the male uses his fingers as he would a penis. If the lesbians used penetration with their fingers, they seldom went beyond the outer third of the vagina, which, in terms of nerve endings, is the most sensitive area. Husbands frequently used their fingers as a substitute penis, even though their wives merely tolerated this approach, especially when approached this way before they were really aroused. One third of the wives we questioned said that they felt deep manual penetration was more exciting to their husbands than to them. Lesbian women, on the other hand, exhibited a general willingness to find out what their partners like and appreciate.

[A] Masters: They weren't communicating: "Now! Do this!" and "Now! Do that!" But when a suggestion seemed indicated, the individual made it. I think it's important to note, though, that communication was not always verbal. There was a good deal of communication by touch or by body language. Little was said. Just the suggestion, made by moving the hand, or moving the body toward the partner, or away.

[Q] Playboy: Once a lesbian woman turned to breast play, did she go about it any differently than a man would?

[A] Masters: Breast play was significantly prolonged. The entire breast was consistently stimulated both manually and orally, with particular attention focused on the nipples. And almost scrupulous care seemed to be taken by the stimulator to spend an equal amount of time with each breast. Sometimes as much as ten minutes was devoted to the breasts before genital play was introduced. I've seen many a heterosexual couple engage in and complete intercourse in the time a lesbian couple would still be focusing on the breasts.

[A] Johnson: It's a matter of orchestration.

[A] Masters: Exactly.

[Q] Playboy: Were there other differences?

[A] Masters: It was our impression that when a woman played with another woman's breasts, her intention was to provide pleasure for the other woman. She usually responded to any verbal or nonverbal communication of pleasure and made a specific effort to enhance the recipient's experience of the moment. The lesbian couple tended to move slowly toward higher levels of pleasure. In contrast, men involved in stimulating a woman's breasts seemed wrapped up in what they were doing and were relatively unaware of their partner's pleasure, or lack of it.

[A] Johnson: Usually, all female research subjects lubricated well during generalized touching. In contrast, the heterosexual woman lubricated only moderately when breast play was emphasized. Almost one third of the heterosexual women reported that the breasts were not a particularly important erogenous zone, that they seemed much more important to the husbands. One should not draw conclusions from this about the erotic potential of breast play for women, however. When and with how much sensitivity it is carried out are crucial to its acceptance by a particular woman. Certain women reported that breast play more than anything else seemed to elicit old ghosts of sexual guilt. I've heard similar histories and comments from breast-feeding mothers.

[Q] Playboy: It appears that the ideal of the American male as the strong, silent type who doesn't ask questions of his partner has obvious disadvantages.

[A] Johnson: There were several clear examples that lack of knowledge about a partner caused distress. The lesbian women were well aware that at times in the menstrual cycle a woman's breasts or nipples may be tender--even painful--to touch. A number of times, we saw lesbians ask their partners if their approach caused discomfort. Throughout the years in the laboratory, no husband ever raised that question.

[Q] Playboy: We're not sure that they would know enough to even ask.

[A] Johnson: That was several years ago. Perhaps they would know enough now and realize that not every woman feels that tenderness. We are so used to information being overemphasized or distorted. Some man who reads this interview will say to his partner, "I read that women get sensitive during menstruation. What do you mean, you don't? Is there something wrong with you? It says here you should feel tenderness." The instant authority.

[Q] Playboy: Did homosexual men engage in breast play?

[A] Masters: Gay men tended to approach each other the same way that gay women did--they took their time, teased each other, and the initial approaches usually involved the whole body. Also, they spent a significant amount of time in breast play. Only 11 of the 42 committed couples failed to include some form of nipple stimulation in sexual interchange.

[Q] Playboy: Did any heterosexual women stimulate their husbands' nipples?

[A] Masters: Only about three or four out of 100 married men were the recipients of such attention.

[Q] Playboy: Is there any explanation for the apparent discrepancy? Why don't women know enough to stimulate their male partners?

[A] Johnson: For the same reasons a man is reluctant to find out about women from women. I think it's the cultural message that begins during adolescence: The woman is the object of sex, man is the subject and the predicate. No one, including the man himself, calls attention to man's breasts or any other part of his anatomy as an erogenous zone. The very idea may embarrass both of them.

[Q] Playboy: We can see a whole generation of young girls trying to get to second base with their partners. Did you find that gay men followed the same pattern as gay women in touching?

[A] Masters: Very close: Teasing techniques were employed frequently. The stimulating partner would watch the recipient and would alter his activity to try to prolong the excitement without bringing him to orgasm. Those men occasionally reached extremely high levels of sexual pleasure. In fact, we noticed that prolonged teasing--by a male or a female partner--could produce significant changes in the size of the erection. There was a noticeable increase in diameter of the shaft and in the size of the glans. A man's erection is not a static thing.

[Q] Playboy: Would you elaborate on that?

[A] Masters: We've noticed that a man with sexual problems tends to view his erection as a single-shot, single-caliber entity. He thinks that if he gets an erection, he must maintain it at all times. Unfortunately, he can't. The erection comes and goes and comes and goes in any continuous sexual interchange. There's a great variation in the degree of engorgement of the penis. It can go down to loss of erection completely and back. It can be partial loss of erection. It can be minimal loss of fullness of erection. You sometimes think the penis is as full as it's going to be and then, with continued play, there's even more engorgement. I'm never sure from observing the penis when it is fully engorged, because it always seems to be able to engorge a little more.

[Q] Playboy: How much variation have you observed?

[A] Masters: I would estimate that a full erection is still capable of another five or ten percent increase in size.

[Q] Playboy: That reminds us of what Adam supposedly said to Eve: "Stand back. I don't know how big this thing gets." You have said that dysfunctional men are handicapped by their expectations of what the erection is or isn't capable of. Can you be more specific?

[A] Masters: Many a man observing the normal ebb and flow of the erection becomes extremely anxious and distracts himself. He clutches and loses the rest of the erection, when all he was doing was observing the natural physiologic variation.

[Q] Playboy: Did the teasing seem based upon what you call same-sex empathy?

[A] Masters: Yes, the men said that they stimulated their partners the way they themselves would like to be stimulated. For example, many homosexual men frequently made selective approaches to the frenulum of the penis--a most sensitive area on the dorsal surface just beneath the coronal ridge. They would bring their homosexual partners to the point of orgasm, then allow them to return to lower levels of sexual excitation. Heterosexual women rarely approached the penile frenulum when they were stimulating the penis. And wives, when they detected increasing sexual excitement, usually rushed their male partners through to orgasm. On the few occasions when a woman deliberately teased her male partner with long-continued play periods, the heterosexual male's level of sexual response was quite equal to that of the homosexual male.

[Q] Playboy: Was there a similar lack of communication about genital touching?

[A] Masters: Many of the men said they wished that their wives had grasped the penis tighter, used more force or stroked more rapidly.

[A] Johnson: The wives reported that they were concerned about stroking too vigorously and hurting the men. Only three of the men had ever given their partners specific directions about preferred ways for penile stimulation.

[Q] Playboy: Were there important differences in oral-sex techniques between homosexuals and heterosexuals?

[A] Masters: The only real differences stemmed from the way lesbians and heterosexual men performed cunnilingus. The women were more inventive. They started with the breasts, moved to the lower abdomen and thighs and then skirted the vagina before focusing on the clitoris. The more variation they came up with, the higher the level of excitement for the recipient. But again, the most interesting thing was the degree of the stimulator's own involvement--some of the women performing cunnilingus on their lesbian partners also experienced orgasm during the act.

[Q] Playboy: Did the husbands show the same variety or intensity of approach?

[A] Masters: The heterosexual men rarely had devoted significant time to learning or improving their cunnilingal technique. They saw cunnilingus as a means to an end. Men proved themselves sexually in intercourse. In contrast, their wives often expressed the feeling that fellatio was a challenge, a technique that they should become expert in if they were to conduct themselves as sexually effective women.

[Q] Playboy: Did gays have the same notion of expertise as heterosexual women?

