Penner and Penner (1981) offer the book The gift of sex, subtitled "A Guide to Sexual Fulfillment." The purpose of the book is to provide the reader with a guide for understanding his or her sexuality and the sexual relationship in marriage. The authors state on the cover that they will help focus on the following aspects of the issue:
These can also be identified as five main topics made by the book, and the authors cover each topic in detail.
The authors examine the physical dimension of sex in terms of how our bodies work, how we can learn about our own bodies, how we can share what we learn and share our bodies with a partner, how our bodies work, and the different phases of the sexual response.
The authors first emphasize that we should not be ashamed of our bodies and that we have to know that our bodies are created by God and are not something shameful in marriage. They show how some people do think of their bodies as shameful and how this affects their sexual development adversely, as well as affecting their ability to develop a sexual relationship adversely. There are certain things which make people dissatisfied with their bodies, such as excessive weight or the fact that in some way they do not fit the body image society holds out as beautiful. Some people have the opposite problem and are preoccupied with their bodies and with beauty, and this is also not a good attitude to have. If our body image is not as it should be, there are ways we can improve it, and the authors talk about several such methods and exercises. They then talk about how we discover our bodies and how we share this with our partner, how our bodies work, and how our bodies work in the sexual act.
The total experience raises the important question of the involvement of the mind in the sexual experience, something raised in the section on the physical as well. Here, the authors talk about the sensuous and the erotic and note how desi...