Helen Singer Kaplan's
3 Stage Model of Sexual Response
Because Kaplan was primarily a sex therapist, it was important to her that she have a model of sexual response that she could use to help her clients. The model she developed met this need better than Masters and Johnson's for a couple of reasons. First, she was able to combine what Masters and Johnson had split into the two phases of excitement and plateau into the one phase of excitement. An "Excitement" phase was more relevant when discussing sexual response with clients. Most had no idea what "plateau" was, but certainly could relate to "excitement." For most of us, "plateau" is simply more "advanced" excitement and there is no need to distinguish it as an entirely different phase. She also eliminated the "resolution" stage, believing it to be the absence of sexual response rather than part of the sexual response cycle itself.
More importantly for Kaplan's sex therapy clients, her model included an essential stage of human sexual response that Masters and Johnson's did not: DESIRE. Lack of desire is the most common problem that clients bring to sex therapists. Consequently, because Kaplan's model distinguishes desire as an independent component of the sexual response cycle, her model has become a very useful one for both therapists and their clients.
Because it has three phases, her model is called "Kaplan's Triphasic Model of Sexual Response."
DESIRE
* EXCITEMENT * ORGASM