[A] Masters: There was one difference--when it came to swallowing the ejaculate. Most homosexual males did swallow the ejaculate, while most heterosexual women did not.

[Q] Playboy: So far, we've been discussing the patterns of committed couples. You also studied a small group of singles, men and women who were previously strangers to each other, who met in the lab for this study. Was their behavior noticeably different?

[A] Masters: All the assigned couples were very direct and goal oriented in their sexual interaction. Both men and women moved right to the genitals. Males did not engage in nipple play. There was almost no teasing. In short, they provided little of the "care" we noticed in committed couples.

[Q] Playboy: Did the assigned couples have more difficulty making love than the committed couples?

[A] Masters: Yes, assigned couples had almost twice the failure rate of committed couples when it came to intercourse.

[Q] Playboy: Looking for Mr. Goodlab. Is there an explanation for the failure rate?

[A] Masters: Intercourse was just mutual-masturbation exercise for the assigned couples. The males were experienced and had good ejaculatory control, so the females usually had time to respond orgasmically--but not always. With each partner concentrating on his or her own needs, there was not much communication or cooperation between strangers. They were not all that involved.

[Q] Playboy: Is there any single trait or pattern that characterized intercourse?

[A] Masters: The great American formula for sex is: A kiss on the lips, a hand on the breasts and a dive for the pelvis.

[A] Johnson: In terms of sexual behavior, although we seem to be a people who look for cookie cutters to shape ourselves after someone whose life is purported to be the sexual ultimate, when the moment arrives, we generally fall back on our early peer-group lessons. There is too little individual confidence to be sexually creative. Even in the lab environment, sexually sophisticated people sometimes fell back on the old familiar scenario.

[Q] Playboy: Which was?

[A] Masters: Some 80 percent of the men made love in the missionary position. They mounted the female as soon as they had an erection and as soon as they thought the partner was ready. Usually, they decided that she was ready when she was obviously lubricated.

[Q] Playboy: Is that incorrect?

[A] Johnson: Well, in theory, you might say it is true. Vaginal lubrication for the woman is essentially a counterpart of erection in the male. Ah, but it doesn't stop there. I'm really going to tread in water I normally try to avoid, because we generally represent only on a same-sex basis--but I'm going to suggest the very real possibility that a man with an erection is not always a man who is ready for intercourse. Is that reasonable?

[Q] Playboy: Certainly.

[A] Johnson: OK, so that's the point being made here. The woman may demonstrate physiological or anatomical readiness. But it's a mistake to assume that because she is physically prepared, she has also arrived at the point of emotional or even spiritual receptivity. So often the man makes this assumption, penetrates and immediately sets the pattern of thrusting. She is even further distracted by the task of accommodating to the depth, frequency and the force of the man's thrusting action before she ever establishes awareness of her own responsiveness. Although she ultimately may be orgasmic, her level of subjective involvement may remain low and her sense of satisfaction minimal. There is a high risk of hostility toward the partner developing in such a situation.

[A] Masters: The man set the thrusting pattern in almost every act of intercourse we observed where the woman was supine.

[A] Johnson: There's a drumbeat out there that continues to beat a single message: The male is the sex expert. As a woman, you must always follow his lead or you will destroy him. Add, "Intercourse is the be-all and end-all of sexual expression" and you have the number-one basis for sexual boredom and disappointment in a relationship.

[Q] Playboy: One of the sacred tenets of marriage manuals is that if you engage in enough foreplay, everything will be all right in the end. Did you find that to be so?

[A] Masters: I don't even like the term fore-play. It sounds like something less than important or meaningful. Dividing sexual response into stages is a necessity for the scientific observer, but sex partners who do the same thing make the human experience a goal-oriented performance. In so doing, a woman's capacity for spontaneous responsivity especially is victimized.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Masters: We found that when we requested a woman and a man in the lab to engage in, let's say, genital touching or cunnilingus, the woman tended to lubricate freely, in direct proportion to the amount of stimulation she was receiving. However, when on another occasion we asked the same couple to engage in intercourse and, as part of the total process, the man engaged in the same activities--genital touching or cunnilingus--the woman frequently did not lubricate as freely, in direct proportion to the amount of stimulation she was receiving.

[A] Johnson: Because she or they interpreted the request as specifically oriented to the goal of orgasmic attainment and the other pleasurable activities became merely "foreplay."

[Q] Playboy: You seem to be saying that if you want to see a woman live up to her natural potential, don't have intercourse. Do everything but.

[A] Johnson: No, just don't have intercourse to the exclusion of undemanding, enjoyable intimacy.

[A] Masters: If you really want to learn something about her, you must not say, "I want to learn about you, therefore you will perform for me." If you really want to learn about a woman, as a man, don't go to her with the idea that you are always going to have intercourse.

[Q] Playboy: Should you make sure that she knows the evening has been set aside for casual exploration?

[A] Masters: Better that you not limit your personal research to just one evening. Take more time--one exposure probably won't provide all the answers to the range of any woman's sexual potential. But if you and she can discover together that you can move to each other, that you both can let the chips fall where they may--then you get a great deal more information. Tonight have cunnilingus, tomorrow have intercourse. Another night you might just masturbate each other or you might do all of these things. You don't prohibit a particular activity. You just say tonight I would like to try this--or this--or that.

[A] Johnson: Even that sounds too programed for me. Why not just agree to explore and improvise together over a period of time? No predetermined goals. No demands.

[Q] Playboy: Is it possible that the homosexual couples you observed--because they were not under any pressure to have intercourse--were better able to enjoy themselves?

[A] Masters: Certainly. They give more of themselves to these activities--masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus--because it is the only thing they have. Even when we told heterosexual women that cunnilingus was the point of the evening, they were so unused to it as a pleasurable end in itself that they initially did not get particularly involved.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any explanation as to why heterosexuals seemed so unimaginative? For example, "the kiss on the lips, hand on the breast, dive for the pelvis" may be boring--but we have it on good authority that "a kiss on the lips, a hand on the breast, a dive for the pelvis, plus a piece of ice" can be astonishing.

[A] Masters: I think heterosexual couples have too many social protocols that they feel they should follow. I'm sure there are many homosexual protocols as well, but they certainly aren't depicted by the general media as heterosexual guidelines are. So, as I see it, if you don't have a scenario, you tend to improvise more.

[Q] Playboy: You say that homosexuals do not have social protocols. But most people have a notion that in any given gay relationship, one partner assumes the male role and one partner assumes the female role. Is that a cultural stereotype?

[A] Masters: That's a cultural misconception. Of course, we observed such behavior in the lab. We observed almost everything in the lab. But if you're asking me if it is the routine or the established pattern, the answer is no. I think we saw it in fewer than one out of 20 couples.

[Q] Playboy: Why are some members of the homosexual community so critical of your study?

[A] Johnson: Because the press plucked out only one aspect of our therapy program--the clinical work that dealt with homosexuals who were dissatisfied with being homosexuals and are motivated to ask for conversion or reversion to hetero-sexuality--and played it up on the front pages: "Startling results--Masters and Johnson claim amazing success in converting gays to heterosexuality." I dread the moment when people who are determined to rid the world of anyone who does not conform to their idea of "normal" decide to use this to demand programs of conversion. Among other things, the news stories ignored the equally important clinical help that is offered to homosexuals who are dysfunctional in their homosexual relationships and wish therapeutic assistance.

[Q] Playboy: But that's the point some gay critics have made. On one hand, you seem to be offering hope of some kind of "cure" for an abnormal condition and, on the other, you seem to be saying that homosexuality is OK and you offer help in making them become better homosexuals. What is your position?

[A] Johnson: Would the critics have us impose the terms under which a person can or cannot obtain help for sexual distress? We are not in the business of determining what is right or wrong in matters of individual choice. Incidentally, it's hardly news that there are homosexuals who do not want to be homosexual, as well as those who are happy with their preference and just want health-care assistance that is available, presumably, to everyone. The focus of our clinical work is the same for everyone: the functional well-being of the person, in terms of his or her chosen environment. Our patients express their needs and distress, demonstrate motivation and its appropriateness to their resources, and in the clinical sense, we respond.

