Categories
Sexual Dysfunction

Male Orgasm Influence

Professionals many times look for a specific influence or conditioning that predetermines sexual failure, and in most instances it can be identified if the delving goes deep enough.

Instances of neither positive nor negative dominance by either biophysical or psychosocial influence structures. If a woman has never established a close juxtaposition between the biophysical and psychosocial systems of influence because she has lived in a protective vacuum, she will not have been stimulated to develop her own sexual value system and therefore will tend to neutralize most input material of sexual implication.

The case history
below is presented to emphasize the fact that there need be no dominant influence (either positive or negative) in the development of primary orgasmic dysfunction.

Mrs. B was an only child of parents in their thirties when she was born. Both parents, teachers in a small, church-oriented college, were more restrained by habit of life-style and their own relationship than by religious influence.

The child did not develop as an extension of their presumed intellectual interests but became the “doll” whom they dressed exquisitely, handled little, and disregarded emotionally (as she perceived her upbringing). There was no real source of female identification, no opportunity to establish a sexual value system.

All decisions in her behalf included the theoretically objective presentation of two alternatives, but parental, primarily mother’s preference was emphasized. Mrs. B had no recollection of making a definitive decision of her own until her sophomore year at college, when she chose for a husband a relatively older man (he was in graduate school and seven years her senior). With this one decision she again relinquished all opportunity for self-determination.

They married upon his graduation at the end of her junior year in college. His assumption of total authority in marriage appeared more by default than demand and continued through 11 years of marriage, during which two children were born.

During the first years of the marriage, Mrs. B maintained a complacent attitude toward her sexual role within the marriage. However, in the last six years of the marriage she developed an intense desire to realize full sexual expression for herself and greater sexual pleasure for her husband.

Husband behavior
In this latter period her husband’s behavior, though warm and protective, was highly restrained in sexual as well as other facets of the marital relationship. He participated in the Foundation’s program with complete willingness, although with little concept of what or how anything in the marriage could be changed.

Reared by an older aunt and uncle he had learned little, by direction or observation, of the potential for human interaction on a personal level. However, he fortunately had not been given any primarily negative indoctrination.

Mrs. B’s enthusiasm for an effective sexual relationship within the marriage was and still is defined as real, but she has been unable to overcome anesthesia to any sensory perception that she can relate to erotic arousal. She has been unable to establish sensory reference within which to develop and relate her well-defined affection and regard for her husband.

The two contributing systems of influence on sexual function:
Remained in displaced positioning one from the other. To date she has demonstrated-insufficient emotional or intellectual capacity to establish a symbiotic state between her two systems of influence.

It is with mixed clinical reaction that the cotherapists regard the positive reaction of Mr. B to therapy. His response was one of delighted enthusiasm to the concept of interaction marked by both physical and verbal communication.

His feeling for his wife was intensified and he has become completely comfortable in a demonstrative marital role. While both partners feel that the alteration in the quality of the marital relationship is of significant proportion, the therapy has in fact failed to achieve the aim of reversal of the presenting distress.

This case represents a strikingly intense degree of negative conditioning, yet there was little of content in the history that could be termed specifically negative in its rejection of sexual expression.

This case also represents an example of the possible clinical warning system revealed by a negative reaction to the use of a moisturizing lotion as a medium of physical exchange. Mrs. B found its use “distracting” and of little meaning to the exchange with her partner.

While Mr. B found it to be the crucial contribution to establishing his initial ability to touch and feel with comfort and receptivity.

Categories
Sexual Dysfunction

Male Sex & Religion

While the multiplicity of etiological influences is acknowledged, the factor of religious orthodoxy still remains of major import in primary orgasmic dysfunction as in almost every form of human sexual inadequacy.

Investigation of 193 women who have never achieved orgasmic return before referral to the Foundation for treatment, 42 were products of rigidly channelized religious control. Eighteen were from Catholic, 26 from Jewish, and 7 from fundamentalist Protestant backgrounds.

It may also be recalled that 9 of these 42 primarily non orgasmic women reflecting orthodox religious backgrounds also were identified as having the clinical complaint of vaginismus, while 3 more women with orthodox religious backgrounds had to contend with situational orgasmic dysfunction and vaginismus simultaneously.

A history reflecting the control of orthodox religious demands upon the orgasmically dysfunctional woman and her husband is presented to underscore the Foundation’s professional concern for any orthodoxy-influenced imprinting and environmental input that can and does impose severely negative influences upon the susceptible woman’s psychosocial structure relative to her facility for sexual functioning.

Mr. A and His Wife
After 9 years of a marriage that had not been consummated, Mr. and Mrs. A were referred to the Foundation for treatment. He was 26 and she 24 years old at marriage. Mrs. A’s family background was one of unquestioned obedience to parents and to disciplinary religious tenets.

