Sexual impotence

“ The patients of this class have always been normal in their sex-life. Suddenly, one day, they find themselves impotent. The cause of this kind of impotence is, in the majority of cases, sexual excesses, and four different kinds of excesses may be taken into consideration, excesses in copulation, in masturbation, in mental erethism, or commonly called day-dreaming, and finally excesses in tactile eroticism, or the common sexual dalliance or caresses of young lovers. ”

“ I am leaving out of consideration sexual impotence, because this is a real disability, and a man suffering with it only irritates the woman without satisfying her. For this she will not stand. But where the man is sexually potent—he may be aged and homely—his other physical attributes play but a small rôle with woman ”

“ Absolute sexual continence is imposed upon the unmarried woman, under pain of being considered immoral or fallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia, impotence, depression, and a great variety of nervous complaints involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life, sleeplessness, and preoccupation with sexual desires and imaginings. ”

“ The second type of Impotence, irritative, is the most frequent of all. In this condition the power of erection may or may not be affected, but the main distressing feature is a premature ejaculation of seminal fluid, which may take place even before a man approaches the woman. This condition is caused by over-stimulation and over-irritation of the sexual nervous apparatus, and is mostly the result either of an old habit of masturbation (self-abuse) or a chronic inflammation in the deep urethra left after previous Gonorrhea. ”

“ Psychic Impotence.—An important sexual neurosis, at least in the eyes of sufferers from it, is what physicians have come to know as psychic impotence. Young married men, because of over-anxiety with regard to themselves for a number of reasons, but without any physical factor to disturb them, find it impossible to complete the sexual act. ”

“ A momentary psychic impotence is not necessarily pathological. While voluptuous sensations alternate during coitus with desire and corresponding erotic representations, a sudden idea of the ridiculousness of the situation, signs of pain or of bad temper in the woman, the idea of impotence or of the real object of coitus; finally, anything which acts as a contrast to the sensations and impulses of coitus, may interrupt it, so that the voluptuous sensations and sexual appetite disappear and erection subsides. Voluntary efforts are often incapable of putting things right again. ”

“ Impotence.—Some misapprehension as to the signification of this term is prevalent, owing to the extent of weakness and the morbid conditions to which it has been applied. The wrong application has been very common; i. e., in using it to describe a condition of sexual neurasthenia and temporary suspension of the sexual powers, from moral shock. A young man who exercises a doubt as to his ability to copulate may, upon the occasion, be unable to procure an erection ”

“ The exciting cause of impotence must combine a constant and long-continued sexual debauch with the depraved chain of thought that must necessarily accompany such degradation; and the practice of self-pollution must be the most fruitful of all causes.
Treatment.—In the management of impotence, the patient’s persuasive influence must not in any way change the intentions of the physician, or the fast hold of his mind, which is so indispensable to a cure, will be lost. The patient is always in great haste, and constantly urging the physician to make rapid progress. ”

“ In another case a vigorous and healthy man, not inverted, and with strong sexual desires, who remained abstinent up to marriage, suffers from psychic impotence, and his wife remains a virgin notwithstanding all her affection and caresses. Ord considered that sexual abstinence might produce many minor evils. "Most of us," he wrote (British Medical Journal, Aug. 2, 1884) "have, no doubt, been consulted by men, chaste in act, who are tormented by sexual excitement. ”

“ The first category includes states of mental weakness in which, owing to the causative cerebral (or spinal) disease, consciousness is clouded, and the ethical and intellectual functions are interfered with; and in which there can be no opposition made to a sexual desire that has either always been intense, or that has been intensified by the disease-process. At the same time, impotence exists, and no longer permits expression of the sexual instinct in violent acts (rape) , but only in acts that are silly. ”

“ Yet impotence is, at the most, an infirmity, whether due to some congenital anatomical defect or to a disturbance of nervous balance in the delicate sexual mechanism, such as is apt to occur in men of abnormally sensitive temperament. ”

“ Excessive sexual indulgence is infinitely more harmful than too little. A body, misused by excess, will go to pieces, even without venereal diseases. Impotence, barrenness, spinal affections, insanity, at least [Pg 165] intellectual weakness, and many other diseases, are the usual consequences. Temperance is as necessary in sexual intercourse as in eating and drinking, and all other human wants. ”

“ Thus there are men for whom sexual contact with their virtuous wives does not supply the necessary stimulus for the excitation of an erection, but in whom it occurs when the act is attempted with a prostitute, or in the form of some unnatural sexual act. As far as psychical stimuli are here concerned, they may be inadequate (v. infra, paræsthesia and perversion of sexual instinct) .
(c) Inhibition. The erection centre may become functionally incapable as a result of cerebral influence. This inhibitory influence is an emotion (disgust, fear of contagion) , or an idea [30] of impotence. ”

“ There are, however, important clinical facts which support 395the supposition that total sexual abstinence may lead to alteration of these glands. Thus we have observed impotence in the cases of several men after sexual abstinence of long duration, which entirely disappeared in nearly every case after copulation at regular intervals; and we arrive at the conclusion that a regular use of these organs, which are intended by Nature to be used, is a necessity, and that impotence can frequently be best cured by marriage. In marriage only can hygienic and regular sexual intercourse best take place ”

“ The importance of retaining the sexual power, of using it wisely and temperately, cannot be over-estimated. It is paramount. Lose your sexual power, lose the power to reproduce your species, and, according to the laws of nature, your days of usefulness are past, and decay and death will soon overtake you.
Impotence sexually means impotence in everything, impotence mentally, physically, socially, etc. Your powers are fast waning—you might just as well be laid away without further notice. ”

