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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXand a consequent impairment of the vascular mechanismof detumescence.In most cases there is only a relative defect of potency.Erection more or less completely occurs and is followed,though too rapidly, by ejaculation. The subject may notBut we cannot doubtbe conscious that anything is wrong.counts for much inthat this defect of masculine potencythe prevalence of sexual frigidity among women.When the loss of ispower more absolute whether dueto temporary psychic impotence or to real enfeebling conditionsthe subjectis often alarmed, even very alarmed.Under the influence of his nervous terror we often find aman constantly brooding over his own sexual powers, constantlytrying to arouse them, constantly, ifperhaps, he isunmarried, making appointments with prostitutes,to meetwith frequent disappointment.*We thus have two classes of cases, those of psychic impotenceand those of what may perhaps still be termedneurasthenic impotence. In the former, the mechanism ofdetumescence is intact but its action is inhibited by psychictension; the treatment, therefore, simply consists inremoving the psychic inhibition by allaying the subject'sdoubts and suspicions. In the cases of neurasthenic impotence,the mechanism of detumescence is not inhibitedbut, on the contrary, more or less enfeebled, and the treatmentis less promising, though it is usually quite possible,if not to restore the impaired mechanism, at all events tominimize the results of the impairment. In all these casesthe main pointis to allay the patient's terror, turn his*It is scarcely necessary to say that in the case of a chaste andrefined man impotence with a prostitute proves nothing. Moll mentionsthe case of a man who, never having had sexual intercourse, visiteda prostitute before marriage, on the advice of a friend, to ascertainif he was potent. He was quite impotent. But he married and wasentirely potent with his wife*[306]