[Q] Playboy: But haven't you, intentionally or not, given a lot of people the impression you can cure homosexuality?

[A] Masters: We have never treated homosexuality as a disease or defined it to a patient as a handicap.

[Q] Playboy: There is currently a great debate raging as to the causes of homosexuality. Would you summarize the state of the art in analysis?

[A] Masters: Well, I can't give you a capsule summary, because different people have different ideas. In the first place--and this is not in order of primary importance--some people feel that homosexuality is genetically determined, that it is an unidentified function of the genes. Just as some babies are born with blond hair, some babies are born with a predisposition toward homosexuality. Other people feel that it is the result of hormone imbalance while the fetus is in the uterus, or a variation in hormone concentration at some point in life. There's been some animal work to bear this out, and some work with humans where a major disturbance in the hormone imbalance apparently led to a higher instance of homosexuality. But that was followed up in such a small number of individuals that to apply it to the general public is stretching it further than I want to go.

[A] We happen to think we learn our sexual orientation as a result of our environment. We are born sexual beings, genetically male and female. Is homosexuality learned? The current answer is yes, just as heterosexuality is learned behavior. But if I knew all the answers to your question, I'd write another book and it would be an immediate best seller. Some people insist that homosexual orientation is the result of having a dominant mother or is learned from one's peers in school. I tried to present a selection of case histories in the book that would cast doubt on the notion that preference is genetically determined or that it is the result of any one type of experience or any one influence.

[Q] Playboy: California State Senator John V. Briggs has recently sponsored legislation that would prevent homosexuals from getting teaching positions or from joining professions in which they might come into contact with young children. He seems to think that since homosexuality is learned, we should protect our children from it. Do you agree?

[A] Masters: It is obvious that Briggs must be convinced that he knows the cause of homosexuality; otherwise, he surely wouldn't be sponsoring such legislation. But we freely admit that we don't know the etiology of homosexuality. Actually, we are waiting for Briggs to publish his research findings. Certainly, I can't conceive of any state legislature's trying to disenfranchise at least ten percent of the total male and female population unless it knew for sure that such legislation would resolve the problem.

[Q] Playboy: If he doesn't publish it?

[A] Masters: I guess that's his privilege, too. But I shall continue to be curious as to how he learned something nobody else knows. And what his sources are. I hope he will share them with the rest of us.

[Q] Playboy: There are psychiatrists who say that you are doing your patients a disservice. According to them, a homosexual who is impotent is suffering the sexual dysfunction because he is guilty about his homosexuality. What's your response to that?

[A] Masters: Let's put it this way: That's a fair claim for those health-care professionals who firmly believe that anyone who is homosexually oriented is, indeed, abnormal--suffering from a mental disorder. Much of the criticism has been exaggerated, although occasionally it has contained pearls. However, if it is suggested that every homosexual who is sexually dysfunctional is dissatisfied with his sexual preference, that I can't accept.

[A] Johnson: Anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, can become sexually dysfunctional on the basis of misinformation or a multitude of social, emotional and attitudinal distresses that initially are unrelated to sex.

[A] Masters: When we started treating heterosexuals for sexual dysfunction in 1959, critics said that we were just treating symptoms and that it was necessary first to treat the presumed underlying conflict. Yet we showed that you could treat the dysfunction per se, within the context of a relationship, and the realities influencing the person's life at the time of therapy, with a relatively low failure rate. When we started treating sexually dysfunctional homosexuals nine years later, in 1968, we again were breaking new ground. We had reasonably clear case histories--both male and female--in which the person was unable to function effectively sexually and yet had no desire to be other than homosexual. The sexual dysfunction was reversed in a number of instances.

[Q] Playboy: It took you 14 years to write this book--were you waiting for the right time to release it?

[A] Masters: We had a basic rule at the institute that we would not make a major report of individual research programs without a minimum of ten years' work behind us. Human Sexual Response, the book on heterosexual physiology, and Human Sexual Inadequacy, the book on heterosexual dysfunction, each represented 11 years of work. Homosexuality in Perspective represents 14 years of work. It took a little longer, because it attempts to combine elements of both the physiology of homosexual dysfunction and the treatment of dysfunction and dissatisfaction.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you choose to combine them?

[A] Masters: We had always intended to study the physiology of homosexual behavior. At first we thought we would report on what we found, just as we had in Human Sexual Response. But we discovered that from a physiological point of view, there was no difference between homosexual response and heterosexual response. Once that was established, there certainly was no indication for a major report.

[A] By that time, we had also learned that we had made a mistake in withholding psychological data in the earlier books. After publishing Human Sexual Response, we were accused of being nothing but "mechanics." One of the outstanding critics of the work pointed out that the word love isn't even mentioned in the book--which is true. What that critic very carefully didn't say is that the word love probably had never been mentioned in any other physiology textbook, either.

[A] Johnson: When the world learned that we were working with people in the laboratory, they immediately developed this image of mad scientists, or technicians. I desperately do not want either of us to come through as making sex mechanical, in or out of the laboratory. The people for whom sex works very well are not mechanical people.

[Q] Playboy: How did you recruit subjects?

[A] Masters: Fundamentally, by word of mouth. There were a few homosexual couples from St. Louis who worked with us first. When they were genuinely convinced that ours was an objective approach, they helped us contact other people in different parts of the country and encouraged them to participate.

[Q] Playboy: Did you get any help from national gay organizations?

[A] Masters: When we started the homosexual-physiology work, in 1964, the national organizations were just fledgling--or were keeping a low profile. We also avoided the gay-bar society, because at that time it did not provide stable relationships. We needed committed couples, not singles.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Masters: We wanted to compare homosexual physiology with heterosexual physiology, and most of the subjects in our original heterosexual research were married couples. We needed "committed homosexual couples" in order to have a basis for comparison; but in the Sixties, most such couples were in the closet. However, we also studied a small group of singles, who met assigned partners in the lab.

[Q] Playboy: Would you describe the subjects you found? Were they exhibitionists or just curious?

[A] Johnson: Most of the research subjects had an extraordinary interest in learning about their own sexuality. They tended to trust the protected conditions of a research environment. Frequently, they mentioned that someone for whom they cared had had a distressful sexual experience. They felt that this distress had been related to lack of knowledge, lack of concern, lack of compassion. They often expressed what appeared to be a genuine hope that our research would help mankind. Some, as you suggest, were just plain curious.

[Q] Playboy: Other than willingness to help, did the subjects have to have any particular characteristics?

[A] Masters: All of the subjects had to be able to respond to self-stimulation, mutual stimulation and either fellatio or cunnilingus. In addition, the heterosexual subjects had to be able to respond effectively during intercourse. We would discuss this by telephone as part of the preliminary screening technique, before we took their histories or introduced them to the lab environment.

[Q] Playboy: Did you measure ability to respond by their capacity for orgasm?

[A] Masters: Yes, although we certainly acknowledge that sexual proficiency is not synonymous with orgasmic responsiveness. Sexual gratification, sexual maturity and sexual interest are phenomena that must be considered somewhat apart from orgasmic attainment--or orgasmic failure--alone. But our ability to document orgasm as a precise, definable physiological event made it a useful form of measurement.

[Q] Playboy: How did your subjects perform during intercourse?

[A] Masters: Couples failed to achieve orgasm only three percent of the time. And that small failure rate was still four times greater than the failure rate for masturbation, fellatio/cunnilingus or partner manipulation.

[Q] Playboy: But isn't that an astonishingly successful rate? It has been suggested that your study is biased in favor of sexual superstars, as if you were writing a book on running after interviewing the top five finishers in the Boston Marathon.

[A] Masters: I think that's very fair criticism, but if you want to know what happens, you generally will have to work with those it happens to. We have been studying people who were selected for functional ability in a laboratory setting. We haven't the vaguest idea of what happens at night, in the dark, under the covers, in the privacy of people's homes.

