epublishing store: Intro

Sexual Health eBook Volume4
Chapter 7

Spiritual Dimensions of Sexual Health: Broadening Clinical Perspectives of Women’s Desire, Gina Ogden

In this age of Viagra and other media messages about sexual function and dysfunction, the dominant discourse about sexual health centers on performance —that is, a goal of physical orgasm generated by intercourse and/or genital stimulation. Definitions of sexual health and performance are so thoroughly conflated that from the perspective of clinician, client, and consumer these concepts often seem interchangeable. But my research shows that goal-oriented norms represent only a fraction of human sexual experience and play only a bit part in creating sexual desire for women (Ogden, 1999, 2002, 2006). After more than half a century of focusing on the quantifiable aspects of performance (e.g., Kaplan, 1979; Kinsey et al., 1948, 1953; Laumann et al., 1994; Masters & Johnson, 1966), sex researchers have yet to find a definitive answer to the question famously posed by Sigmund Freud: “What do women want?” (Freud, 1938).

In my practice of sex therapy since the mid-1970s, I have found that equating sexual health with performance is not only inaccurate, but can also be harmful, especially to women. By reifying the performance aspects of sex, generations of sex researchers and therapists have unwittingly reinforced that women are the “second sex” (DeBeauvoir, 1952), historically less sexually interested and less functional than men. From the clinical point of view, performance norms are basic to DSM-IV-R definitions (2000, pp. 23–24; also see the appendix in this volume) and they constitute a distorted standard of sexual health that predicts how clinicians are likely to diagnose and treat women who present with complaints about low sexual desire (e.g., Tiefer, 1995; Tiefer & Kaschak, 2001). It is no wonder that sex research has consistently found that a high percentage of American women lack desire for performance oriented sex—43 percent is the number most recently and most broadly cited (Laumann, Paik, & Rosen, 1999).

Performance definitions of sexual health leave out the emotions and meanings that are arguably crucial for desire, satisfaction, and healthy sexual relationship. (Daniluk, 1998; Ellison, 2000; Espin, 1987; Foley, Kope, & Sugrue, 2002; Kitzinger, 1983; Kleinplatz, 2001; Savage, 1999; Sugrue & Whipple, 2001). Women in my clinical practice have routinely linked their positive sexual experiences with qualitative issues such as self-esteem, love, passion, compassion, altruism, empathy, acceptance, release, beauty, reverence, and grace, and the sense of ongoing personal power when all of these are present. Although such emotions and meanings cannot be objectively quantified, they are nonetheless real, part of what visionary psychiatrist Carl Jung has called the “irrational facts of experience” (Jung, 1959). When applying them to issues of human sexuality, I have referred to them as the spiritual dimensions of sexual health (Ogden, 2002, 2006).

The purpose of this chapter is to broaden the clinical base for understanding the emotions and meanings that are implicit in women’s sexual desire, and to broaden the scope of questions clinicians might ask women who present with sexual desire problems. Information in this chapter is based on results of an independent exploratory survey I conducted on integrating sexuality and spirituality (ISIS) (Ogden, 2002, 2006).

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