Sexual desire could at times appear to bring pleasure and misery in somewhat equal proportions. It is my firm conviction that a better understanding of it can help to tilt the weight away from misery, the present book being based upon the belief that knowledge is empowering. For example, rightly or wrongly, people sometimes think that their tastes are socially and morally unacceptable and better knowledge could prove valuable in seeing how the taste might have arisen and coming to terms with it. Similarly, couples frequently find that discord arises from divergent tastes or intensities of desire. Insights into how desire works might yield greater tolerance of differences and thereby harmony. To give a full account of the range of desires, Chapters 20–1 describe the nightmare world of sexual violence, for which, of course, there can be no degrees of tolerance. I believe that a greater insight into the causes of sexual violence could help to combat it. However, the reader seeking only insight into harmonious and consensual sex might wish to skip these two chapters.

I have a wide range of different readers in mind, such as neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers, counsellors, teachers, social workers, police and probation officers, as well as the general public. I have tried very hard to write it in a style that is accessible to such a spectrum of different readers and I can only hope that I have succeeded. To respect such a spectrum, some information on, for example, details of brain processes is put in footnotes, which can be ignored without losing the story-line.