directed masturbation
a behavioral treatment for women with anorgasmia or female orgasmic disorder to improve the consistency, strength, and number of orgasms experienced in intercourse. Directed masturbation also is used to alter deviant sexual preferences in individuals who engage in pedophilia, rape, and child molestation. The procedure consists of weekly therapy sessions as well as extratherapy sensuality and masturbatory exercises to be practiced by the client, including visual examination of the genitalia and whole body, focused genital exploration and touching, and increasingly intense manual stimulation supplemented with erotica and fantasy. Sexual enrichment workshops, communication skills training, sexual counseling, and Kegel exercises may also be used. Despite the clinical popularity of directed masturbation for treating orgasmic dysfunction, empirical support for its effectiveness has been plagued by methodological problems (e.g., small sample sizes,
confounded treatments, lack of objective outcome measures), and the technique has yet to gain widespread acceptance as an evidence-based practice. [formally developed in 1972 by U.S. psychologists Joseph LoPiccolo (1943– ) and W. Charles Lobitz]