Masters and Johnson
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Search complete. 18 mentions across 14 episodes found for "Masters and Johnson".
Sep 9, 2026
Julie MerrimanHOST
Here's the oldest one, and it's aged like fine wine.
Julie MerrimanHOST
Decades ago, the pioneering sex researchers, Masters and Johnson, identified a phenomenon they named spectating.
Julie MerrimanHOST
It's when, in the middle of intimacy, you step outside your own body and start watching yourself.
Julie MerrimanHOST
How do I look? Is this taking too long? Is he still into this? Am I doing this right? The moment you start spectating, you're performing instead of feeling, and arousal drops through the floor.
Julie MerrimanHOST
It is slower.
Julie MerrimanHOST
It is sexier.
Julie MerrimanHOST
Masters and Johnson prescribed the 2026 trend way back in 1970.
Julie MerrimanHOST
[laughs] It's when I was in first grade.
Sheri LynchHOST
What's that Masters of Sex thing about? Girls is on that.
Sheri LynchHOST
It's about Masters and Johnson.
Sheri LynchHOST
Masters and Johnson.
Sheri LynchHOST
Oh, that.
Sheri LynchHOST
I watched that for a year.
RobertHOST
Graded steps, done alone, and assigned as homework.
RobertHOST
Now, when the researchers tried it on three couples who had already failed a Masters and Johnson program, all three women came for the first time in their lives after the masturbation training started.
AnnaHOST
They even did a follow-up study on this with 83 women, and that brought that number up to 91% success, which is, I never see those results ever in my clinical trials that I read.
AnnaHOST
So that's really impressive.
Cindy MestonGUEST
Something else that undoubtedly plays a role in women's sexual desire and function is body image.
Cindy MestonGUEST
And we know that women who don't feel good about their bodies or have low self-esteem, low body esteem, they engage in what Masters and Johnson coined as spectatoring.
Cindy MestonGUEST
So what spectatoring is, is when you're in a sexual situation and instead of focusing on the pleasurable sexual sensations or your partner's sexual arousal and all the good things that lead to increasing arousal.
Cindy MestonGUEST
Instead of that, you're kind of doing this spectator thing where you're removed from the sexual scenario like you're watching yourself.
Anna StarfireGUEST
this is when the book about child sexuality came out.
Anna StarfireGUEST
Masters and Johnson and some book about sex.
Anna StarfireGUEST
And I remember Don and Buzzy, you know, sort of talking about this book that came out.
Anna StarfireGUEST
And, yeah.
Abraham MorgentalerHOST
Or caution, yellow light.
Abraham MorgentalerHOST
But I think that what happened was, and we believe that because of Masters and Johnson, who, I don't think people know that much about, but back in the day, they were like the biggest sex researchers ever, together with Kinsey maybe, but they had a huge impact.
Abraham MorgentalerHOST
And they were featured in sort of national magazines, and they basically came with the idea that that this was all psychological.
Abraham MorgentalerHOST
Men having erectile dysfunction issues or impotence back then were psychological.
Patty JolomoHOST
One of my favorite tools for couples who become disconnected physically is an exercise called Sensate Focus.
Patty JolomoHOST
Sense8 Focus was developed in the 1960s by sex researchers and therapists William Masters and Virginia Johnson, whose work had a major influence on the development of modern sex therapy.
Patty JolomoHOST
Through their clinical work with couples experiencing sexual difficulties, they recognized that many sexual problems were made worse by the pressure to perform.
Patty JolomoHOST
particularly when one or both partners became focused on whether an erection was occurring, whether arousal was increasing, or whether orgasm would happen.
Allison ArmstrongGUEST
It didn't used to always be that way for Hundreds and thousands of years, women weren't expected to have orgasms.
Allison ArmstrongGUEST
And then Masters and Johnson and the Kinsey Report.
Allison ArmstrongGUEST
And now we're supposed to have multiple orgasms.
Allison ArmstrongGUEST
And their sex drive builds and builds and builds and builds so that it drowns everything out.
Tracy DalgleishHOST
We think it's an on and off switch.
Tracy DalgleishHOST
Desire, and this is the Masters and Johnson model, that this was the original desire arousal model, which is desire first, it's linear.
Tracy DalgleishHOST
Desire first, arousal next, orgasm, and then the recovery period is afterwards.
Tracy DalgleishHOST
And there's actually been research by Rosemary Basson, she's a psychiatrist in British Columbia here in Canada, and she has found that women actually start from a sexually neutral position.
Julie MerrimanHOST
So let's follow that observer into the bedroom because this is where she does the most damage.
Julie MerrimanHOST
Way back in 1970, when sex researchers Masters and Johnson noticed something in their clients that they named spectatoring.
Julie MerrimanHOST
It's the experience of mentally stepping outside your own body during sex to watch and evaluate yourself instead of being inside the experience and feeling it.
Julie MerrimanHOST
And they found it was just one of the most reliable ways to kill arousal in a human being.
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