ABSTRACT
This is the story as it has thus far unfolded of our efforts to understand sex through the systematic treatment of sex problems.
The period before the publication of Masters and Johnson's Human Sexual Inadequacy (1970), beginning in the 1920s, can be thought of as "the era of sexual technique." It was marked by the popularity of instructional manuals (the "marriage manuals") whose principal purpose-in reaction to then-customary, one-sided, male-dominant sex-was to promote sexual mutuality by sensitizing men to women's sexuality. The effect was to raise expectations about both female and male sexuality.
