Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition

Disorders of Desire tells the story of U.S. sexology over the forty-year period from the late 1940s to the late 1980s. The first edition, published in 1990, centered on the researchers, professional debates, social changes, and political movements that shaped the field. It underscores the high stakes in the ongoing contests of authority over sexuality and gender. From the exposure of individual lives lived under the scrutiny of sexual science to the inside world of scientific research, from the celebratory and brazen street politics of early gay liberation to the anonymous sufferers in self-help movements, from the pathologies of the marriage bed to the legitimation of transsexualism, Disorders of Desire traces the influence of sexology in midto late-twentieth-century American life. Now the second edition returns to print this chapter in the history of U.S. sexuality, with new material and commentary. Preparing for a new edition posed special challenges regarding what and how much to revise from the original book. In anticipation of this task, I was hyperattuned to how other authors approached it. Judith Shulevitz’s intriguing article on the revision of literary texts, “Get Me Rewrite,’’ warns that revising years later might violate the “integrity of the original’’ and might constitute a form