Virginia E. Johnson was an American sexologist, she pioneered research into the human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction as part of a sexuality research team with William H. Masters.
Johnson was risking a lot to be part of the research into sex, ladies of her generation were brought up with the knowledge that sex was a topic that was not to be discussed. Johnson and Masters built on the work of Alfred C. Kinsey to try and break the taboo surrounding human sexuality. Kinsey had focused on personal accounts of sex, Johnson and Masters took their research to a lab setting and devised methods to scientifically map the response to sexual stimuli. They used polygraph-style instruments to chart how the body responds when observing 700 participants who either had intercourse, or masturbated in lab conditions. Johnson and Masters were able to identify the four stages of sexual response – “excitement phase, plateau phase, orgasmic phase, and resolution phase”. This is now known as the human sexual response cycle.
Johnson and Masters went on to treat hundreds of couples that struggled with some type of sexual dysfunction, including premature ejaculation and difficulty reaching climax. They had a 20% failure rate and their treatment was the dominant brand of sex therapy in America for a while. 70% of the program was devised by Johnson.
In 1964, Johnson and Masters established their own independent nonprofit research institution in St. Louis called the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation. The centre was renamed the Masters and Johnson Institute in 1978. Johnson later said that she was against the fact that from 1968 to 1977 the centre ran a program to “convert” homosexuals to heterosexuals.