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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXhypophysis. FitzGibbon regards it as an apparently spontaneousatrophy of the genital organs liable to producetoxins, whence a train of symptoms such as flushing, etc.,which may be eliminated in severe cases by removal of thewomb; but as flushings and allied symptoms may occurto a pronounced degree after the womb is removed, onaccount of disease, at an earlier age, this view seemsdubious at the best.Although slight emotional and physical disturbances arealmost invariable at this period, many women, even thoseof unstable nervous disposition, pass through this stage oftransition with no serious trouble, though a few are liableto some degree of breakdown, physical or mental.On the psychic side it is inevitable that the "change oflife," the realization of the fact which she has perhapstried to postpone that she is no longer young, shouldmake a deep impression on a woman. The end of thereproductive life, moreover, appears as the end of thewhole sexual life, though that is by no means actuallyThe woman awakes with a start to the fact thatthe case.what seems the chief period of life is rapidly slipping awayfrom her. There is thus sometimes a sudden increasedsexual activity, with occasionally an unwonted tendencyto be attracted to some new man and to make advancesto him. In unmarried women who have lived respectableand conventional lives the same tendencies occasionallyappear and are more apt to be accompanied by indicationsof mental unbalance. All such manifestations are familiarlyknown and their frequency often exaggerated.Yet we have to recognize that the period of the menopausemay sometimes be marked by such disturbances inthe sexual psychic life,exacerbation of desireespeciallya final flare of the generative flameperhaps accompaniedby various caprices and suspicions and occasionally by