Research in psychopathology is booming in an unprecedented way, at least, in terms of increasing number of publications. Yet, a few questions arise: Does quantity also give us quality? Are the collected data generally of sound quality? How are data typically collected in psychopathology? Are the applied methods of data collection appropriate for this particular field of study? This article explores three different methods of data collection in psychopathology, namely self-rating scales, structured interviews, and semi-structured, phenomenological interviews. To identify the (...) most adequate methodological approach, we first establish the nature of the object of psychopathology and then we critically assess each method’s appropriateness to this field of study. We emphasize fundamental issues that make self-rating scales and structured interviews unfit for the task of adequately examining psychopathology. By contrast, we propose that a semi-structured, phenomenological interview presents a more appropriate method. Finally, we describe two types of semi-structured, phenomenological interviews that can be applied to assess and explore psychopathology, respectively. (shrink)

This article considers whether there is room in the work of Goldenberg, which is characterized as materialist, for spirituality. The author shows how Freudian psychoanalysis gives the opportunity for the body to be resurrected from the place of signifier of death and dissolution. However, it is also argued that it is possible to bring body and spirit together in such a way as to allow the body to flourish. The author argues for a 'thinking through the body' that is best (...) accomplished when grounded in goddess spirituality. (shrink)

Lloyd analyzes every proposed evolutionary explanation of female orgasm and argues that all but one suffers from serious evidential errors. Lloyd attributes these errors to two main biases: androcentrism and adaptationism. This paper begins by arguing that the explanation Lloyd favors—the by-product account—is guilty of the androcentrism which supposedly implicates the other explanations of female orgasm with numerous evidential discrepancies. This suggests that there is another error afflicting orgasm research in addition to the biases Lloyd identities. I attempt to diagnose (...) and characterize this additional error. In short, I think the error is using an imprecise definition of the trait in question. Further, Lloyd takes her analysis to support Longino’s contextual empiricist model of scientific objectivity. I consider what implications this analysis has for contextual empiricism. Finally, I argue that theorizing about female orgasm should be done from a conceptual engineering approach. (shrink)

Pragmatism is the idea that we attribute meaning to things that matter to us. Ultimately, the things that matter are intercepted by our bodies — our eyes, ears, nose, hands, feet, skin — right down to our sex differences. Our bodies are the tools with which we interface with the world — the cultural world. Sex differences provide major insights into how the body impacts on experience and thus, personality and ultimately culture’s gender roles. In my earlier paper, I discuss (...) what Peirce identified as fundamental aspects of cognition — habits and associative learning — and I place them in the context of Heidegger’s Dasein. In this current paper, I develop on these ideas in order to apply them to understand gender roles. From the inextricable connection between habits, associative learning andDasein, we can infer the following: (1) Gender roles are habits; (2) Gender roles are chosen; (3) Men and women “like” the roles to which they have beenassigned (this is a fundamental expression of Dasein). That is to say — the choice becomes the association of habits becomes the desire becomes the need. Hence arise the needs by which gender roles are identified. (shrink)

Note: This work has been updated in a modified version in Vierra, Andrew. 2020. “Make Me Gay: What Neurointerventions Tell Us About Sexual Orientation and Why It Matters for the Law.” In Neurointerventions and the Law: Regulating Human Mental Capacity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/neurointerventions-and-the-law-9780190651145?cc=us&lang=en&# . This thesis challenges the restrictive definition of ‘gay’ used in legal discourse, argues for the adoption of a broader definition that is inclusive of more gay individuals, and demonstrates that the adoption of a broader definition (...) would help frame gay rights debates in a way that is more acceptable to both progressives and conservatives. Current legal arguments for gay rights use ‘gay’ to refer almost solely to individuals that have exclusively—largely immutable—same-sex erotic desires. However, ‘gay’ should be understood to include a more diverse group of individuals. Thus, the current restrictive use of the term ‘gay’ either captures too many people or too few. Too many people, for conservatives, because gay rights are extended to many gay individuals that are not included in the restrictive definition. Too few people, for progressives, because the restrictive use of the term ‘gay’ doesn’t capture the entire gay community. (shrink)

Lay understanding and scientific accounts of female sexuality and orgasm provide a fertile site for demonstrating the importance of including epistemologies of ignorance within feminist epistemologies. Ignorance is not a simple lack. It is often constructed, maintained, and disseminated and is linked to issues of cognitive authority, doubt, trust, silencing, and uncertainty. Studying both feminist and nonfeminist understandings of female orgasm reveals practices that suppress or erase bodies of knowledge concerning women's sexual pleasures.

