The enigma of sexual desire. - Sexual Appetite, Desire and Motivation: Energetics of the Sexual System - book review

Journal of Sex Research, May, 2002 by Cynthia A. Graham

Sexual Appetite, Desire and Motivation: Energetics of the Sexual System. Edited by Walter Everaerd, Ellen Laan, and Stephanie Both. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Knaw Edita, 2001, 156 pages. Paper, NLG 80.00, Euro 36.30.

The chapters in this book are the proceedings from a colloquium on sexual motivation, appetite, and desire held in Amsterdam in 1998. The editors highlight the "considerable discrepancy ... between advances in fundamental research about the architecture and regulation of sexual behavior, and the application of this knowledge to social problems" (p. VII). The purpose of the meeting was to "explore contributions from different disciplinary perspectives to questions about the steering of sexual behavior and sexual emotions" (p. VII). The topics addressed include neuroanatomical and neurophysiological aspects, behavioral studies in animals and humans, evolutionary theories and theories about love, and hypoactive and hyperactive sexual desire.

I found the eight chapters uneven in quality and in their degree of focus on the questions that guided the organization of the meeting. The contributors offered a wide range of perspectives from many disciplines; however, some chapters were written in a more accessible style than others. For example, the first chapter by Holstege and Boers, on neuronal systems of mating in the hamster and cat, was highly technical and there was no attempt to integrate the material presented with the broader issues related to sexual motivation. In contrast, Joe Herbert's chapter, also on neural control of sexual behavior, took a much broader perspective. Herbert suggests that the neural mechanisms for sexual behavior are closely related to those concerned with adaptive responses, but in developing his argument he repeatedly stresses the interaction between the brain, endocrine system, and the social environment.

The chapters by Kim Wallen and Roy Levin cover behavioral studies in animals and humans and are two of the better chapters in the book. Kim Wallen's chapter, "Social Context and Hormonal Modulation of Primate Sexual Behavior," discusses historical views of human and nonhuman primate sexuality and the influence of hormones on the expression of sexuality, evidence that social context modulates influences on female sexual motivation, and the idea that perceived risk might act as a modulator of sexual behavior. I found this chapter well organized and thought provoking. One of the strengths of Wallen's approach is that he relates the primate research findings to the situation for human females, and included in the chapter are reviews of the relevant research on sexual desire in human females (although he might have included more recent studies in this area).

Wallen also considers a topic that has recently generated heated debate: the issue of gender differences in sexual desire (e.g., Baumeister, 2000; Hyde & Durik, 2000). He suggests that we should "reframe" this issue by asking, "... not whether men and women have equal sex drives, but whether they have the same pattern of sex drive?" (p. 55). He goes on to argue that "... the primary difference between males and females across mammalian species is that the male sex drive is more or less continual, whereas the female sex drive is discontinuous and, in most cases, cyclic" (p. 56). There is an interesting discussion of whether increased risk affects the expression of sexual desire in women, as it does in female rhesus monkeys, and again, Wallen does a good job of relating the evidence he presents to social problems such as teenage pregnancy.

Roy Levin's chapter, "Sexual Desire and the Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Human Female Sexual Response Model of Masters and Johnson," covers much more than the title implies. In a readable and comprehensive manner, Levin discusses the historical development of knowledge about human sexual arousal mechanisms, different models of sexual response, and critiques of these models. He also reviews evidence for changes in sexual desire during the menstrual cycle, the relationship between hormones and desire, the expression of the human female orgasm, sexual desire and the pharmacoactive substances, and possible "erotic sites" for the creation of spontaneous sexual desire. I found the discussion of possible physiological mechanisms that inhibit sexual desire in women particularly interesting.

A chapter by Walter Everaerd and colleagues introduces a preliminary model of the generation of sexual desire and action. These researchers hypothesize that sexual motivation is "an emerging property of sexual processing" (p. 102), and that such processing is largely involuntary and unconscious.

There is a very short contribution by Dorothy Tennov: "Conceptions of Limerence". This was an unusual chapter. I am unfamiliar with the literature on limerence, but after reading this chapter I still had no idea about what research had been done on this topic.

The final two contributions, by Julia Heiman and William Marshall, focus on hypoactive and hyperactive sexual motivation, respectively. The chapter by Marshall is very brief and fairly narrow in scope, looking at attachment problems in the etiology and treatment of sexual offenders. Julia Heiman reminds us that we "... neither have a clearly articulated model of sexual desire nor answers to basic questions such as ... How do we know someone is experiencing desire and how do we measure it? What qualifies as too little, too much, or just enough desire and who has the authority to apply these labels?" (p. 117). I would agree with her view that research on humans could benefit from "systematically gather[ing] phenomenological data on the subjective nature of sexual desire" (p. 120). In this chapter, Heiman puts forward a systemic theoretical framework to identify what factors comprise sexual desire, and provides an outline of topics that might be further articulated. As well as raising a number of questions, this chapter also identifies areas important to study if we are to understand the experience of human sexual desire.