Contemporary Desire Science · Clinical Exercise

Spontaneous, Responsive, Contextual

Three patterns, and the third one is not a third kind of desire. Six client descriptions to sort, then the presentation this module calls the most common desire misidentification, and what you actually say to each of them.

What this exercise practises

Classifying a desire pattern from a client's own description, separating timing from conditions, and resisting the inference from gender to pattern that the research does not support.

Then the harder half: what to say to a partner who has read low initiation as lost attraction, and which single assessment question produces something a client can use.

Estimated time to complete this exercise: 20 minutes

1Three patterns
2The partner
3The question
4Close

Before you begin

How this one works

Three patterns, and the third one is not a third kind of desire. Spontaneous and responsive are patterns. Contextual describes what modulates both of them, all the time.
Part 1 gives you six client descriptions to sort. Two of them are there to break an inference you may not know you are making, and one of them is placed in the wrong bin by most people.
Parts 2 and 3 take the presentation the module calls the most common desire misidentification and ask what you actually say, first to the partner and then to the client.
Nothing is graded and nothing is recorded. Reloading starts it again.

Neither pattern is pathological in isolation. The clinical problem arises when spontaneous desire is treated as the default and responsive desire is read as evidence of disorder. The absence of spontaneous desire is not a finding. Its misidentification as dysfunction is.

References

  1. Basson, R. (2000). The female sexual response: A different model. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26(1), 51–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/009262300278641
  2. Basson, R. (2001). Human sex-response cycles. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 27(1), 33–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/00926230152035831
  3. Brotto, L. A. (2010). The DSM diagnostic criteria for hypoactive sexual desire disorder in women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39(2), 221–239. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-009-9543-1
  4. Meana, M. (2010). Elucidating women’s (hetero)sexual desire: Definitional challenges and content expansion. Journal of Sex Research, 47(2–3), 104–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490903402546
  5. Pfaus, J. G. (2009). Pathways of sexual desire. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 6(6), 1506–1533. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01309.x
  6. Toates, F. (2009). An integrative theoretical framework for understanding sexual motivation, arousal, and behavior. Journal of Sex Research, 46(2–3), 168–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490902747768