What Is Desire?
Not everyone thinks that sexual desire is a medical issue. Lenore Tiefer, PhD, a psychologist at the New York University School of Medicine, is an outspoken critic of what she sees as a trend toward unnecessary medical intervention in sex. She is a founding member of a group promoting “A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems,” and editor of a book by that title. The idea that desire is a thing women have or lack, apart from any object of desire, is mistaken, she says. But it is convenient for the purpose of selling pharmaceuticals. “I don’t think people desire sex, or rather, let’s put it this way: They’re learning to desire sex,” she tells WebMD. “It used to be I thought that people desired people: ‘I desire Fred’ or ‘I desire Louise.’ Then there was masturbation, which was a kind of tension-relieving thing where you felt like having an orgasm, but it wasn’t sexual desire. It wasn’t anything like that. Sexual desire was this longing that you felt in your body or in your heart to be with
