In the straight-laced 1950s, conducting research into sex presented some daunting challenges. For example, when Masters and Johnson began their work at Washington University in 1957, they wondered where they would find volunteers for the project. But to their surprise, they discovered that many ordinary people were willing to serve as subjects. Curiously enough, getting research subjects was easy.
If you waited, you had to wade through the... the fraternities that sent their pledges in to be interviewed. And, you know, the poor dears were stammering, stuttering, and so on because they didn't come of their own free will.
And that was very easy to screen out, of course, and kind of fun in a way. So Masters and Johnson embarked on the first major scientific study of sexual response ever conducted. Masters and Johnson have since destroyed the films they made of their early studies, but later researchers repeated their work, including films such as these.
Over a ten-year period, Masters and Johnson observed and took measurements from 700 male and female subjects masturbating or having intercourse in the laboratory. They once estimated they had studied over 10,000 orgasms. They were the first to film a woman's orgasm internally using an artificial penis of clear plastic that contained a light and camera.
In the late 50s and early 60s, this kind of research was not yet known. would have scandalized many if they had known it was going on. I couldn't think of any way that I could prepare the public for the shock value of finding out that such research existed. They missed. superbly courageous of doing something against the stream of society and to delve into some kind of study about a taboo topic, something between the waist and the knees and not only did they study it, they observed it.
So from the beginning, Masters knew it was imperative that the research be conducted in relative secrecy. And he was very careful to shield the project from outside criticism by lining up support from the university and from local clergy. In 1964, Masters moved the project off campus, establishing the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation. It was financed by a few private donations and small foundations.
grants. Masters himself took no pay from the foundation or the medical school, supporting himself solely from his gynecological practice. Masters and Johnson attempted to report their findings to the medical community, but the most prestigious journals rejected their research papers.
By 1966, though, after 12 years of work, Masters and Johnson were ready to publish their research in book form. At the time, America's attitudes about sex were becoming more liberal, but little new information had become public. In the mid-1960s, we knew more about how to get a man to the moon and back than we knew about what was happening inside the vagina of a sexually stimulated woman.
Even in the mid-1960s, some people thought anything related to sex was pornographic. Masters and Johnson knew that, so when they brought out their book, Human Sexual Response, they did everything they could to control the potential of sex. for sensationalism.
Does it concern you that thrill-seekers, people of that sort, will make it a point to try to get a copy of your study? No, I don't really think so. If they are looking for pornography... or that type of material, they're going to be disappointed because I can assure you that every effort was made to remove this type of material from the text. Masters and Johnson wrote the book as a medical textbook in deliberately dense scientific language.
They chose a conservative Boston publisher, Little Brown, and held briefings for small groups of science writers in a Boston hotel suite just before publication. We weren't marketing. We just didn't want the books burned.
We just didn't want them to be ignored for what they were or misunderstood. The book was a sensation. Little Brown released 15,000 copies and they sold out in one day.
How has the demand been running? Wonderful. Beyond our fondest expectations.
I noticed that... You put it in the window, so you have no... It's a hot property. I want to sell it.
Human Sexual Response went on to sell over 250,000 copies in just the first year. It held firm on the bestseller list for six months. Do people apologize for ordering it or try to pass themselves off as students or anything? On the contrary.
I mean, this is an enlightened age and people are interested in sex. Compared to the 1950s, it was an enlightened age, as America's sexual mores were changing. If the Masters and Johnson book had arrived in 55 or 1960, it would have been blasted.
It arrived at almost the perfect time. It arrived at a time in which people were throwing off a lot of the taboos and repression related to their own sexuality. In Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson identified four phases of orgasm and detailed the physiological responses in each. Some of their findings overturned popular misconceptions, particularly in regard to female sexuality.
The book publicized the ability of many women to have multiple orgasms, and it showed that physiologically, a woman's orgasm was the same, no matter what the stimulation. This overturned Sigmund Freud's notion that there were vaginal orgasms from intercourse, which were proper and mature, and clitoral orgasms, which were neurotic and immature. And this notion that there were two kinds of orgasms and one was superior psychologically, emotionally to the other, was very much prevalent in the culture at the time.
But Masters and Johnson's work, what they said essentially is that an orgasm is an orgasm, however achieved. What it did is it gave women a sense of both entitlement and a sense of inclination to pursue it, so that women became much more eager. to achieve and experience orgasm. Human sexual response became a bestseller, but not everyone was thrilled with an explicit textbook about sex.
The book was published on a Monday, and by Friday the mail began coming in in sex. I mean that literally. We had to employ three secretaries on a part-time basis to answer the mail. And about 80% of the mail was dropped dead. Previously, Dr. Masters had received numerous offers.