View article

Interest in women's sexual functioning has increased in recent years although the primary emphasis has been on deficits in both genital and subjective sexual response. Female sexual psychophysiology research suggests that women are capable of greater sexual responsiveness than previously thought and can experience genital response in the absence of a subjective experience of sexual arousal. Women who report relatively persistent genital arousal, both with and without accompanying distress, provide case examples of the potential for dissociation between genital and psychological sexual response. In this article, we provide case illustrations of women reporting unprovoked genital arousal both with and without distress and suggest that what appears to be spontaneous genital arousal in some women may be the result of either subconscious processing of sexual stimuli in the environment—stimuli that are …