This book provides an extensive review of current literature on the interrelationship between alcohol use/abuse and sexuality. Topics addressed include the effects of alcohol on sexual responses of male and female social drinkers and male and female alcoholics; the incidence of sexual deviance in male alcoholics; marital sexual adjustment in male alcoholics; the relationship of sex victimization to the intoxicated state in female victims; marital sexual adjustment in actively drinking male and female alcoholics; influence of chronic alcoholism upon homosexual and lesbian relationships; sexual adjustment of single recovering female alcoholics.

The effect of alcohol on sexual behavior is a central theme of Dr. Carlotta Schuster's monograph. The effects of acute or chronic alcohol ingestion on the sexual responses of heterosexual and gay men and women are reviewed in detail. She brings to life the research reports by presenting a series of illuminating case vignettes.

Dr. Schuster reminds us of Macbeth wherein the porter says, "It (alcohol) provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance." It is amazing how many scores of scientific projects have been mounted to test the accuracy of those immortal words. These are described and summarized in this volume, so the reader can ascertain the conditions and circumstances that change, modify or confirm Shakespeare's observation.

On reading Dr. Schuster's monograph, it gradually dawned on me, a student of sexual function and dysfunction, and not, like Dr. Schuster, an expert on alcoholism, that there are striking parallels and ways of looking at these two facets of life, alcohol and sex. Both can be, and generally are, a source of great pleasure, satisfaction, and enhancement of living, or they can be the cause of intense misery, unhappiness, loss of psychological or physiological function, of intense craving, loss of control and of self-respect, and enormous disruption of intimate and loving relationships.

The complexity of both alcohol addiction and sexual behavior are almost mind-boggling. Think of the interplay among these diverse elements. One must consider on the biological side: genetic factors interacting with constitutional influences, such as fetal hormones and enzymes, brain anatomy and physiology, including the role of . . .