“ Impotence consists in a lack of power to effect an erection; but there is a condition, not always impotence, where the person has lost all [129] desire for copulation, and will not make an effort to obtain an erection. He does not attempt to concentrate his will-power, and does not desire any relation whatever with the opposite sex, although he may have been a debauché in his early life. ”

“ Psychic impotence is a very peculiar condition strikingly illustrating a powerful influence of the mind over bodily functions. 116It usually attacks young men in perfect health who are of a worrying and brooding disposition, particularly so over sexual matters. ”

“ Most common causes of paralytic impotence in young men are a persistent and excessive masturbation habit and excessive sexual indulgence. The earlier in life these vicious habits and excesses are started and the longer they last, the harder and harder is the cure of the resulting sexual exhausting impotence. In fact, these cases are the most 121difficult of all to cure, and many of them are incurable. Men suffering with paralytic impotence present a truly pitiful picture. ”

“ Neurologists have observed women on whom continence was forced either during marriage or after its dissolution, who thereupon fell into a state of severe nervous exhaustion or nervous excitement, or suffered from threatening or even actually developed psychoses. That sexual abstinence is “absolutely harmless,” as moralists and many physicians would so gladly believe, appears to Erb a quite unwarrantable assumption.
“In the processes of reproduction,” continues Erb in his discussion of this subject, “woman is the principal sufferer. ”

“ It is important to remark that the evil results of sexual abstinence in women, in the opinion of many of those who insist upon their importance, are by no means merely due to unsatisfied sexual desire. ”

“ SEXUAL IMPOTENCY.—Sexual impotency means sexual starvation, and drives many wives to ruin, while a similar lack among wives drives husbands to libertinism. Nothing so enhances the happiness of married couples as this full, life-abounding, sexual vigor in the husband, thoroughly reciprocated by the wife, yet completely controlled by both. ”

“ Again (especially in females) , fear of the result of coitus (pregnancy) , or abhorrence of men, by reason of mental or moral weakness, may direct into perverse channels an instinct that makes itself felt with abnormal intensity. But too early and perverse sexual satisfaction injures not merely the mind, but also the body; inasmuch as it induces neuroses of the sexual apparatus (irritable weakness of the centres governing erection and ejaculation; defective pleasurable feeling in coitus) , while, at the same time, it maintains the imagination and libido in continuous excitement. ”

“ Shameless prostitution may result, even in married women. In cases of a milder type, the sexual impulse is exhibited in the form of onanism, nude perambulations about the room, wearing of male attire, etc. In cases of hysterical mental disorder, the morbidly excited sexual life may manifest itself in the form of maniacal jealousy, baseless complaints against men of indecent assault, hallucinations of coitus, etc. Sometimes there may be frigidity, with lack of sexual pleasure, commonly due to genital anæsthesia. ”

“ If, as happens in relatively rare cases, upsetting early experiences cause him to block off his 97 sexual feelings, he simply becomes impotent. He will experience this impotency as a tremendous and tragic deprivation and will be powerfully motivated to overcome it. Those who have witnessed the sufferings of a man with such a problem will know just how powerful his drive back to health is.
The mature female’s orgasm takes place within the vagina; the fact that a woman can experience this kind of orgasm generally marks her as a fully developed woman in all aspects of her personality. ”

“ More particularly in such circumstances are evil effects on the nervous system likely to ensue, since we have a combination of excessively prolonged and frequent sexual intercourse, and of interference with complete sexual gratification. ”

“ Another definition of impotency in man is the non posse seminare in vase idoneo; three things being considered as indispensable to his due performance of the generative act.—Ut arriget or erection; 2, Ut vas fœmineum resaret, or intromission, and 3, Ut in vase seminat, or emission.
Sterility must not be confounded with impotency. Many women are barren, but very few are impotent; while, on the contrary, many men are impotent who ought not, on that account, to be regarded as barren. In either sex impotency is present when from whatever cause an individual cannot concur in the sexual contact. ”

“ Women who have been married for many years, who have had many children, and who have suckled these children, pass through the changes of the climacteric much more easily than old maids, than women who have lived for many years in continent widowhood, or than women who have had very few children or none at all. The practice of prohibitive coitus, i. e., the use during intercourse of methods of preventing the occurrence of conception, a form of sexual immorality which has become extraordinarily common during the last few decades, has an unfavourable influence upon the course of the climacteric. ”

“ It may be added that we may find a curiously inconsistent proof of the excessive importance attached to sexual function by a society which systematically tries to depreciate sex, in the disgrace which is attributed to the lack of "virile" potency. Although civilized life offers immense scope for the activities of sexually impotent persons, the impotent man is made to feel that, while he need not be greatly concerned if he suffers from nervous disturbances of digestion, if he should suffer just as innocently from nervous disturbances of the sexual impulse, it is almost a crime. ”

“ Not merely does a woman entertain the disturbing thought that the critical age has begun, bringing in its train certain dreaded dangers to her health and even her life, but she is further depressed by the consciousness that she is about to lose her feminine attractions, and to decline in sexual esteem, and that her reproductive capacity is now to be extinguished. ”

“ The female masturbator often becomes excessively prudish, despises and hates the opposite sex, and forms passionate attachments for other women. Masturbation is not seldom the cause of a great number of female complaints. It is often the cause of obstruction and of pains of menstruation, of ovarian neuralgia, of weakness of the legs and of sexual irritation. It causes pruritus vulvae, hypertrophy of the clitoris and labia minora, hyperaemia of the vaginal orifice, fluor albus, and cervical catarrh. Masturbating women often complain of general weakness and of palpitation of the heart. ”