She was one of three siblings, the middle child to an elder brother by three years and a younger sister by two years. Other than her father, religion was the overwhelming influence in her life. The specific religious orientation that of Protestant fundamentalism encompassed total dedication to the concept that sex and sin were synonymous words.

Mrs. A remembers her father, who died when she was 19, as a Godlike figure whose opinion in all matters was absolute law in the home. Control of dress, social commitment, educational direction and in fact, school selection through college were his responsibility.

There were long daily sessions, of family prayer interspersed with paternal pronouncements, never family discussions. On Sunday the entire day was devoted to the church, with activities running the gamut of Sunday school, formal service, and young people’s groups.

The young woman described a cold, formal, controlled family environment in which there was complete demand for dress as well as toilet privacy.

Not only were the elder brother and sisters socially isolated, but the sisters also were given separate rooms and encouraged to protect individual privacy.

She never remembers having seen her mother, father, brother, or sister in an undressed state. The subject of sex was never mentioned, and all literature, including newspapers, available to the family group was evaluated by her father for possibly suggestive or controversial material. There was a restricted list of radio programs to which the children could listen.

Mrs. A had no concept of her mother except as a woman living a life of rigid emotional control, essentially without a described personality, fully dedicated to the concept that woman’s role was one of service. She considered it her duty and her privilege to clean, cook, and care for children, and to wait upon her husband.

There is no recall of pleasant moments of quiet exchange between mother and daughter, or, for that matter, of any freedom to discuss matters of moment with either her brother or her sister.

As a young girl she was totally unprepared for the onset of menstruation. The first menstrual period occurred while she was in school she was terrified, ran home, and was received by a thoroughly embarrassed mother who coldly explained to the young girl that this was woman’s lot.

She was told that as a woman she must expect to suffer this “curse” every month. Her mother warned her that once a month she would be quite ill with “bad pains” in her stomach and closed the discussion with the admonition that she was never to discuss the subject with anyone, particularly not with her younger sister. The admonition was obeyed to the letter.

The mother provided the protective materials necessary and left the girl to her own devices. There was no discussion of when or how to use the menstrual protection provided.

Menstrual cramping had its onset with the second menstrual period and continued to be a serious psychosocial handicap until Mrs. A was seen in therapy. She also described the fact that her younger sister was confined to bed with monthly frequency while maturing.

During the Teenage Years

Dating in groups was permitted by her father for church-social activities and occasionally, well-chaperoned school events. College, selected by her father, was a coeducational institution which was described by her as living by the “18-inch rule,” i.e., handholding was forbidden and 18 inches were required between male and female students at all times.

Her dating was rare and well chaperoned. After graduation she worked as a secretary in a publishing house specializing in religious tracts. Here she met and married a man of almost identical religious background.

The courtship was completely circumspect from a physical point of view. The couple arrived at their wedding night with a history of having exchanged three chaste kisses, which not only was the total of their physical courtship but also represented the only times she remembered ever being kissed by a man. Her father had felt such a display of emotion unseemly.

The only time her mother ever discussed a sexual matter was the day of her wedding. Mrs. A was carefully instructed to remember that she now was committed to serve her husband. It would be her duty as a wife to allow her husband privileges.

The Husband Privileges
were never spelled out. She also was assured that she would be hurt by her husband, but that “it” would go away in time. Finally and most important, she was told that “good women” never expressed interest in the “thing.” Her reward for serving her husband would be, hopefully, in having children.

She remembers her wedding night as a long struggle devoted to divergent purposes. Her husband frantically sought to find the proper place to insert his penis, while she fought an equally determined battle with nightclothes and bedclothes to provide as completely a modest covering as possible for the awful experience.

The pain her mother had forecast developed as her husband valiantly strove for intromission.

Although initially there were almost nightly attempts to consummate the marriage, there was total lack of success. It never occurred to Mrs. A that she might cooperate in any way with the insertive attempts.

And since this was to be her husband’s pleasure, it therefore was his responsibility.

She evidenced such a consistently painful response whenever penetration was attempted that frequency of coital attempt dwindled rapidly. The last three years before referral, attempts at consummation occurred approximately once every three to four months.

For 9 years this woman only knew that she was physically distressed whenever her husband approached her sexually, and that for some reason the distress did not abate, Her husband occasionally ejaculated while attempting to penetrate, so she thought that he must be satisfied.

Whenever Mr. A renewed the struggle to consummate, she was convinced that he had little physical consideration for her. Her tense, frustrated, negative attitude, initially stimulated by both the pain and the “good woman” concept described by her mother, became in due course one of complete physical rejection of sexual functioning in general and of the man involved in particular.

