Definition
Sexology is a field of science that focuses on human sexuality, including sexual needs, behavior and sexual dysfunction. Sexology is a part of such fields of science as psychology, medicine, anthropology and sociology.
Sexology includes such research issues such as: puberty, sexual orientation, gender identification, sexual relations and behavior, sexual dysfunction (e.g. erection problems, ejaculation problems, dyspareunia), paraphilia (sexual preference disorders) and unusual sexual interests, as well as sexuality specific groups: youth, the elderly, the disabled etc.
History of sexology
Sexology is a relatively new discipline of knowledge. Admittedly, human sexuality was already dealt with in ancient times, but rather the art of love was described then, while sexuality was not the subject of interest of science as such.
The roots of Sexology as a scientific discipline lie only in the nineteenth century. In 1886, the German researcher Richard von Krafft-Ebing published his work Psychopathia Sexualis. Initially, research on human sexuality was developed mainly in Germany and Austria (here we can mention, above all, researchers such as Sigmund Freud and Magnus Hirschfeld). After World War II, sexology developed mainly in the United States, which is associated with the research of Alfred Kinsey (he published the groundbreaking work of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953) and William Masters and Virginia Johnson, who released their Human Sexual Response and Human Sexual Inadequacy in 1966 and 1970 respectively.
In Poland, the Polish Sexological Society deals with the development of research on sexuality, promotion of sexual health and cooperation with foreign scientific associations dealing with sexology.
Various aspects of human sexuality
Sexology deals with all aspects of sexuality, both those related to the human body and his psyche. So it can be said that it has both a medical and psychological dimension.
Sexuality problems that arise from the human psyche are dealt with by a psychologist sexologist, while cases of medical nature (i.e. those that involve the body, not the psyche) are dealt with by a phisician-sexologist.
