The impact of imagery type and imagery training on the subjective sexual arousal of women

Abstract

There has been little research to determine which characteristic of imagery would be most likely to enhance sexual arousal when engaging in sexual fantasy. In this stuty, the impact on subjective sexual arousal of two types of imagery, response imagery (physiological response) and stimulus imagery (characteristics of the setting and surroundings) was examined. Past research suggests that response imagery would be more effective than stimulus imagery in eliciting an emotional response. In this study subjective sexual arousal was assessed in two groups of women receiving either response or stimulus imagery training, followed by relaxation and self-generated sexual fantasy, with a third group receiving relaxation training alone. Assessment was carried out prior to training, immediately following the inital training session and following one week of training. Subjective sexual arousal increased significantly following the initial imagery training session for both imagery groups, but did not change for the relaxation group. There was no further increase following one week of training. Written descriptions of the self-generated fantasy reflected the different types of imagery training.