On Desire, Excitement, and Impotence in Modern Sex Therapy

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Abstract
The widely accepted DSM-III classification of sexual dysfunctions has reinforced the idea that it concerns easily distinguishable deficiencies in the ‘normal’ phases of the sex response cycle: desire, excitement, and orgasm. For each of these deficiencies sex therapists offer a standard treatment package by which clients can learn to restore the ‘natural’ response pattern. As such, treatment has become a matter of techniques and so has sexuality itself. Acting as psychotechnologists, many sex therapists show an almost insatiable ‘desire’ to improve their clients’ sexual performance and they experience the ‘excitement’ of their therapeutic work in counting the number of orgasms their clients are able to reach. But facing the problem of inhibited sexual desire, a lot of sex therapists must admit their ‘impotence’ in this matter. What they do not seem to realize is that their performance-oriented approach enhances a sociocultural climate in which people lose interest in preprogrammed sex, because sexual lust has turned from a taboo into a ‘must’.

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