A Review of Anxiety and Sexual Arousal in Human Sexual Dysfunction

Abstract

Clinical accounts have traditionally emphasized the importance of anxiety in the development and maintenance of sexual dysfunction (e.g., Masters & Johnson, 1970). However, a review of empirical research suggests anxiety, operationalized in a variety of ways, has no effect or facilitates genital responding in heterosexual men and women. The apparent contradiction between the clinical and empirical literature might be resolved if anxiety and sexual arousal are conceptualized as complex responses involving cognitive, behavioral, and physiological systems (Lang, 1968). Two models of sexual dysfunction (Barlow, 1986; and Palace & Gorzalka, 1990) are discussed in terms of this revised conceptualization, and directions for future research on the relationship between anxiety and sexual arousal are suggested.