When seen in therapy, Mrs. A had no concept of what the word masturbation meant. Her husband’s sexual release before marriage had been confined to occasional nocturnal emissions, but he did learn to masturbate after’ marriage and accomplished ejaculatory release approximately once a week, without his wife’s knowledge. There was no history of extramarital exposure.

Of interest is the fact that Mrs. A’s brother has been twice divorced, reportedly because he cannot function sexually, and her younger sister has never married. As would be expected, at physical examination Mrs. A demonstrated a severe degree of vaginismus in addition to the intact hymen.

In the process of explaining the syndrome of involuntary vaginal spasm to both husband and wife, the procedures described were followed in detail. When vaginismus was described and then directly demonstrated to both husband and wife.

It was the first time Mr. A had ever seen his wife unclothed and also the first time she had submitted to a medical examination.

There obviously were multiple etiological influences combining to create this orgasmic dysfunction, but the repression of all sexual material inherent in the described form of religious orthodoxy certainly was the major factor.

Under Foundation direction, the process of education had to include reorientation of both the sexual and social value systems. The influence of the psychosocial system was turned from a dominant negative factor to a relatively neutral one during the acute phase of treatment.

This alteration in repressive quality allowed Mrs. A’s natural biophysical demand to function without determined opposition, and orgasmic expression was obtained. Obviously, the husband needed a definitive psychosexual evaluation as much as did his wife.

Categories
Sexual Dysfunction

Male Sexual Dysfunction

In order to be diagnosed as having primary orgasmic dysfunction, a woman must report lack of orgasmic attainment during her entire lifespan. There is no definition of male sexual dysfunction that parallels in this severity of exclusion.

A Male Is Judged Primarily Impotent:
The definition means simply that he has never been able to achieve intromission in either homosexual or heterosexual opportunity. However, he might, and usually does, masturbate with some regularity or enjoy occasions of partner manipulation to ejaculation.

For the primarily non orgasmic woman, however, the definition demands a standard of total inorgasmic responsivity.

The edict of lifetime non orgasmic return in the Foundation’s definition of primary orgasmic dysfunction includes a history of consistent non orgasmic response to all attempts at physical stimulation, such as masturbation, male or female manipulation, oral genital contact, and vaginal or rectal intercourse.

In Short
Every possible physical approach to sexual stimulation initiated by self or received from any partner has been totally unsuccessful in developing an orgasmic experience for the particular woman diagnosed as primarily non orgasmic.

If a woman is orgasmic in dreams or in fantasy alone, she still would be considered primarily non orgasmic.

Foundation personnel have encountered two women who provided a positive history of an occasional dream sequence with orgasmic return and a negative history of physically initiated orgasmic release.

However, no woman has been encountered to date that described the ability to fantasy to orgasm without providing a concomitant history of successful orgasmic return from a variety of physically stimulative measures.

There are salient truths about male and female sexual interaction that place the female in a relatively untenable position from the point of view of equality of sexual response.

Of primary consideration is the fact of woman’s physical necessity for an effectively functioning male sexual partner if she is to achieve coitally experienced orgasmic return.

During coition the non orgasmic human female is immediately more disadvantaged than her sexually inadequate partner in that her fears for performance are dual in character. Her primary fear is, of course, for her own inability to respond as a woman, but she frequently must contend with the secondary fear for inadequacy of male sexual performance.

The outstanding example of such a situation is, of course, that of the woman married to a premature ejaculator. From the point of view of mutual responsibility for sexual performance, the woman has only to make herself physically available in order to provide the male with ejaculatory satisfaction.

The premature ejaculator in turn makes himself available, there usually is little correlation between intromission, rapid ejaculation, and female orgasmic return during the episode.

Married Premature Ejaculator

The biophysically disadvantaged female usually is additionally disadvantaged from a psychosocial point of view. Not only is there insufficient bio-physical opportunity to accomplish orgasmic return, but in short order the wife develops the concept of being sexually used in the marriage.

She feels that her husband has no real interest in her personally nor any concept of responsibility to her as a sexual entity. Many times the wife might be at a peak of sexual excitation with intromission. Without fear for her husband’s sexual performance she could be orgasmically responsive shortly after coital connection, displaying full bio-physical capacity for sexual response.

But as she sees and feels the male thrusting frantically for ejaculatory release, she immediately fears loss of sexual opportunity, is distracted from input of biophysical stimuli by that fear, and rapidly loses sexual interest.

With the negative psychosocial-system influence from the concept of being used more than counterbalancing the high level of biophysically oriented sexual tension she brought to the coital act, orgasmic opportunity is lost.

