Multiple Os

In the Textbook of Clinical Sexual Medicine (p. 39-51), Roy Levin provides their own iteration of a sexual response model for penis-owners and details a thorough history of sexual response models from Moll’s 1912 model to Masters and Johnson’s Four Phases of Sexual Response to dual control models and more.

Levin’s “Sexual Man” complex flow chart model of sexual response (p. 48) (See here to see model.) is one of the most thorough models to data. Rarely do I find complexity models of orgasm. I did not expect anything less from Roy Levin who is some of the first to study many topics related to orgasm (e.g., prostate-induced orgasms), and has written many refutations of previous models (e.g., here).

Levin considers three important questions in relation to models:

• What kind of models can be used to describe sexual arousal responses?
• What properties should a good model possess?
• What do, and what should, such models try to accomplish?

Options for models include text models using descriptive words, diagrammatic models (flow charts and analytic pathways), mathematical models, physical (artificial models of anatomy), and animal models (those used to study penile/vaginal hemodynamics, muscular activity, and brain activity.)

Levin also asks questions about dimensions that any model of sexual response should ideally possess:

Does it:

1. Have a predictive power function?
2. Add to our understanding of sexual arousal?
3. Help researchers to design better studies?
4. Contribute to clinical practice?
5. Store information in a convenient format?
6. Create a useful summary?
7. Aid in teaching?
8. Reduce uncertainty?
9. Allow modifications in the light of new discoveries?

I commend Levin for considering the above questions and also applying their earlier work on the difficulty of defining orgasm, which concludes with the need for a combined input of the subject,psychologist, physiologist, endocrinologist, and brain imager. The “Sexual Man”model includes the senses of the subject, psychological aspects (mood and personality), endocrinological aspects like hormones, neurological regions, and psychological responses like tumescence. The model does not indicate typologies, although combinations and different weightings of the models components may influence orgasm typology.

This model could be manifolds more complex and thorough, but it is indeed an advancement from assumptive and oversimplistic models like Masters and Johnson’s Four Phases of Sexual Response. Perhaps an extended orgasm response model like Umit Sayin’s model can be another future model to cover typologies for the penis-owner sexual response models.

DISCUSSION

What do you want to see in the next generation of orgasm model?

What could be added to Levin’s model?

What else would you like to see in a model (e.g. art, graphics, formulas, lenses, and methodologies)?