The Sexual Tipping Point®: A Narrated Exploration of a Dynamic Biopsychosocial & Cultural Model of Sexual Response

M. A. Perelman

sexual tipping point model; biopsychosocial model; sexual dysfunction; sex therapy; sexual medicine; medical education

This Legends Series contribution presents a narrated, animated exploration of the Sexual Tipping Point® (STP) model, a biopsychosocial framework conceived by the author to help clinicians and patients alike understand, inspire hope, and successfully treat sexual disorders. The STP illustrates how sexual response at any moment reflects the dynamic balance of mental and physical, excitatory, inhibitory, and disinhibiting factors, whose net sum determines an individual’s tipping point between sexual and nonsexual states. The film opens with a brief personal introduction tracing the model’s origins from a hand-drawn sketch of “inciters” and “suppressors” in Helen Singer Kaplan’s 1995 final book, through its first professional presentation at Columbia University’s continuing medical education program in June 2000, to its current variable-switch form. In addition, it highlights its stewardship by the MAP Education & Research Foundation, which owns the STP copyrights and registered trademark and makes all STP materials freely available at mapedfund.org. The animated presentation then explains the model’s components and demonstrates its clinical application, including a prostate-treatment case illustrating how simultaneously occurring excitatory, inhibitory, and disinhibiting influences shape sexual response. Disinhibition is especially observed in an alcohol demonstration of biphasic drug effects. A companion interactive HTML version (https://mapedfund.github.io/stp/) allows viewers to manipulate the model’s factors and observe how both mental and physical factor changes shift the tipping point. The film was created in response to clinicians’ requests for a resource briefer than the comprehensive STP Primer (mapedfund.org), recently developed with the support of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America and EVAL Health. This film provides a citable, fifteen-minute introduction to a model designed to increase both comprehension and hope for clinicians and patients alike.

The production of this film utilized material from both the author’s own archives and the repository of material in the STP Primer. The STP Primer was developed following an introduction by the Sexual Medicine Society of North America (SMSNA) to EVAL Health, which provided the required technical expertise and support and currently hosts the platform on which the Primer resides. Financial assistance for the film’s production was provided by the MAP Education & Research Foundation, an approved 501(c)(3) public charity.

Michael A. Perelman, PhD, is the Founder and Chairman of the MAP Education & Research Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, which owns the Sexual Tipping Point® copyrights and registered trademark. He has consulted to and invested in numerous pharmaceutical companies; none of those past or current relationships constitute a conflict of interest with the content of this video.

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