Virginia Johnson—human sexuality pioneer

www.amepc.org/tau © Translational Andrology and Urology. All rights reserved. While Virginia Johnson, was born as Virginia Eshleman on February 11, 1925 in Springfield, Missouri, she came to be known as the research assistant, wife, and former wife of William H. Masters, M.D. (1,2). She was the “soft” side of the “Masters and Johnson sexual research team”. Dr. Masters was a gynecologist on faculty at George Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He had a plan to do sexuality research and had the funding, yet needed an assistant to help him in the process. Mrs. Johnson, had been married twice previously and responded to an ad by Dr. Masters for a research assistant in 1957 (1,2). After she had a career in music and singing, she was pursuing a degree in sociology, which was never completed. Once she applied for a research assistant position with Dr. Masters, her educational aspirations were over (1). It was said that after Dr. Masters hired Ms. Johnson as his assistant, it didn’t take long for their professional relationship to become personal (3), and they married in 1971 (1). While some sources stated she was a “sexologist and psychologist”, she actually never completed a bachelor’s degree (1,2,4). The team of Masters and Johnson helped change the way human sexuality was perceived in America and the world. They quickly rose to national prominence because of the type of research, which they conducted and presented. Their research was more scientific than previous human sexuality research done by the biologist, Alfred Kinsey. The work of Dr. Kinsey focused primarily on interviews about human sexuality, done in the 1940s and 1950s in Indiana (2,5). The human sexuality research of Masters and Johnson was quite legendary as it was the first open discussion, with some scientific data, about human sexual behavior at the time (3). They decided to make their research more scientific to allow for more professional recognition of their practice. Their research focused on the physiology of human sexual response, which they published in their initial book, “Human Sexual Response” in 1966 (2,6). Dr. Masters focused more on the physiological aspects of human sexual response, and Virginia Johnson’s bedside manner allowed for more recruitment from friends, family, and faculty in the St. Louis area for their human sexuality research (4). This was especially beneficial because they realized that each had a complementary contribution to their personal and professional relationship (4). They worked together at this institute even after their divorce in 1993 (2). The hallmark of their legacy was the term “sexual response cycle (SRC)” which included specific phases of human sexual response (SRC) (2,3). Their definition of the SRC depicted the Excitement, Plateau, Orgasm, and the Resolution Phases. In their initial book, they described in graphic detail the exact physiological changes associated with each phase of the SRC (6). They promoted the field of “sex therapy” by training clinicians in this area of specialty at the Masters and Johnson Institute, which was initially affiliated with the George Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. They later established their own non-profit institute called the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation, in 1964, which was renamed the Masters and Johnson Institute, in 1978 (1,2). Their position of the SRC gained favor and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) included their SRC as the foundation for nomenclature of the sexuality disorders (7). During their prominence, especially during the 1960s to the 1980s, the field of sex therapy evolved and many other clinicians gained recognition for their work in the research of human sexuality. Some of the notable clinicians during this time include: Stanley Altof (8), Lonnie Barbach (8), Len Derogatis (9), Helen Singer Kaplan (10), Sandra Leiblum (9), Joseph LoPiccolo (11), Ray Rosen (8,9), and Bernie Zilbergeld (12). Additionally, there were various professional Opinion