[A] Johnson: There is another reason for studying functional people. To ask an individual who has any history of sexual problems to perform in a lab would be unthinkable. The pressure and potential for trauma could be enormous.

[Q] Playboy: Even the superstars, however, did not do as well during intercourse as they did when experiencing the other forms of stimulation--masturbation, manipulation or oral sex. Does that suggest that intercourse is vastly overrated as a form of pleasure?

[A] Masters: If you think about it, the three types of stimulation you just mentioned occur in a my-turn/your-turn situation, whether practiced by homosexuals or by heterosexuals. In masturbation, one is setting one's own pace, and one is obviously acutely aware of one's own needs and levels of response. Preferred techniques of stimulation are used as desired. When one is being manipulated by a partner, it's still a my-turn/your-turn situation, which, with good communication, can work very well. The same thing is true for fellatio/cunnilingus. One partner can focus his or her entire attention on the other and get some sense of what works--through good communication, same-sex empathy or because of familiarity with your response pattern. But in intercourse, we have two people trying to function simultaneously. Inevitably, that is more difficult. There is more opportunity for failure when two people are involved in routine sexual interaction than when responding on a my-turn/your-turn basis. The catch is that the culture says that intercourse is the be-all and end-all of sexual expression.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't those forms of stimulation subject to the charge of "servicing" one's partner rather than finding sex mutually pleasurable?

[A] Masters: Well, the answer to that is yes. But intercourse can be mere service, too. It is still true in this country, let alone in the rest of the world. Intercourse is a service. There are infinitely more times that the female is used for service than the female and male are together as full partners in intercourse. That is true wherever you have a double-standard society. And that's most of the world.

[Q] Playboy: Did you intend in Homosexuality in Perspective to make those other forms of stimulation more attractive?

[A] Masters: The book is not in any sense designed to be a cookbook or marriage manual. What it does is report what actually happens, as we perceive or measure it in the lab.

[A] Johnson: We think it does indicate the many dimensions of erotic stimulation that are available, and we believe that people also have a right to be informed. But right now it seems that many people are terribly vulnerable because of the proselytizing that goes on in the name of ultimate sex.

[Q] Playboy: Meaning intercourse. In spite of the drawbacks you list, many of us prefer intercourse. Why should we change approaches?

[A] Masters: I think if we limit ourselves--in any area of interest--to one specific focus, we tend to become restless, unsatisfied and bored over X amount of time. When there is only one right way to do anything, originality is neutralized. Variations can only be so much. Americans rely too much on intercourse.

[A] Perhaps I could compare lovemaking to tennis. It's like trying to build a game around just a forehand. If someone serves to your backhand, you're in desperate trouble. You can run around it only so far. If it's a good serve, you can't run around it. I'm not saying that the forehand isn't of value. What I'm suggesting is that if there is only one official way to get pleasure, and you don't vary it, then you have people trying to cope with boredom by varying partners. If they vary partners lots of times, they're still doing the same thing. One, two, three, kick. The variances come in the fact that the grass seems a little greener in the neighbor's back yard. And it's a little greener until you've been there two or three times, and then you have to go somewhere else. We suggest that in order to keep the grass green in one's own back yard, there's great advantage in varying the way the lawn is fed.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps the one notion that most heterosexuals have about gays centers on anal sex. It is generally assumed that it is the gay equivalent to intercourse. Did you observe that behavior in the lab?

[A] Masters: For the homosexual men we were working with, it wasn't the primary means of sexual release, although anal sex was frequently experienced.

[Q] Playboy: But you studied it, didn't you?

[A] Masters: With a few subjects: five homosexual and seven heterosexual couples.

[Q] Playboy: What did you find?

[A] Masters: We asked each of the homosexual and heterosexual couples to engage in anal intercourse on two occasions. We noticed an interesting physiological response. Upon initial penetration, there was discomfort, for some partners approximately half the time, but then the sphincter would relax. After full penetration was obtained, there was no further evidence of discomfort. Once thrusting began, the sphincter would reverse its relaxation pattern and constrict tightly around the shaft of the penis.

[Q] Playboy: Did the partners find anal intercourse pleasurable?

[A] Masters: The female recipients reached orgasmic levels of sexual excitation on 11 of 14 occasions; there were three instances of multiorgasmic experience. The male recipients did not respond in a similar fashion. In ten episodes, there were only two instances of male orgasm, and in both of those instances, the men were masturbating while they were mounted rectally.

[Q] Playboy: That finding runs against the common myth--it reverses the stereotype that anal sex is the sole right of gays. Women enjoy it, too?

[A] Johnson: Some women enjoy it.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps that finding will permit heterosexuals to experiment a bit more, just as the Kinsey Report effectively gave people permission to try other forms of sexual behavior.

[A] Masters: The answer is, who knows? Our role is not to give people permission. It is to present reasonably reliable sex information to the best of our ability, first to the health-care professions and second to the general public. What people do with that information is obviously up to them; many will reject it completely.

[A] Johnson: Because that is the response that may be appropriate either to the requirements of their anatomy or to the lifestyle and values with which they are effective and secure.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of such books as The Joy of Sex? Do they provide useful information?

[A] Johnson: The need for that type of book obviously is real, but I think it is one more reflection of people's lack of confidence in their own ability to explore and share sexual feelings spontaneously with someone in a similar frame of mind. Most of all, the popularity of such books reflects the failure of a society and the parents in that society to prepare their children for the joy of sex.

[Q] Playboy: We've noticed that although you've said that gays tended to spend more time on certain forms of lovemaking, you never specified the actual times involved. Why?

[A] Masters: Because the minute that we say "the average time is such and such," people are going to start measuring themselves against a presumed standard, and then sex becomes more mechanical and less spontaneous. For example, when we published Human Sexual Response, we purposefully did not include information about the average size of the penis. To some degree, we hoped that by not doing so, we would neutralize the concept that penis size is crucial to sexual response.

[Q] Playboy: If you helped defuse the myth that penis size counted, you did so not because you failed to include measurements but because you pointed out that the female physiology generally can accommodate to the difference. Would you reprise that information?

[A] Masters: Well, it has to do with the female's facility to respond vaginally. The vagina acts in a very interesting way from the time the woman is mounted--presuming there is enough time. Once the female is fully penetrated, the vagina tends to overexpand--regardless of the size of the penis. Then, in a minute and a half to three minutes, with a continuing thrusting action and presuming the male hasn't already ejaculated, then the vagina begins to contract. It eventually will fit snugly around the penis, regardless of its size. Now, there are certain exceptions to this--the micropenis that is pathologically small or the occasional huge penis that causes a great deal of pain. But these are rare. In routine coitus, the vagina adjusts itself to the penis regardless of size and constricts itself around it, presuming the woman is given time to do this.

[Q] Playboy: But if she doesn't have time, then size might count.

[A] Masters: Right. But the difference, of course, depends on whether or not the woman believes there is a difference. The adjustment is involuntary. The woman doesn't know she is doing it, so it may well be that it is like anything else: If I believe white is white, it is going to be white the rest of my life, no matter what.

[A] Johnson: It is the same reason women buy one soap over another soap product. For ages, they have been conditioned to believe that the well-endowed man has it all over the less-endowed man. If she believes it, then it can matter, of course.

[Q] Playboy: All right. You've given the explanation. Shouldn't that suffice? Why not release the figures? You say your intention is to provide information. Why not release the penis-size figures and let the chips fall where they may?

[A] Masters: I agree with you. But if we had published the size, the rest of the information wouldn't have made any difference. Everybody would have been using a measuring stick. That way lies impotence.

[Q] Playboy: We suspect that everyone who would already has. Certainly, you could have given the extremes. Say, the male penis is between a quarter of an inch and four yards long.

[A] Johnson:[Laughs] I like that range.

