Introduction

Sexology / Introduction

Introduction

A negative impact of sexual disorders on one’s emotional state and social activity is well-known.

Problems of this kind are very widespread. In adolescent age, the leading role among them is played by strong attraction to masturbation confronted by moral taboos. In adult age, sexual dissatisfaction or, vice versa, exhaustion from forced sexual intercourse can come to the fore. A significant number of people suffer also from congenital or acquired sexual anomalies. Even more people suffer from functional disorders of the reproductive system such as impotency and quick ejaculation in men and anorgasmia in women (in cases when it causes disease-like states).

For many centuries, sexological research has not been conducted in European countries due to an impact of the Judaic religious dogmas (which were adopted by many Christian Churches in almost unchanged form); therefore many problems were resolved on the basis of the Old Testament “law”.

First serious works on this subject were written in Europe only in the end of the 19^th century [27,33-34,46-48,51,53-54,58-60,69].

In the middle of the 20^th century, a significant progress in this field of knowledge was achieved thanks to the studies of a group of American scientists headed by A.Kinsey [90-91].

In the following decades, a series of experiments on animals were conducted in the field of sexual neurophysiology [57,78,96-97] and sexological aspects of social psychology [2,26,70,85-86].

Among Russian sexological studies of that time, I would distinguish the works of A.M.Svyadosch [64-65] as those worth a special attention.

After Gorbachev’s Perestroika and liberalization of publishing activity, a number of remarkable books on sexological subjects were published in Russia [41,49-50]. Among them I would distinguish the book Healing Sex by Barbara Keesling [49], where the author describes sex as an opportunity to help other people — in contrast to an egoistic attitude toward it.

In the book you are reading now, I have gathered material accumulated for years of my work in the Sexological Center of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, which was headed by professor A.M.Svyadosch, as well as in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Research Institute; also during subsequent years when I totally switched to studying and popularizing the art of psychic self-regulation and the methods of spiritual self-development.