Patterns in the data on human sexuality support the hypothesis that the bases of sexual emotions are products of natural selection. Most generally, the universal existence of laws, rules, and gossip about sex, the pervasive interest in other people's sex lives, the widespread seeking of privacy for sexual intercourse, and the secrecy that normally permeates sexual conduct imply a history of reproductive competition. More specifically, the typical differences between men and women in sexual feelings can be explained most parsimoniously as (...) resulting from the extraordinarily different reproductive opportunities and constraints males and females normally encountered during the course of evolutionary history. Men are more likely than women to desire multiple mates; to desire a variety of sexual partners; to experience sexual jealousy of a spouse irrespective of specific circumstances; to be sexually aroused by the sight of a member of the other sex; to experience an autonomous desire for sexual intercourse; and to evaluate sexual desirability primarily on the bases of physical appearance and youth.The evolutionary causes of human sexuality have been obscured by attempts to find harmony in natural creative processes and human social life and to view sex differences as complementary. The human female's capacity for orgasm and the loss of estrus, for example, have been persistently interpreted as marriage-maintaining adaptations. Available evidence is more consistent with the view that few sex differences in sexuality are complementary, that many aspects of sexuality undermine marriage, and that sexuality is less a unifying than a divisive force in human affairs. (shrink)

By modifying the body in meaningful ways, human beings establish their identity and social status. Lip plugs, ear plugs, penis sheaths, cosmetics, ornaments, scarification, body piercings, and genital modifications encode and transmit messages about age, sex, social status, health, and attractiveness from one individual to another. Through sociocultural sexual selection, male genital modification plays an important role as a sociosexual signal in both male competition and female mate choice. The reliability of the signal correlates with the cost of acquiring the (...) trait. Women use a variety of cues to assess male quality. Male genital modification is one way that some women assess their mates. Extreme male genital modifications not only honestly advertise status, sexual potency, and ability to provide sexual satisfaction, they may provide a reliable index of male-female cooperation through the male’s commitment to endure pain and risk. (shrink)

Sexual selection processes have received much attention in recent years, attention reflected in interest in human mate preferences. Among these mate preferences are preferences for physical attractiveness. Preferences in and of themselves, however, do not fully explain the nature of the relationships that individuals attain. A tacit negotiation process underlies relationship formation and maintenance. The notion that preferences for physical attractiveness evolved under parasite-driven “good genes” sexual selection leads to predictions about the nature of trade-offs that individuals make between mates’ (...) physical attractiveness and investment potential. These predictions and relevant data are explored, with a primary emphasis on women’s preferences for men’s qualities. In addition, further implications of trade-offs are examined, most notably (a) the impact of environmental variations on the nature of mating and (b) some effects of trade-offs on infidelity and male attempts to control women. (shrink)

Research over the last decades has stimulated a paradigm shift in biology from assuming fixed and dichotomous male and female sexual strategies to an appreciation of significant variation in sex and sexual behaviour both within and between species. This has resulted in the development of a broader biological understanding of sexual strategies, sexuality and variation in sexual behaviour. However, current introductory biological textbooks have not yet incorporated these new research findings. Our analysis of the content of current biology texts suggests (...) that in undergraduate biology curricula variation in sexual behaviour, sexual strategies and sexuality barely feature, even though sex is discussed in a range of contexts. In this aspect, biological teaching is lagging behind current research. Here, we draw attention to new findings in the biology of sex, and suggest how these might be incorporated in undergraduate teaching to provide a more contemporary and inclusive education for biology students. (shrink)

