ABSTRACT
In recent years, several different headlines bannered the covers of Cosmopolitan magazine. In November, 1988, “When You're Not Interested in Sex, He's Not Interested: How to Reawaken Your Desire.” In July, 1989, “Girls Who Are Addicted to Sex: Why They Cant Stop.” And finally, in November, 1989, the plaintive question, “How Much Sex Is Enough?” The Cosmo girl was embroiled in the labyrinthine contemporary debate about sexuality and sexual desire. The latest questions about the nature and limits of desire issue from the invention in the mid-1970s of two distinct diagnostic constructs: inhibited sexual desire (ISD) and sexual addiction. Clearly these are recognizable concerns—that one might have too little desire for sex, or conversely, experience oneself as sexually insatiable. The medlcallzation of these two conditions, however, with elaborate systems of diagnostic categories and treatment interventions, charts a sexual condition or “sick role” 1 and, in the case of sexual addiction, an entire identity constructed around a specific sexual pattern.
