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Feminism & Psychology
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What Makes Women Experience Desire?

Ellen Laan

Department of Sexology and Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynaecology; Academic Medical Center; University of Amsterdam; H4Caractère manquant ?205; Meibergdreef 9; 1105 AZ Amsterdam; The Netherlands, E.T.Laan{at}amc.uva.nl

Stephanie Both

Department of Psychosomatic Gynaecology and Sexology, Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), Poortgebouw-Zuid, Postbox 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands, s.both{at}lumc.nl

What makes women experience sexual desire? According to Kaplan, normal sexual response starts with desire, progresses through excitement or arousal, and ends with orgasm (Kaplan, 1974). This model implies that sexual desire is something you either have or don't have, and, if you don't have it, there may be no sex in your future. This drive model of sexual desire, a biomedical model, assumes that lack of desire represents a deviation from a physiological norm. In contrast, the biopsychosocial model promoted by the New View emphasizes that a woman's sexuality is largely produced by her social context and rejects the idea of desire norms rooted in physiology. The incentive motivation model of sexual desire that we will present here is based on new findings suggesting that the experience of desire may follow rather than precede sexual excitement, and suggests that desire emerges following sexual arousal initiated by a sexually meaningful stimulus.

Key Words: arousal • genital responsiveness • incentive motivation • psychophysiology • sexual desire • sexual motivation

Feminism & Psychology, Vol. 18, No. 4, 505-514 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0959353508095533
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