Subscribers to one model, the Madonna-whore complex, hold that women can only be "mothers" or "whores."

He gave a cool laugh, drawled, 'I guess you could call it the madonna-whore complex.'

In psychoanalytic literature, a Madonna-whore complex is the inability to maintain sexual arousal within a committed, loving relationship.

Mary, Mary quite contrary Italy struggles to come to grips with the Madonna-whore complex.

The songs are not lyrically linked, and explore themes ranging from the Madonna-Whore Complex to celebrity life.

Psychoanalyst Richard Tuch suggests that Freud offered at least one alternative explanation for the Madonna-whore complex:

Freud argued that the Madonna-whore complex is caused by oedipal castration fears which arise when a man experiences the affection he once felt for his mother with women he now sexually desires.

Another theory claims that the Madonna-whore complex derives from the representations of women as either madonnas or whores in mythology and Judeo-Christian theology rather than developmental disabilities of individual men.

Discovering this feminine version of the madonna-whore complex in Romantic novels "demonstrates that the distinction between long-term and short-term mating strategies is instinctive, and it gives literary scholars a new way of examining old writings," as The Times put it.

The majority of the video album was directed by Sophie Muller, and the individual video clips largely (but not exclusively) focus upon Annie Lennox interpreting the madonna-whore complex in the form of a neurotic mousey housewife and an extroverted blonde vamp, and are steeped in metaphorical imagery and subtext.