Congratulations to Victoria Georgoff, an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling student, who recently completed her Master’s thesis entitled “Psychoaffective Differences and Sexual Experience: Psychoaffective Differences Between Sexually Functional and Dysfunctional Men in Response to a Sexual Experience.” Her thesis panel members were Dr. David Rowland, Chair, Dr. Stewart Cooper, and Dr. James Moore. Following is the thesis abstract:

Abstract

This paper investigates key differences between sexually functional and dysfunctional males, focusing on self-report affective responses to a sexual experience. Participants were 79 sexually dysfunctional men and 16 sexually functional men with a urological disorder, all seeking treatment at a urology clinic. It was hypothesized that dysfunctionals would have more negative emotional responses than functionals regarding a sexual encounter. The data supported this hypothesis, finding statistically significant differences on all 28 measures of affective response, with dysfunctional men endorsing negative affects more highly and functional men endorsing positive affects more highly. No significant differences existed in terms of desire or attitude towards sex, which may indicate negative feelings are associated with poor sexual performances. The findings of this study are important as they explore complex emotions beyond anxiety and depression; highlighting such differences between the populations may lead to a better understanding of the development and maintenance of sexual dysfunction and hopefully to new therapeutic treatments.