response. Using these tools, Masters and Johnson initiated a project that ultimately included direct laboratory observation and measurement of 700 men and women while they were having intercourse or masturbating. Based on the data collected in this study, they co-authored the book Human Sexual Response in 1966. In this book, they identify and describe four phases in the human sexual response cycle : excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. By this point in time, the generally repressive attitude toward sexuality was beginning to lift and the book found a ready audience. Masters and Johnson were quickly catapulted to celebrity status as their book became a best seller. During this period, Masters divorced his first wife and Masters and Johnson wed. In 1970, they published Human Sexual Inadequacy, which was concerned with the treatment of impotence, premature ejaculation, frigidity and other sexual problems. In the wake of these two publications, the field of sex therapy -- the clinical treatment of sexual problems -- was born. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Masters and Johnson continued their research and publication efforts. Their book Homosexuality in Perspective, which described the sexual responses of gay men and lesbians, was published in 1979. In this book, Masters and Johnson debunked the notion that homosexuality is a mental illness. However, their claimed ability to change the sexual preferences of homosexuals who wished to change produced considerable criticism from the gay community and from other sex researchers. Their final collaboration, Heterosexual Behavior in the Age of AIDS, published in 1988, was not well received because of its criticism of the general need for safer sex practices (including condom use) in heterosexual relationships. In the early 1990s, Masters and Johnson were divorced and their over 30-year collaboration in sex research and therapy came to an end. In 1970, based on their studies of problems in ...
