Answering Sexual Dysfunctions in Marriage

This book is trying to describe and investigate the insiders' perspectives of the Chinese couples towards sexual dysfunctions in marriage according to their own interpretation in the socio-cultural context of Hong Kong. Interpretation of experience in marriage for the spouses is specific to clinical social work, psychotherapy and sex therapy in a wider socio-cultural context. It drives us to expand the horizon of understanding and investigation towards the phenomenon of sexual dysfunction with the concern of human alternatives or possibilities, veering round from etiology to understanding of human significance or meaning of sexual dysfunctions in contexts of the Chinese couples. The principles of descriptive phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics would furnish epistemological strategies for searching of meanings of the experiences in the dimensions of space (perceived contexts), time, self (body) and relations (others) that articulated a conceptual framework for pre-understanding of this qualitative inquiry. In this qualitative study employed with in-depth interviews, eight Chinese spouses assessed with sexual dysfunctions and their partners in heterosexual marriage have been recruited to provide personal accounts of their marital experience and perceived significance of sexual dysfunctions in marriage.