[A] Masters: Sure we could, but we decided not to measure it at all. No, that isn't true. Measurements were done, but we decided not to publicize them at all. Some damn fools have publicized measurements somewhere.

[Q] Playboy: But you've argued that fact is the only way to fight biases, prejudices and the like. Yet, in this instance, you are not scientists.

[A] Johnson: It's just Bill's stance and I understand it. But I think the point is perfectly well made as you've just stated it. It isn't scientific. We have more of a commitment to prevention than to the pure science of information. I genuinely love information. I like to know anything and everything I can possibly know about something. I'm not particularly emotional about that information, but once you see the incredible susceptibility of people to being told what they should do and what will happen if they don't--then you cannot help but develop a sense of protectiveness.

[Q] Playboy: To go back to the earlier analogy of running, people who jog are not intimidated by the racers who run fourminute miles. Why are you so sure that in the sexual arena people will feel threatened by information?

[A] Masters: There's a hell of a difference between what you do when you're running and what you do with your penis--or don't do with it. And you can be just as objective as you want about being unable to run the four-minute mile, but if someone says to you you should routinely complete intercourse in ten or fifteen minutes, then millions of people are going to try.

[A] Johnson: This is a very vulnerable area. If we are going to be allowed to create a science of human sexuality, then I think we have an obligation to make people understand that there are tremendous variables within the natural range. It's a new field. You cannot open it up and presume immediate total comprehension.

[Q] Playboy: Let's take this opportunity to review the basics. You stated that during intercourse, the clitoris receives indirect stimulation. There are many women who say that may be true for others but not for them. What do you say?

[A] Johnson: The clitoris does not require direct stimulation or contact. The total body is a potentially erotic "organ." It is very possible to choose a completely asexual part of the anatomy and develop it as the source of sexual stimulation to orgasm. There can be back-of-the-neck orgasms, bottom-of-the-foot orgasms and palm-of-the-hand orgasms.

[Q] Playboy: Our readers may be acquainted with that last kind.

[A] Johnson: I grew up in the country, where little kids learn that it's very sexy to play with the palm of a hand. It has to do with nerve endings, in terms of the sensuous susceptibility of certain parts of the anatomy over others. Similarly, the clitoris is a unique organ, insofar as we know it has no other purpose than receiving or transmitting sexual pleasure. It is certainly very responsive to stimulation, and it is possible for a woman to develop that response to a level of dependency, because she knows it works and she doesn't know that anything else works. Those women who have not responded in intercourse after having developed real orgasmic effectiveness by stimulation of the clitoris, either by self or by partner--but who expected direct transposition of this successful response pattern to intercourse--can be very disappointed or disillusioned about their presumed "inadequacy."

[Q] Playboy: Let's get this straight. First, there was the debate about clitoral versus vaginal orgasms. Your notion is that all orgasms are clitoral orgasms, or rather, all orgasms are total-body orgasms. All this can get a little confusing.

[A] Johnson: Freud postulated that if a woman could not be stimulated to orgasm by intercourse, she was sexually immature. He carried it rather far. This is not to indict Freudian concepts in general. His incredible genius was getting answers from women at a time when it was highly inappropriate for women to express themselves sexually. Freud also was a man whose interpretations must have had a lot to do with his personal life. To make matters more difficult, his perceptions and his theories have often been taken out of context by those who treasure a single concept and defend it as the only way--the Word.

[Q] Playboy: We just read an abstract from the Third International Congress of Medical Sexology in which a sexologist claims there are clitoral, vaginal and uterine orgasms.

[A] Johnson: Oh, Saint Christopher! The amount of garbage in this field, and the number of people without credibility! Of course, the uterus responds with orgasm--if the woman responding has a uterus. Every other part of her system responds in some fashion as well. The variables are in degree of involvement and intensity and in subjective perception. There aren't a dozen people in this field who know what they are talking about in terms of the nature of human sexual response. No. Make that 24.

[A] Masters: You're stretching it.

[A] Johnson: There are many people out there in the world who have made their own sexual self-discoveries who have infinitely better sexual insights than so many people who presumably are researching the subject.

[Q] Playboy: We've heard of doctors who claim that they can cure an inorgasmic woman by surgically realigning the clitoris. Is there any basis to that claim?

[A] Johnson: Don't ask me!

[Q] Playboy: We're asking you.

[A] Johnson: I have such a violent response to that that I don't even want to publicize it. For God's sake, this is where I become a radical feminist in every sense of the word. By the way, I'm aware of the strategy of ignoring something inconsequential until it dies a natural death, but I find it difficult to invoke with this issue. That a man determines what is wrong with female anatomical design and a few silly women say "It's so wonderful" sets us back 50 years. My husband will not criticize other doctors, but as a woman, I cannot sit still and give you a benign smile when you ask me that question. If someone, as an individual, wants surgical modification of anatomy that is neither malformed nor diseased, fine. But for someone to promote a male-oriented, male-originated concept of what women can or cannot do without this surgical intervention--it's taking gross advantage of the lay person's vulnerability.

[Q] Playboy: In Human Sexual Response, you suggest that women are potentially multiorgasmic. Yet according to The Hite Report, as many as 70 percent of the women in America are unable to reach orgasm during intercourse. How do you respond to such findings?

[A] Johnson: Such reports are very mixed blessings. There are a lot of simple truths that can be distorted by poor interpretation of such reports. They do not reveal the capacity or potential for woman's sexual response. They only reveal the prevailing condition of generations of women taught to deny their sexual feelings and needs or to pretend they didn't exist. That is the disservice of such reports. On a more positive side, they do let a woman know she is not alone in her inability to reach orgasm with intercourse. Unfortunately, they strike a note of discouragement at the same time by failing to indicate the realistic expectations she can have for reconditioning a pattern of inorgasmia with intercourse. I'm especially concerned for the woman who might ultimately have discovered this for herself had she not accepted the discouraging interpretations as fact.

[Q] Playboy: There are some women who experience something that they aren't certain is an orgasm. How do you treat that situation in therapy?

[A] Johnson: It's possible that a woman is orgasmic and doesn't know it, but I don't think you can make this judgment for or against such an occurrence unless you have a good definitive history from her about what she thinks orgasm is. One way to further evaluate what she thinks it is is to find out how she came to think about it. Did she read about orgasm? Did somebody tell her? From where did she draw her conclusions? I usually move away from direct questioning at that point and suggest that we talk about her sexual feelings and how they began. We start with the early memory of genital feelings, physical feelings. Then we move in general terms to the circumstances under which they occurred, and then I try to establish her sense of intensity of feelings. Then I try to place these things in an update of her present relationship or present opportunities to respond to some kind of sexual stimulation. Then I want to find out in that whole course of history-taking the kinds of things that she considers stimulating and exciting, romanticized or technical or mechanical or whatever. I want to know where she's at, what her own base lines are to the extent that she can be disarmed into discovering them for herself. Then with that matrix of knowing how she thinks of herself--sensually in other settings at other times--we go into the circumstance she's describing: "I don't know whether I'm orgasmic or not." Finally, we can kind of measure one against the other.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't that something new lovers should be doing with each other, anyway?

[A] Johnson: I think it's a part of the excitement of sharing, but most people are so far away from looking at it that way. They think it's an admission of inadequacy or an admission of previous activity that's going to engender jealousy. Couples just don't get into that kind of talking. They personalize. They put clothes and faces and times and places on these activities. I don't think that is necessary and I think in the present state of the art of forming social or sexual relationships, there is always the factor of jealousy--the emotional tugs and pulls of knowing somebody else has shared something with the person of their choice.

[Q] Playboy: What are the essential ingredients of an orgasm?

