Sexology

What is sexology?

Sexology is the scientific, interdisciplinary study of human sexuality: behavior, feelings, and functions. It combines biology, psychology, sociology, and medicine. A sexologist applies that knowledge in practice, with the complaints and questions people have around sex.

How sexology looks in practice

Sexology is both research and application. It is the interdisciplinary study of human sexuality, with an eye for the biological, psychological, social, and cultural side. In the consulting room that means a sexologist looks past the body, at thoughts, relationship, and context too. Take someone with pain during sex. A sexological view weighs the physical cause, the tension, and the relationship against one another, instead of pointing to one thing as the culprit. In the Netherlands the profession is protected: only someone who holds the title seksuoloog NVVS meets testable quality standards. Behind the practice sits a broad research field that supplies the models every sexologist uses, from the sexual response cycle to the accelerator-and-brake model.

Where sexology comes from

The field is young. According to the encyclopedic history, the German physician Magnus Hirschfeld founded the first Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin in 1919, which the Nazis destroyed in 1933. After the war, research got going in the United States. Alfred Kinsey founded his research institute in 1947, and Masters and Johnson published their groundbreaking studies on the human sexual response in 1966 and 1970. Much of what is now known about arousal and desire comes from that line. In the Netherlands, sexology grew in the second half of the twentieth century into a mature field with its own professional association, the NVVS, which safeguards the quality of care.

What sexology gives you

The good thing about it is that sex became a subject of knowledge instead of guesswork. For you that means reliable answers to questions that used to stay in the realm of taboo. For care it means that complaints like pain, low desire, or orgasm problems can be treated seriously and with evidence, instead of being waved away or approached moralistically. And because the field also looks at the social and cultural side, it places a complaint in its context: what someone was raised with counts as much as what the body does. What it does not do: sexology is no ready-made recipe. It offers insight and treatment methods, not one truth that holds for everyone.

What sexology is not

“Sexology is the same as sex education.” No. Education passes on information; sexology is the science and the clinical practice behind it.

“A sexologist is a kind of doctor for sex.” Partly. According to the NVVS, a sexologist is a doctor, psychologist, or educational specialist with extra training, so not always a medical doctor.

What I see myself

I’m a gigolo. Not a sexologist, and a good thing that profession exists. Much of what I notice in practice, that desire is rarely a simple switch, is exactly what sexology has investigated and backed up. If someone has a real complaint, a sexologist is the right address, and that is where I send them. I offer attention and experience, not a diagnosis.

Further reading

• Sex therapy is the clinical application of sexology to complaints.
• Sexual response cycle is one of the best-known fruits of sexological research.
• Sexology gives the full history with sources.

Where this fits on this site

I don’t give therapy and I don’t make diagnoses. What I do offer is attention without judgment, and with a real complaint an honest referral to a sexologist. Just curious how a meeting goes? Then take a look at my services. Sending a message first is fine too. It commits you to nothing.

Sources

• Sexology. Wikipedia. Provides the definition of sexology as the scientific study of human sexuality, and the history via Hirschfeld (1919), Kinsey (1947), and Masters and Johnson (1966 and 1970).
• Seksuoloog. Nederlandse Wetenschappelijke Vereniging voor Seksuologie. Provides that a sexologist is a doctor, psychologist, or educational specialist with extra training, with a testable quality mark.

Related terms

• Sex therapy. The clinical application of sexology.
• Sexual response cycle. A core result of sexological research.
• Sexual biography. An instrument sexology uses in practice.
• Sexual accelerator. A model that comes from the Kinsey Institute’s sexological research.