The body and bodily experience make little appearance in analytic moral philosophy. This is true even of analytic sexual ethics—the one area of ethical inquiry we might have expected to give a starring role to bodily experience. I take a small step toward remedying that by identifying one way in which the bodily experience of sex is ethically significant: some of the physical actions of sex have a default expressive significance, conveying trust, affection, care, sensitivity, enjoyment, and pleasure. When people (...) having sex don't in fact have these feelings, the sex can be misleading, even if they've antecedently communicated that they don't have these feelings. This account of how sex can mislead is inspired by a perhaps surprising source, Catholic sexual morality. Analytic sexual ethicists could benefit from emulating Catholic sexual morality's attentiveness to the bodily nature of sex and its ethical significance. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how condom manufacturers and their marketers have failed to adequately promote their product to the male homosexual population (gays). Inasmuch as the AIDS syndrome constitutes a major life-threatening danger and that gays appear to be particularly vulnerable, failure to aggressively promote a known preventive such as condoms to gays constitutes negligent homicide.The method used here defines what is traditionally viewed as a viable target market, analyzes the major elements of marketing with regard (...) to gays, and examines the neglect of condom promotion by their manufacturers. (shrink)

This article addresses the history of sociological sex research and its reception in Sweden and Finland. It describes the background and implementation of the first study in Sweden in 1967, and how the methodology of this study was adopted in Finland in 1971. Both of these studies were followed up in the 1990s with surveys that documented the changes in sexuality, 1992 in Finland and 1996 in Sweden. As the studies were labelled ‘Kinsey studies’ of their respective countries, the article (...) examines the effect that the work of Alfred Kinsey's research group had on them. In particular, the article pays attention to the role of homosexuality in the studies and their reception, both in the mainstream media and in lesbian and gay organizations’ magazines. The article argues that, even though the studies recognized their position on the continuum of sex research stemming from Kinsey's work, they did not have a similar role in normalizing homosexuality. On the contrary, the studies showed diminishingly small numbers of homosexual respondents, even in the 1990s, when lesbian and gay rights were rapidly developing, and the studies were used to argue against equality and minority rights. (shrink)

I argue that scientists should adopt a sexual orientation view that includes ‘internal’ sexual orientation markers such as desire, fantasies, and attraction, plus self-identification, and that these two markers should line up. By ‘internal’ markers, I mean inner states or processes of the agent. This can be contrasted with ‘external markers’, by which I mean, behaviours of the agent. I begin by critically reviewing four genetic studies of sexual orientation that are representative of the literature. I look at how each (...) of these studies deploy the concept of ‘sexual orientation’, and show a) that they are each using different notions, and b) that none of the notions are satisfactory. I argue that these accounts have a very limited amount of predictive and explanatory power. Following this, I outline what an account of sexual orientation that has more predictive and explanatory power might look like. I argue that this account will be one that includes internal markers and self-identification. (shrink)

Research in psychopathology is booming in an unprecedented way, at least, in terms of increasing number of publications. Yet, a few questions arise: Does quantity also give us quality? Are the collected data generally of sound quality? How are data typically collected in psychopathology? Are the applied methods of data collection appropriate for this particular field of study? This article explores three different methods of data collection in psychopathology, namely self-rating scales, structured interviews, and semi-structured, phenomenological interviews. To identify the (...) most adequate methodological approach, we first establish the nature of the object of psychopathology and then we critically assess each method’s appropriateness to this field of study. We emphasize fundamental issues that make self-rating scales and structured interviews unfit for the task of adequately examining psychopathology. By contrast, we propose that a semi-structured, phenomenological interview presents a more appropriate method. Finally, we describe two types of semi-structured, phenomenological interviews that can be applied to assess and explore psychopathology, respectively. (shrink)

Understanding the processing of sexual stimuli has become a significant part of research on human sexuality. In addition to individual characteristics, empirical studies have shown that cultural factors play an important role in sexual stimuli processing. The attitudes toward sex have been reported to be more conservative in East Asian societies as compared to western countries, and significantly more sexual difficulties are observed among East Asian people. However, stimulus materials, which potentially facilitate human sexuality research on native East Asian people, (...) are relatively not satisfactory. Erotic stimuli depicting East Asian figures are limited in the existing picture datasets. To address this issue, we present a collection of 237 erotic and 108 control pictures, accompanied by self-reported ratings of sexual arousal, pleasantness, and sexual attractiveness for opposite-sex erotic stimuli by heterosexual males and females. This collection is divided into six categories, depending on their contents: dressed males, semi-nude males, nude males, dressed females, semi-nude females, and nude females. We showed gender differences in sexual arousal, pleasantness, and sexual attractiveness ratings in response to opposite-sex erotic pictures. Males reported the highest levels of sexual arousal, pleasantness, and sexual attractiveness for nude female pictures, whereas females reported the highest levels of sexual arousal, pleasantness, and sexual attractiveness for semi-nude male pictures. The erotic picture dataset may provide a useful resource of erotic stimuli that can be used as stimulus materials in experimental research on sexual function in East Asians. (shrink)