[A] Johnson: It is a blend--almost always an unequal blend--of three things. An orgasm represents the body's physical drive to express itself sexually, its system responding sexually. We have to presume a drive. I think it's rather well established that such a drive exists. Second, there are psychological and emotional requirements that we learn to develop and fulfill. And, third, there are the influences of the social environment. There are dozens of other ways to label those three general areas of sources of response, but all of them have to be present to some degree. It is possible to pre-empt the requirements of two of them by overemphasizing one. The physical, the component that is the entree into the physical drive, is the actual tactile friction that one can apply. The perfect example of this is the woman who is fully satisfied, satiated sexually, who is disinterested in the time and the place and the circumstance, who couldn't care less at that moment whether she is orgasmic or not--who, as an exercise in achievement or because she has nothing else to do, will pick up a vibrator and will in the face of no interest, no drive, no nothing, produce orgasm. Women all over the world are proving this in the privacy of their own rooms, all the time.

[Q] Playboy: Would you give an example of one of the other sources?

[A] Johnson: Let's take a woman of poor physical well-being, who has a low sex drive for physical reasons or psychological reasons--other demands that are more important--whatever. Give that person an extraordinary evening with a person of choice in a remarkable set of circumstances and you will find that the requirements that are being poorly met by drive or by physical friction are preempted by what you would have to say are the psychosocial components.

[Q] Playboy: You sound like you're describing the ideal fantasy evening.

[A] Johnson: In the past 20 years, we've observed several women who were able to reach orgasm through fantasy alone--utilizing none of the other components.

[Q] Playboy: One of the more controversial chapters of Homosexuality in Perspective was your research on fantasy. Dr. John Money, for example, charges that "You can't understand the sexuality of anyone on earth if you don't understand their erotic imagination. Masters and Johnson do not appear to be attuned to that part of people's lives. They measure what can be measured with instruments. You have to build up an extraordinary amount of trust before you can get people to unlock their secret, dangerous images. The content of erotic imagery in homosexuals is different from that in heterosexuals." How did you get the fantasy material?

[A] Masters: To me, the most important thing in the chapter on fantasy is how we gathered the information. We certainly agree with Money that it takes trust, understanding and more than one interview to collect fantasy material that is sufficiently reliable for interpretation. It has been our experience that people tend to tell the interviewer or therapist first what they want you to know. Second, they tell you what they think you want to know. It's rarely before the third level of interviewing that they tell you how it really is. During the period the fantasy material was being collected--1957 to 1970--three types of interviews were conducted with each subject from the homosexual, heterosexual and ambisexual study groups. First, each subject was interviewed by the research team and then interviewed separately, in depth, by each member of the team on a one-to-one basis. The interviews were open-ended and continued over a two-to-three month time interval until their completion.

[Q] Playboy: Why is that important?

[A] Masters: Until very recently, most of the available information we have had on fantasies has come from the published clinical findings of psychologists or psychiatrists. Consequently, most of our beliefs about fantasy tend to be based on the fantasies of persons undergoing treatment for sexual and other problems. It seems to me that if one is going to make use of fantasy material in psychotherapy--as a factor in diagnosis, in the study of process or as a means of evaluating progress--it should be done on a conceptual basis that includes a study of fantasies of men and women who do not have need for health care. If the researcher or clinician questions a sexually dysfunctional male about his fantasies, for instance, what is the basis for determining the significance of his answer? There is a great advantage in having information on the fantasy patterns of sexually functional people, especially when one is trying to arrive at an effective diagnosis for treatment of those men and women who are sexually dysfunctional.

[Q] Playboy: For years, psychiatrists have used fantasies to diagnose latent homosexuality. If a man dreams about having sex with another man, he's automatically labeled deviate and subject to therapy. Are you challenging that?

[A] Masters: We recorded the five most frequent fantasies for homosexual men, homosexual women, heterosexual men and heterosexual women. The fantasy that was most frequently reported by all of our groups was that of forced sex--the imposition of will, either physical or psychological. The only other fantasy that was common to all four groups was that of cross preference. Homosexual men frequently reported fantasizing about having sex with women, and lesbians similarly reported fantasies about sex with men. Heterosexual women also described fantasies of making love with other women on numerous occasions, and heterosexual men frequently had fantasies about sex with other men.

[Q] Playboy: What does all this mean?

[A] Masters: There are innumerable possible interpretations of this data that will be reported later. Suffice it to say that at present, this information should make us take a long look at a very popular diagnosis--"latent homosexuality." We have been asked to believe that if a male patient describes regularly recurrent fantasies about sex with other men, he can be labeled a latent homosexual. But consider this: When a homosexual man reports recurrent fantasies of sex with a woman, he has not been labeled a latent heterosexual. What it really means is the diagnosis of latent homosexuality may not have as secure a connotation as we had previously been led to believe.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned that forced sexual encounters were fantasized by all four groups. Were there any differences between, let's say, how a homosexual male and a heterosexual male fantasized about forced sex?

[A] Masters: In all but one instance, the homosexual man was the rapist. The victims--who were restrained and forced into sexual service via whippings or beatings--were just as likely to be women as men. In contrast, the heterosexual men commonly imagined that they were the ones being forced to have sex--usually by a group of unidentified women rather than by a single woman. However, when they imagined that they were the rapist, the victim was usually identified as a specific woman.

[Q] Playboy: How did the fantasies of lesbians differ from those of heterosexuals?

[A] Masters: The forced-sex fantasy was the most frequently reported fantasy for lesbians. Their fantasies might cast them as either victim or rapist. Indeed, they often switched roles back and forth in the same fantasy. Usually, the rape did not involve physical abuse, but rather, some form of psychosocial pressure. Heterosexual women usually imagined they were being "taken" while an unidentified male or males rendered them helpless. But there was little specific sadism or masochism in their fantasies.

[Q] Playboy: What was the most popular fantasy for heterosexuals?

[A] Masters: The replacement of one's committed or current sexual partner. For a man, it could be someone he knew or a public personality. In his fantasy, she was always willing.

[Q] Playboy: That makes sense. Why waste a fantasy on someone who is unwilling?

[A] Masters: Even more often, a heterosexual woman imagined engaging in intercourse with a specific man--a Robert Redford. Others, like heterosexual men, perceived someone they actually knew.

[A] Like the heterosexual males, homosexual men seldom fantasized their committed or current sexual partners. Their most popular fantasy consisted of images of anatomy--penis, buttocks, shoulders, facial characteristics. Their fourth and fifth favorite fantasies consisted of idyllic encounters with unknown men or groupsex experiences. Only the lesbian women regularly reported fantasies about their established sexual partners.

[Q] Playboy: How do you account for this pattern? Is it natural for us to lust in our hearts over strangers?

[A] Johnson: I have no scientific basis for answering your question--only personal opinion. I think sexual fantasy involving a stranger says one of two things: either that so little has been put into the real relationship--when there is a real one-- or the partner is so unappealing that "newness" of a fantasized stranger is used simply to provide erotic stimulation. Or it may be saying something about inability to trust intimacy. Holding back from real closeness, not really getting involved out of fear of embarrassment--feelings that can't be handled. Does the stranger represent less risk of being misunderstood and rejected? Or less responsibility? Whatever, fantasy ultimately provides a substitute for those needs that are never communicated and therefore remain unfulfilled by the partner. Lesbians in our research group more often were more open in allowing their needs to be recognized by their partners. They evidently built their sexual relationships on a realistic basis that more nearly represented what they wanted and needed. Therefore, they fantasized about their partners. Of course, recognizing the eroticism of reality is not just a lesbian's prerogative. Anyone can discover it if he tries.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that most of us are not able to recognize our own desires?

[A] Johnson: I'm saying that the difference between romantic desires and erotic necessities of sexual responsivity is something that very few people comprehend. We've had 30 therapists at our institute for training and it has been something less than easy to get them to conceptualize and clinically identify each patient's sexual needs as unique. Of course, most of us initially must work through walls of mythical, cultural givens before we finally understand something of the nature of sexual response. Put simplistically, the concept is this: There are people who live sex and people who perform sex. Those who live it function effectively because their actions reflect their emotional and psychological needs. Those who perform sex are trying to cope with any number of things that keep them from expressing themselves authentically. They are contending with barriers that prevent them from plugging into their set of unique needs and preferences to which their natural response is keyed. Effective treatment of sexual dysfunction often depends upon whether or not such a person can be helped to identify that source of desire and response within and communicate it to his partner in shared activity. It isn't enough just to say "I want" or "I need." That assumes the partner is going to make it happen. It's only fair to add that another crucial factor in treatment is getting partners to understand and accept the other's primary needs.

