Qualitative Evidence of the Subjective Orgasm Experience

What is it about?

Subjective Orgasm Experience (SOE) is defined as the perception and appraisal of orgasm from a psychological point of view, and constitutes a different approach to the more traditional one based on the presence/absence of orgasm or difficulties associated with it. This dimension of sexual functioning has been associated with sexual health variables (e.g., sexual satisfaction), and depends on the context in which it occurs (sexual relationships vs. solitary masturbation). One of the most relevant measures of SOE is the Orgasm Rating Scale (ORS), which conceptualizes orgasm based on four dimensions: Affective, Sensory, Intimacy, and Rewards. This study constitutes the first qualitative approach to SOE from the ORS paradigm. This study examined the adjectives self-generated by a sample of the Spanish population to refer to their orgasms in the contexts of sexual relationships and solitary masturbation, as well as the coincidence with the semantic descriptions of orgasm proposed by the ORS. Four hundred Spanish adults with recent orgasmic experiences participated, who, by means of the Free Association of Words technique, responded to two inducing stimuli (description of orgasm in the context of sexual relationships, and in the context of masturbation). The findings replicate the quantitative evidence existing to date from the SOE research. Participants in the study evoked all but two of the ORS adjectives in the relationship context ("shooting" and "spreading") and four in the masturbation context ("tender," "flooding" "rising" and "spreading"). "Spreading" was the only ORS adjective not evoked in any of the contexts analyzed. The most frequently used adjectives belong to the affective dimension, and when examining the co-occurrence with which people generate the adjectives, almost all of them are evoked simultaneously with some of this affective dimension, both in the context of sexual relationships and in that of masturbation. In the sexual relationship context, there is more homogeneity in terms of evocation, whereas in the masturbation context, more heterogeneous and idiosyncratic descriptions were offered, as well as a predominance of the rewards dimension. Through this study it was also found that some people evoked negative adjectives associated with orgasm in the context of solitary masturbation, something that is not contemplated by the different existing models, a fact that should be explored in greater depth.

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Photo by Deon Black on Unsplash

Photo by Deon Black on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This study provided qualitative evidence to the SOE study and ratified the semantic composition of the ORS, which was evoked almost in its entirety, without the need to provide cues (its adjectives were generated spontaneously in the discourse). In addition, similarities were observed between both contexts, although with differential nuances, consistent with previous quantitative evidence: prominence of the affective dimension when describing the orgasmic experience in both contexts and significant presence of the rewards dimension in the context of masturbation.

Perspectives