Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

MARRIAGEmen, much commoner than is sometimes supposed. Insome cases, indeed, it isapparent rather than real, and isdue to the concealed, or even merely latent and unconscious,existence of an abnormal direction of the sexualimpulse, more especially to an unrealized homosexual impulse.In many cases frigidity may be merelythe result ofthe exhaustion of excessive masturbation. In yet othercases it isthe accompaniment of a strenuous developmentof other activities, psychic or physical, which use up allthe superfluous energy of the organism, though in someof these we must probably admit that the sexual impulsewas feeble at the outset. In others, again, it is due to akind of infantilism, and is then a form of retarded development.In civilization the strenuous demands of life and themore or less unnatural conditions under which the sexualimpulse develops combine to produce a frequent inability,relative or absolute, to secure potency in coitus. Hamiltonfound that only 55 per cent of his husbands and 38 percent of his wives, all belonging to what we must regard asthe most civilized stratum of the community, regardedtheir potency as normal; and while there were a certainnumber of inconclusive answers among both men andwomen, the proportion of both husbands and wives whoconsidered their sexual potency below normal was decidedlyhigher than of those who thought it was above, aresult in contradiction of the common belief that bothmen and women are disposed to exaggerate their own sexqualities. It is also noteworthy that the number of husbandswho thought their wives undersexed was about thesame as of wives who thought their husbands undersexed.Hamilton found, further, that 41 cent husbands ad-permitted that there was, or had been, a difficulty in securingpotency, while 24 per cent wives (not,it must be'[303]