By the late 1970s, sexology had become a recognized professional field with many textbooks and several journals and professional organizations. How had disciplinary diversity fared? In a handbook of sexology, Geer and O’Donohue (1987) presented 14 theoretical perspectives on sexuality identified with particular academic disciplines: psychology, physiology, theology, anthropology, and so forth. They propose that “each discipline involved in the study of sex can be uniquely characterized by a particular set of questions about sex it is concerned with, and by particular methodologies it uses to investigate these questions” (p. 3). In other words, standards for sex research are still related primarily to particular disciplines. This model of peaceful coexistence presumably works because each discipline investigates “such different questions” (p. 4).
In fact, whereas Geer and O’Donohue (1987) do describe considerable diversity, there are some important common thematic elements among their chapters that alert us to a possible sexological model. They conclude that “the two most obvious repeated themes [across chapters] are (a) the relative contribution of biological vs. experiential variables, and (b) the nature and source of sex differences” (p. 17). Also, although these points may have been too obvious to acknowledge, all the chapters except the feminist and sociological ones emphasize sex as genital activity, and omit any discussion of power, script, or commercial factors. The emphases on genital activity, sex differences, and the role of biological variables are central to the sexological model of sexuality.