Empirical data from studies with both heterosexual and homosexual individuals have consistently indicated different tendencies in mating behavior. However, transgenders’ data are often overlooked. This exploratory study compared levels of sociosexuality and self-esteem between transgenders and non-transgender (cisgender) individuals. The aim was to verify whether either sexual genotype or gender self-perception had more influence on the examined variables in transgenders. Correlations between self-esteem and sociosexuality levels were also investigated. The sample consisted of 120 Brazilian individuals (51 transgenders) from both sexes. (...) Sociosexuality scores indicated mostly sex-typical patterns for transgenders of both sexes across the construct’s three dimensions (behavior, attitude, and desire), except for female-to-male transgenders’ behavioral sociosexuality. Unique associations between the dimensions of sociosexuality were found for transgender participants. No differences in self-esteem were observed and no correlations between self-esteem and sociosexuality were found. The results suggest that transgenders’ sociosexuality is largely influenced by their sexual genotype despite their incongruent gender self-perception and that the relationships between behavior, attitude, and sociosexual desire are different from those observed in cisgenders. (shrink)

The suppression of sexuality is culturally widespread, and women’s sexual promiscuity, activity, and enjoyment are almost always judged and punished more harshly than men’s. It remains disputed, however, to what end people suppress sexuality, and who benefits from the suppression of female sexuality. Different theories predict that women in general, men in general, women’s intimate partners, or parents benefit most. Here we use the lies women and men tell—or imagine telling—about their sexual histories as an indirect measure of who is (...) most involved in the suppression of sexuality. We asked men and women what they would reply if asked questions by their mother, father, current partner, attractive confederate, and various same- or opposite-sex friends and colleagues about their number of previous sex partners, age at first romantic kiss, age at first consensual sex, and cheating on a previous partner or spouse. By comparing the size and direction of the lies that subjects told, we tested competing predictions of several cultural and evolutionary theories concerning why female sexuality is suppressed and who is driving its suppression. We found that men and women told larger and more frequent lies to their parents, with women telling the largest and most frequent lies of all to their fathers. Additionally, the majority of lies by both men and women were in sexually conservative directions. Our findings suggest that mothers, and especially fathers, restrict female sexuality. (shrink)

The historical forces of war and migration impacted heavily on the disciplinary locations, practitioners, and structures of sexology and psychoanalysis that had developed in the first decades of the 20th century. By the late 1940s, the US was fast becoming the world centre of each of these prominent fields within the modern human sciences. During these years, the work of Alfred C. Kinsey and his team became synonymous with a distinctly North American brand of empirical sex research. This article offers (...) the most nuanced account to date of the shifting relationship between these two fields in the late 1940s to mid 1950s. It argues that this was more collaborative and mutually influential than previous historians have assumed, even as, following the publication of the first ‘Kinsey report’, tensions grew between the Indiana team and the conservative brand of psychoanalysis that by this stage dominated 1950s North American psychiatry. A keen sense of professional competitiveness accelerated the growing split between these two fields, as Kinsey’s team developed a distinctly modern, technologized brand of statistically oriented sexology that contrasted with the older patient case history, and assumed a very different approach to conservative analysts on ideas of homosexuality and ‘normal’ sexual behaviour. Yet this story of divergence is also tempered through consideration of other aspects of ‘situated knowledge’ such as religion and gender identity, even as accounts of cross-disciplinary competitiveness are expanded by contrasting Kinsey’s positions on psychoanalysis with those of contemporaries such as Harry Benjamin. (shrink)

охарактеризовано стан сім’ї в «епоху постметафізіческого мислення» як процесуальний онтологічний проект. Визначено Витоки цього проекту в ірраціоналізації метафізичних підстав сім’ї в доктринах другої половини XIX - початку ХХ століття. Описано характеристики традиційної сім’ї в сучасності як тотальна плюральность, що виражається головним постмодерністським символом - різом, яка проявляє себе сьогодні у множинної фамілістічності.

