[4] Additionally, they are the focus of a television series called Masters of Sex[5] for Showtime based on the 2009 biography by author Thomas Maier.
According to author Thomas Maier, as part of their clinical research Masters and Johnson observed paid volunteers engaging in sexual activity while hooked to wires in their lab.
By the time Masters divorced his first wife in 1971, associates believed that he and Johnson essentially lived together and worked and traveled together seven days a week.
[5][6] Masters and Johnson married in 1971 but then later divorced on March 18, 1993, in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County; they nonetheless continued to work together professionally.
While they noted that there were specific changes to the patterns of male and female sexual responses with aging – for example, it takes older men longer to become aroused and they typically require more direct genital stimulation, and the speed and amount of vaginal lubrication tends to diminish with age as well – they noted that many older men and women are perfectly capable of excitement and orgasm well into their seventies and beyond, a finding that has been confirmed in population-based epidemiological research on sexual function in the elderly.
Usually, the discussion consisted of just a question or a suggestion, but often it was limited to nonverbal communicative expressions such as eye contact or hand movement, any of which usually proved sufficient to establish the protocol of partner interaction.
No coaching or suggestions were made by the research team.According to Masters and Johnson, this pattern differed in the female homosexual couples: While initial stimulative activity tended to be on a mutual basis, in short order control of the specific sexual experience usually was assumed by one partner.
Prior to 1970, when they described their treatment program to the world for the first time, sexual dysfunctions such as premature ejaculation, impotence, vaginismus, and female frigidity had been generally treated by long-term (multi-year) psychotherapy or psychoanalysis with very low rates of success.
Masters and Johnson revolutionized things by devising a form of rapid treatment (2 week) psychotherapy always involving a couple, rather than just an individual, working with a male-female therapist team that resulted in a success rate of more than 80%.
[14][15][16] She, as well as Elisabeth Lloyd, have criticized Masters and Johnson's argument that enough clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm should be provided by thrusting during intercourse, and the inference that the failure of this is a sign of female "sexual dysfunction".
Other researchers have argued that Masters and Johnson eliminated same-sex attracted participants when studying the human sexual response cycle, which also limits the generalizability of their results.
[19][20] Another persistent critique was that despite her extensive years of clinical work, Virginia Johnson never earned a university degree and often did not correct those who referred to her in the press or in person as "Dr.