ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses four reasons for the neglect of the study of pleasure in sexology: conceptual complexity, physiological complexity, political complexity, and the medical model myth of the naturalness of sex. There is nothing about pleasure dysfunction in the official medical sexual nomenclature, for example, and there's nothing in university-level or medical sexuality texts about the physiological bases of pleasure, cultural differences in pleasure, or the psychological development of pleasure. Only some use the term "pleasure" to describe experiences such as slipping into cool water on a hot day or tasting a spoonful of a perfect flan or hearing a Mozart concerto or dancing the samba. As psychocultural history kicks in, experiences get hooked to meanings: and pleasures and can move far beyond the sensory or sensorimotor. Physiological sex research on people has necessarily used non-invasive methods and different endpoints, and some surprising results have emerged.
