Aims

Part A:
- to summarize the basic biological information about sexuality in order to position the biological, morphological and functionak factors underlying sexual behaviour and to initiate to a psychophysiological thinking

Part B:
At the end of the course, the students should be able to tackle human sexuality at the level of the link between the somatic and the psychologic, by developing their critical mind in order to avoid as well biological reductionism as excessive psychologisation.

Main themes

Part A:
The course will integrate the basic notions of gene, hormone and neuron; the matter is to describe and understand how the endocrinal and nervous processes interact in the sexual behaviour. In this aim the following stages will be considered:
- the genetic and chromosome bases responsible for the biochemical structure and functioning of human being, either man or woman.
- in an anatomo-functional approach with a weak magnifying power, the genital system and the nervous somato-vegetative system as minimal basic data, necessary but not sufficient , of the sexual behaviour
- in a functional sharper and dynamic approach, the neuroendocrine mechanisms of sexuality
- in a psychophysiological angle, the sexual reaction and the biological, sensory and neuroendocrine underlying factors.

Part B:
Presentation of the great questions of this link nature/culture, innate/acquired, about sexuality, knowing that these aspects are at the same time indivisible in human life and necessarily dissociated in an analysis with a scientific claim.

Content and teaching methods

Part B:
Psychophysiology of desire and pleasure ; sexual emotions and reactions ; sexual identity and orientation ; puberty, parentality, menopause, senescence, sleep : the different stages and states of the existence are reviewed with a double glance, pycho-physiological.
The course is presented with transparents. The syllabus is enriched with excerpts of compendiums in sexology, of papers.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Part B:
This course follows the course SEX2590A, Biology of sexuality.
Evaluation by a written examination on wide questions through the whole subject matter and requiring a work of synthesis bsed on a previous memorisation of the content of the course.
Transparents and syllabus