Define sensate focus. Provide a step-by-step explanation as to how this method is used as a therapeutic intervention

What will be an ideal response?


Responses should consider:
Sensate focus is a sex therapy technique described by Masters and Johnson that requires a couple to redirect emphasis away from intercourse and focus on their capacity for mutual sensuality.
- A couple that is experiencing a sexual problem is instructed to find quiet, private time together one or more times each week.
- During these sessions, they are to remove their clothing and spend time taking turns touching and caressing each other, focusing on the pleasure they feel in touching and being touched. They must not touch each other's breasts or genital areas.
- Over the course of several weeks, the caressing is allowed to expand to include nipples and genitals, but the goal continues to be sensual and pleasurable sensations, not orgasm. Genital touching that may lead to orgasm is prohibited.
- Within a few weeks, the couple usually finds that with the pressures and expectations of intercourse removed, the sexual, sensual, and romantic feelings and responses are reawakened in them.
- As the process continues, they are allowed to touch each other to orgasm and eventually to engage in intercourse once again.
- Couples feel emotionally closer, and sexual desire increases for couples whose desire had been waning. Orgasm problems are often resolved.

Interdisciplinary Studies

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When a woman is aroused, blood rushes to the vagina and ____ from the capillaries crosses the vaginal walls

a. lymph c. blood b. hormones d. fluid

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A decline in the rates of sexual activity for teenagers between 1991 and 2001 was followed by a slight increase in reported sexual activity. With what did this slight increase in sexual activity positively correlate?

a. increase in federal support of abstinence-only education b. increase in federal support of comprehensive sexual education c. decrease in number of teenagers taking "purity pledges" d. increase in number of teenagers taking "purity pledges"

Interdisciplinary Studies

A school system wants to save money and thus does not use the most recent versions of the psychological tests that they administer to students. This is an example of a violation of what key principle of responsible test administration?

a) Standard of care b) Competency c) Expertise d) Voluntariness

Interdisciplinary Studies

Which of the following researchers in Victorian England compiled a vast collection of information on sexuality-including medical and anthropological information-and can be considered the forerunner of modern sex research?

A. Magnus Hirschfeld B. Sigmund Freud C. Richard von Krafft-Ebing D. Henry Havelock Ellis

Interdisciplinary Studies