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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXauthorities advise as generally the best. With mental peaceand rational hygiene fairly satisfactory results may bereached in these cases.This indicates that sexual incapacity is largely a matterof personal and social adaptation. In most cases if thesubject had been from youth in a natural and wholesomerelationship with individuals of the opposite sex the difficultyor incapacity for harmonious union with a congenialmember of that sex would not arise, and there would belittle tendency to nervous terror, immature timidity, oraggressive frigidity in approaching a sexually desirableperson. We are justified in believing that sexual incompetenceis, to a large extent, a special manifestation ofincomplete social adaptation. We must not ignore theconstitutional factors, which may, for instance, involvea homosexual tendency, nor physical defects or weaknesswhich calls for the surgeon's aid. But the wise surgeonhimself admits that when he has done his best there oftenremains much for the psychologist and psycho-therapist.We seem justified in believing that the sexual impulseis never so feeble that it cannot, at times, under favorableconditions, become in some degree manifest. Krafft-Ebingaccepted the existence of complete sexual incapacity inrare instances, but he brought forward no observations ofhis own in evidence, only a case of Legrand du Saulle's inwhich seminal emissions had still taken place and one ofHammond's in which there had even been transitory erections.These cases were undoubtedly marked by a considerabledegree of hypoaesthesiabut the definite sexualmanifestations they yet exhibited prevent us from acceptingthem as examples of complete sexual anaesthesia.It seems equally doubtful whether complete sexualanaesthesia can exist in women. There can indeed be nodoubt as to the extreme frequency of hypoaesthesia, or, as[308]