Human beings talk and co-operate, they build and produce, they work to accumulate and exchange, they form societies, laws and institutions, and, in all these things the phenomenon of reason—as a distinct principle of activity—seems dominant. There are indeed theories of the human which describe this or that activity as central—speech, say, productive labour (Marx), or political existence (Aristotle). But we feel that the persuasiveness of such theories depends upon whether the activity in question is an expression of the deeper (...) essence, reason itself, which all human behaviour displays. (shrink)

This article works across multiple disciplinary boundaries, especially queer theory, to examine critically the controversial, and often socially controlling, role of biomedical knowledge and interventions in the realm of human sexuality. It will attempt to situate scientific/medical discourses on sexuality historically, socially, and culturally in order to expose the ways in which “proper” sexual health in medical research and clinical practice has been conflated with prevailing social norms at particular historical junctures in the 20th and 21st centuries. How might the (...) relationship between clinical and cultural spheres be better engaged in biomedical knowledge and clinical practice in understanding sexual health, given the impact of homophobic and transphobic assumptions in the diagnostic histories of homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood, a new diagnostic category introduced into the DSM following the removal of homosexuality from the DSM-III? The article will argue further that biomedical knowledge is always already mediated through culture by analyzing normative racial, gender, class, and sexual ideologies that regulated early understandings of the epidemiology of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the West and in the postcolonial world while informing global health policy on HIV/AIDS. The article concludes by examining the implications of medical education for both LGBTQI patients and medical professionals, for understanding gender and sexual rights as human rights, and for thinking about new kinds of interventions, contestations, and struggles to resist continued homophobic and transphobic assumptions in biomedical practice today and their ongoing effects in the everyday world. (shrink)

Androphilia refers to sexual attraction and arousal to adult males, whereas gynephilia refers to sexual attraction and arousal to adult females. The Kin Selection Hypothesis posits that genes for male androphilia can persist if androphilic males offset the fitness costs of not reproducing directly by enhancing indirect fitness. In theory, by directing altruistic behavior toward kin, androphilic males can increase the reproduction of kin, thereby enhancing indirect fitness. Evidence supporting the KSH has been documented in Samoa. Samoan transgendered, androphilic males, (...) known locally as fa’afafine, are socially accepted by the majority of Samoans. In contrast, no supportive evidence has been garnered from other cultures that are characterized by less social tolerance toward male androphiles. Tests of the KSH in Canada might be more likely to yield findings consistent with Samoa because Canadian social and political attitudes toward male androphiles are markedly more tolerant and accepting. Here, we compared the willingness of Canadian androphilic men, gynephilic men, and androphilic women to invest in nieces and nephews as well as in non-kin children. Consistent with the KSH and findings from Samoa, androphilic men exhibited a significantly greater cognitive dissociation between altruistic tendencies directed toward kin versus non-kin children relative to gynephilic men and androphilic women. The present study, therefore, provides some tentative support for the KSH from a culture other than Samoa. Findings and future directions for research are considered within the context of the existing cross-cultural literature. (shrink)

In this essay, the author describes how he faced institutionalized homophobia during his psychiatric training, and how he later wrote a play inspired by the life of a gay psychiatrist. Despite Freud’s supportive stance, homosexuality aroused the antipathy of American organized psychiatry and psychoanalysis and came to be listed as an illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Dr. John E. Fryer outed himself as “Dr. H Anonymous” at a 1972 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, and the next year (...) homosexuality was removed from the DSM. The 2014 play Doctor Anonymous offers a fictionalized account of this watershed moment in the history of the gay rights movement. The author discusses his own psychotherapeutic work with gay male patients, including those who had previously been treated with conversion therapy, and explores how the play mirrors his own life experience and the experience of his patients. (shrink)