[Q] Playboy: OK, given these ingredients, how would you suggest that a couple deal personally with the problem of the nonorgasmic female?

[A] Masters: Seek professional help if trying together has reached an apparent stalemate. Your best friend or your partner may be your worst therapist. In the past few years, we've been getting a lot of cases of sexual aversion. This is a reaction to sexual activity, or more often to the anticipation of sexual activity of phobic proportion. It may manifest itself as an incredible level of anxiety, dread or revulsion--even as vomiting, diarrhea, palpitation or even momentary loss of consciousness.

[Q] Playboy: What are the causes of such violent aversion?

[A] Johnson: Many things. With some frequency, we are encountering women who develop sexual aversion when their partner decides to teach them how to have an orgasm during intercourse. Mind you, I am talking of a woman who has had no background of sexual disinterest or dysfunction but who enters a relationship where she and her partner become interrested in her orgasmic response. She has not been consistently orgasmic or with the desired frequency, and her partner feels that she could--or should--be doing better. They start working on this and sooner or later their efforts become just that--work. Not infrequently, the male partner considers her response to be the measure of his own sexual effectiveness. The removal of the pleasure aspect eventually leaves her simply afraid, to the point at which she has become nauseated or otherwise aversive at the mere thought of sex.

[Q] Playboy: No doubt her lover ends each session with the question "Did you come?"

[A] Masters: If you want to improve sex, that is not the right time to start such a discussion.

[Q] Playboy: When should you start it?

[A] Johnson: You choose a time when you're not in bed together and you ask, "What do you enjoy? What is your experience like? What do you feel? Because I care. Because I really want to know. For all the right reasons, curiosity or just wanting to be a part of your experience. I want to enjoy it, to appreciate it."

[A] Also, if you want someone to tell you what has happened to him or her--at the moment it has happened--learn to ask in advance. Say that it means something to you. Not "Did you?" For heaven's sake, if she didn't, think where that leaves her: She has to admit inadequacy or know the possible letdown she may bring a partner who depends on sexual achievement.

[Q] Playboy: Should a woman announce her orgasm?

[A] Johnson: Like any experience that you acknowledge to another human being, it gains another dimension. If you smell some marvelous fragrance, it certainly reinforces that experience if someone else shares it.

[Q] Playboy: Obviously, if a woman thinks that lovemaking is going to be followed by a quiz--with no chance for a make-up exam--she's going to get nervous. You mention sexual fakery in your new book. Would you explain the term?

[A] Masters: Sexual fakery is an escape hatch, a pattern of behavior that offers the illusion of self-protection. The heterosexual woman who fakes an orgasm would be an instance of sexual fakery. Another example is the homosexual man who is impotent, and therefore always plays the role of the stimulator and insists that he has no interest in receiving pleasure. Usually, this sexual fakery is identified. In the long range, it is rarely anything but deleterious to the individual who practices it.

[Q] Playboy: How does a homosexual woman practice sexual fakery?

[A] Masters: In the same way the heterosexual woman does, pretending orgasm. We gave an example in the text of a woman who had engaged in homosexual behavior for ten or twelve years without achieving orgasmic release. Her partners began to complain that it took such a long time for her to respond, so finally she started faking an orgasm.

[Q] Playboy: Does that make it more difficult for her to reach a genuine climax?

[A] Masters: It can. A woman who pretends an orgasm generally tends to do so to remove herself as quickly as possible from the sexual interaction because she presumes there's nothing in it for her. From then on, her chances of ultimately achieving orgasm are significantly diminished, for lack of opportunity and perhaps because she ceases to become involved sensually.

[Q] Playboy: Have you read the foreward to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Mother Night, in which he warns: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be"?

[A] Masters: That's a good understanding of the problem. People who are sexual fakers begin to identify with the image they project. It makes it quite difficult to get to the root of the problem. Once they admit the fakery not only to the therapist but to their committed partner, if one exists, the therapist is well along the road toward helping them. But not until then.

[Q] Playboy: In Homosexuality in Perspective, you also say that you try to get patients to confront their fears of performance. Short of therapy, what can the individual do about performance fear?

[A] Masters: Well, it helps a little bit to understand it. And it helps even more if the partner understands as well. Beyond that, there's not much anybody can do without turning to professional help. Fear of performance is a devastating thing, and effective therapy usually is needed to neutralize it.

[Q] Playboy: Would you summarize your therapeutic approach?

[A] Masters: Yes, but we don't want to appear to be cookbooking it. First of all, we find that facing your fear of performance helps in a therapeutic contest. We explain to patients that having once experienced such fear, they are going to have to live with the possibility of its emerging at any time for the rest of their lives. You must not tell someone that things are going to work splendidly at all times in the future, because after working effectively for two or three years, the fear may return and the man or woman is devastated. It's much better to be psychologically prepared for realities of sexual response and learn to deal with them.

[Q] Playboy: You make it sound as if there's a sexually troubled person hiding behind every bush. How many people, by your estimate, have sexual problems?

[A] Masters: Our guess is that at least half of the' couples in America have sexual problems. That estimate is based on impressions from our clinical work and an examination of legal literature--divorce cases and the like.

[Q] Playboy: Did any of your subjects try to fake an orgasm in the lab?

[A] Masters: On occasion, but it was very easy to tell. The polygraph needle always gave them away.

[Q] Playboy: What are the kinds of problems you handle in therapy?

[A] Masters: As I said earlier, in the past few years we've been seeing more in the way of sexual aversion. We're also seeing more cases of male impotence and various female anorgasmic states.

[Q] Playboy: When you wrote Human Sexual Inadequacy, you said that you had an effective-cure rate of around 80 percent. Are you still doing as well?

[A] Masters: Our failure rate is running about the same. In some areas, there's improvement; in a couple of areas, the results are worse than they were. In the past five years, we've been less effective in working with the female and more effective in working with the male. It averages about the same. To us these figures represent an improvement, because we're dealing with more difficult cases.

[Q] Playboy: In what way?

[A] Masters: In the first 12 to 15 years of our therapy programs, about 45 percent of our cases were referred to us after there had been failure in prior psychotherapeutic attempts to reverse the sexual dysfunction for which the man, woman or couple had sought professional support. In the past five years, about 85 percent of those who come to us have experienced prior psychotherapeutic failures.

[Q] Playboy: You devoted a whole chapter of Human Sexual Inadequacy to premature ejaculation. At the time, you were quoted as saying that within ten years the condition would not be a problem. Obviously, your prediction hasn't come true. Can you say why?

[A] Masters: Surprisingly, rarely do we see a case of premature ejaculation in the clinic now. Since it's relatively easy to reverse, our guess is that the first-line health-care professionals are taking care of the problem. It's screened for us, but it certainly hasn't disappeared as a sexual dysfunction.

[A] Johnson: When we first treated cases of premature ejaculation, we noticed an almost stereotypical case history. Usually, the person's first experience had been under circumstances in which it was necessary to rush through intercourse under a great deal of pressure. For instance, the back seat of a car. There was no sense that you should linger and appreciate the act; there was just the fun of doing it. I think that conditions have changed--I hope.

[Q] Playboy: With the gas shortage, we doubt that anybody is doing it in back seats anymore. Are there any other reasons for the change?

[A] Johnson: I think that premature ejaculation--like a lot of other areas of distress--has come to be accepted as a minor problem. It's not immediately threatening to the male image. Men know it's treatable, that there's something they can do about it. I think there's a growing feeling about all sexual problems that they are not, as previously thought, a matter of "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Which takes them out of that "My life is ruined" or "All is lost" perspective.

