MASTERS AND JOHNSON ON SEX AND HUMAN LOVING

A cooler, dryer approach to sex and sexuality is hard to imagine. This encyclopedic volume tackles anatomy and physiology, sexual techniques and varieties, health and illness, psychology, behavior, the law, and a great deal else with utter aplomb. Facts are agreeably and clearly presented, most of them seeming quite dull, perhaps because the authors strive so relentlessly for objectivity. For example, on the subject of sexual fantasizing, six ""outside"" experts are called in to add their voices to the famous authors' and cover every nuance of the desirability and dangers of sex in the mind. They describe eight categories of sexual fantasies, but only two specific fantasies are mentioned, and in bare outlines. (The better of these is a little story about a rock groupie, who while having sex always fantasized that her partner was Mick Jagger. When she finally worked her way around to Mick in the flesh, she found that her fantasy was still indispensable since her Mick was so much better than the real man.) Let no one say that Masters and Johnson are fooling around. This is sober science for the general audience and a source book to answer all conceivable questions, from the usual ones about masturbation to the more up-to-date, in a chapter entitled ""The Varieties of Sexual Behavior,"" in which are discussed all the paraphilias, or unusual sexual behaviors motivated by sexual fantasies. But caring and the non-physical side of sex and loving are emphasized again and again, even as anonymous and casual sex are given their due. A chapter towards the end lists 17 sensible ways to increase sexual satisfaction, and then the text gets around to discussing the various sexual dysfunctions and their treatments, for which Masters and Johnson are famous. Is there nothing new? Only, perhaps, that everything about sex seems so ordinary and tame here in the 80's.