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Introduction - What is sexual behavior?
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Factors in Human Sexual Behavior
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Modern sex researchers have practically abandoned the general concept of a sex drive. Instead, there has been a tendency toward breaking it into components. As early as 1940, R. L. Dickinson differentiated between "sex endowment, capacity, and drive." In 1948, Alfred C. Kinsey spoke of sexual "capacity" as opposed to "actual performance"; and in 1958, Lester A. Kirkendall proposed a distinction between "sexual capacity, sexual performance, and sexual drive." ("Toward a Clarification of the Concept of Male Sex Drive," Marriage and Family Living, 20. November 1958). So far, this latter approach seems to be the most promising, and therefore we should perhaps adopt Kirkendall's argument here (while slightly modifying his language). In short: When talking about human sexual behavior, it seems useful to distinguish between three basic factors:
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1. Sexual capacity, i.e., what the individual can do.
2. Sexual motivation, i.e., what the individual wants to do.
3. Sexual performance, i.e., what the individual does do.
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