[A] Masters: Times have changed. One of the last cases of premature ejaculation we treated was that of a 63-year-old man. He had gone to a doctor 25 years previously to seek treatment because he thought he was denying his wife pleasure. The "expert" told him that it didn't make any difference to the woman, so there was no point in changing. After 25 years, the couple decided to do something about it.

[Q] Playboy: According to Time magazine, you've trained over 7000 therapists. How does someone find a therapist?

[A] Masters: We have trained 30 therapists. The figure of 7000 represented an approximation of the number of health-care professionals who have attended two-day seminars or five-day workshops sponsored by the institute. When Time called to check the figure, we told them that the designation was incorrect, but they ran the figure of 7000 anyway.

[Q] Playboy: If someone wanted to consult a Masters and Johnson-certified therapist, would he or she contact the institute in St. Louis?

[A] Masters: We don't certify therapists. No one who trains has the right to certify.

[A] Johnson: We'd be happy to tell people who the 30 people we've trained are. We don't know to what extent they continue to use our methodology, though. Our main problem occurs whenever some thoughtless or witless writer puts the address of the institute at the end of a newspaper article and we get thousands of letters asking for referral. It absolutely destroys the ability of our office staff to function effectively. We have to stop everything to answer the mail. Bill long ago declared that we would not fail to respond to anyone in trouble who clearly printed his name and address.

[Q] Playboy: How can someone tell if he or she is in the hands of a charlatan?

[A] Johnson: You have to rely on others in the community in whom you have already developed trust. If you have a doctor to whom you're going to entrust your life, then go to him for suggestions of who to consult about your sex life. There's no perfect system. You cannot define skills practiced by someone behind closed doors. There is a continuing need for review and revision of supervisory procedures. We're about 50 years behind other fields of medicine when it comes to being responsible for our profession. We have no peer review boards.

[Q] Playboy: In the past few years, several lawsuits have been brought against therapists who initiated sex with patients. Do you have a position on doctor-patient relationships?

[A] Johnson: The nature of the patient-doctor relationship is very well defined. Until 1948, the Hippocratic oath contained the line: "I will abstain from... the seduction of females or males or freemen or slaves."

[A] Masters: Two years ago, in an appearance before a plenary session of the American Psychiatric Association, we took the position that any health-care professional who takes advantage of a client should not be sued for malpractice. He or she should be arrested for statutory rape.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't that a bit harsh?

[A] Masters: Not really. The client simply isn't able to give objective permission, or informed consent to the act--because of the very nature of the doctor-patient relationship. If more people were willing to press this type of charge, there would be less of a problem.

[Q] Playboy: Do you find that you have to deal with a great deal of public apathy to your work? Do you ever feel yourselves becoming paranoiac?

[A] Masters: To work in this field--I don't care whether you are publishing Playboy or Homosexuality in Perspective--one must expect to contend with significant levels of public opprobrium. When you live for years in this atmosphere, it is inevitable that a significant level of paranoia intrudes on your objectivity.

[Q] Playboy: Are you ever concerned for your security?

[A] Masters: Let me put it this way: We certainly don't have a total sense of security. And we certainly didn't have a sense of it when we published Homosexuality in Perspective. Anybody as identified in this field of sex research and sex therapy as we are today has to live with the possibility of some manner of social threat.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of threat? Have you received hate mail, for instance?

[A] Masters: Hate mail for Human Sexual Response was heavy. Dozens of what we call "drop dead" letters. And there was a significant bundle of similar mail when we published Human Sexual Inadequacy. Inevitably, the hate mail comes in before the "hooray for you" mail. The hate mail comes in the first three or four months, almost immediately following the publication of a book. About 80 percent of it is actually scatological, some of it obviously pathological. Much of it isn't signed. No return address, so you can't even respond. But since we published Homosexuality in Perspective, we have received only six drop-dead letters. To me, this is an absolutely amazing change. I anticipated hundreds, even thousands of such letters. They should be here by now. They should be arriving in sacks.

[Q] Playboy: Earlier, you mentioned that a critic had said that love was never mentioned in Human Sexual Response. Neither, perhaps more surprisingly, was oral sex. Why?

[A] Masters: We didn't study oral sex in the original research project because we didn't have the courage. We were running scared in terms of opportunity to finish the work. We had gambled our professional careers undertaking the investigation of human sexual physiology. Had we been stopped by the university authorities before we had something significant to talk about--where would we have gone from there?

[Q] Playboy: Reduced to a life of private practice?

[A] Masters: At best; I might well have been thrown off the listing of a specialist society, even taken off the A.M.A. rolls or brought up for censure before the licensing board for moral misconduct. Those things could have happened.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever wondered what prompted you to go into sex research at the same time Hefner was beginning Playboy 25 years ago? Was it something in the water supply?

[A] Masters: I wish I could answer that. Hef and I have talked about it several times. The only thing that I can say is that aside from man's curiosity about sex, I looked at the total area of human sexual function and realized that nobody knew very much about the subject. Or, rather, that nobody was sure about his information. Everybody knew something about the subject. I suppose it was a combination of an embarrassing lack of knowledge by the health-care professionals and the challenge of working in an area where nobody ever worked before. Such a situation inevitably is a challenge to anybody who's research oriented--to do things that had never been done before. Of course, Kinsey opened the door for us. Kinsey was the first person to get permission from a major university to conduct sex research. I can find it in my heart to doubt whether Washington University would have given us permission to work in this field if Indiana University hadn't taken a bath in the cold water first.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever meet Kinsey?

[A] Masters: I met him once in a receiving line. I did not know him. He definitely set the early pace for what we were interested in doing. We received flak primarily because we were not asking people questions about sexual behavior, we were asking people to demonstrate this behavior in an experimental laboratory. It's a different ball game.

[Q] Playboy: What do you see as the future of sex research?

[A] Masters: I would like to see it legitimized to the point where it could be funded in parallel with other legitimate areas of research in human physiology and behavior.

[A] Johnson: So that young, well-trained, competent people will be attracted to it, and take these rather primitive early studies and apply the sophistication that is now available. So they might study the perceptions that are enhanced now by the openness in the field, the openness to the idea of human sexuality. Young people could bring incredible insight. Not just a point of view but another stage of the science of human sexuality. But it does take funding and supportive environments, and so far, they are not particularly forthcoming. People are doing what they can. They are certainly working in the psychological and sociological aspects of sexuality, but unless those two areas are supported by basic science and preclinical work, it's going to fall right back into the old traps of speculative hypotheses. And then we'll be locked in at another level, as we were after Freudian insights first opened doors to thinking about and looking at the importance of and the role of the sexual dimension of human existence, in terms of daily function--of one's total existence.

[Q] Playboy: After 25 years of sex research, what remains a mystery to you?

[A] Masters: Sex. We don't even know what we don't know. There is so little secure information in this field. We don't even know the questions to ask.

[Q] Playboy: Just how important do you think sex is?

[A] Johnson: For most people, sex is of paramount importance in their life. Others have different priorities. Things they value more. However, we are all sexual beings, male or female. The personal option is how we express our sexuality. Although sexuality will remain a dimension of one's personality regardless of choice, the personal option may be either an active life or a commitment to the choice or circumstance of celibacy. Occasionally, both within one lifetime. One thing you can be sure of: The more one knows about sex, the better chance there is of dealing with it effectively when something is not satisfactory. I believe that is a reasonable principle of education. That is the principle, at least, by which we are committed to sex research. That, plus the fact that we continue to believe that "sex is a natural function." We've proclaimed that for so long now, people surely are tired of hearing it. Maybe in another ten years beyond that, our society will allow us to live it.

"You must understand, we weren't there to watch sexual activity as a psychologist, or even a casual observer, might."

"We have never treated homosexuality as a disease or defined it to a patient as a handicap."

"There can be back-of-the-neck orgasms, bottom-of-the-hand orgasms...."

"The fantasy that was most frequently reported by all of our groups was that of forced sex."

"Our guess is that at least half of the couples in America have sexual problems."