Brief attempt should be made to highlight the direct association of male and female sexual dysfunction in marriage, for there were 223 couples referred to the Foundation for treatment with bilateral partner complaints of sexual inadequacy. By far the greatest instance of a combined diagnosis was that of a non orgasmic woman married to a premature ejaculator.

Of the total 186 premature ejaculators treated in the 11 year program, 68 were married to women reported as primarily non orgasmic and an additional 39 wives were diagnosed as situationally non orgasmie. Thus, in 107 of the 223 marriages with bilateral partner complaint of sexual dysfunction, the specific male sexual inadequacy was premature ejaculation.

Since the in-depth descriptions of the premature ejaculator presented in earlier topic include full descriptions of the problems of female sexual functioning in this situation, there is no need for a detailed history representative of the 68 women primarily non orgasmic in marriages to prematurely ejaculating men.

Another salient feature in the human female’s disadvantaged role in coital connection is the centuries old concept that it is woman’s duty to satisfy her sexual partner. When the age old demand for accommodation during coital connection dominates any woman’s responsivity, her own opportunities for orgasmic expression are lessened proportionately.

If woman is to express her biophysical drive effectively, she must have the single-standard opportunity to think and feel sexually during coital connection that previous cultures have accorded the man.

The male
must consider the marital bed as not only his privilege but also a shared responsibility if his wife is to respond fully with him in coital expression. The heedless male driving for orgasm can carry along the woman already lost in high levels of sexual demand, but his chances of elevating to orgasm the woman who is trying to accommodate to the rhythm, depth, and power of his demanding pelvic thrusting are indeed poor.

It is extremely difficult to categorize female sexual dysfunction on a relatively secure etiological basis. There is such a multiplicity of influences within the biophysical and psychosocial systems that to isolate and underscore a single, major etiological factor in any particular situation is to invite later confrontation with pitfalls in therapeutic progression.

Categories
Sexual Dysfunction

Male Libido

Random orgasmic inadequacy is illustrated in the history below. With but two episodes of orgasmic attainment in her life, Mrs. H provides a history of one manipulative and one coital effort to orgasmic release. Her two highlighted sexual experiences were as much of a surprise to her when they occurred as they were to her husband.

There seems to be a clinical entity of low sexual tension which by history does not represent specific trauma to a sexual or any other value system. If so, it is rare both in occurrence and in professional identification. Perhaps the case history reported below is representative of such a situation.

Mr. and Mrs. H
were referred to the Foundation after 11 years of marriage with the wife’s stated complaint that she was just not interested in sex. She was 47 and her husband 44 years old. Her childhood and adolescent years had been spent in comfortable surroundings. She was the eldest by three years of two sisters and reported a relatively uneventful, non traumatic background for growth and development.

Mrs. H was a relatively attractive woman with a reasonable number of dating opportunities during high-school and college years. Despite thoroughly enjoying the social aspects of the dating opportunities, there was little sexual stimulation from the few petting experiences she accepted.

She never masturbated and recalled no awareness of pleasant pelvic sensation during her childhood.

Her mother was a relatively self-sufficient woman with multiple socio cultural interests. She never discussed material of sexual content with her daughter. When Mrs. H. was 15, her father was killed in an automobile accident.

After college Mrs. H sought opportunity for a professional career in the business world. She continued working throughout her twenties, doing exceptionally well professionally. There was established social opportunity, but she found herself resistant to both male and female (one occasion) approaches to shared sexual experience.

Her resistance was not described as aversion. It was just that she was essentially unstimulated by any sexual approach and saw no point in a commitment without interest.

She had a number of women and men friends and many interests. She worked hard, enjoyed her vacations, traveled extensively, but simply avoided sexual approach. At age 36 she met and married a man three years her junior who was working in the same professional field. They formed their own business venture.

From Mrs. H’s point of view the marriage was simply a form of business merger. The same could not be said for her husband. He was very much interested in sexual functioning. He had been married for less than two years in his mid twenties and listed a large number of sexual opportunities with a wide variety of experiences before this marriage.

Mrs. H was totally cooperative in sexual functioning, but was basically unmoved. She lubricated well with coital connection, found pleasure in providing release for her husband, but was totally uninvolved personally.

She had never masturbated, and her husband’s attempts to stimulate her not only were unsuccessful but at times she even found them amusing when “nothing happened.” Neither repulsed nor frustrated, she simply wasn’t involved in sexual expression.

This was not her husband’s reaction to their mutual sexual experiences. He found her lack of responsiveness utterly frustrating. Together they prospered from a financial point of view, but her obvious lack of sexual interest was depressing to him as an individual:

Eighteen months before referral to the Foundation, Mrs. H was highly stimulated on one occasion during coital connection and was orgasmic. The couple thought success had been attained, but subsequent coital episodes found her essentially unstimulated. There was one other such episode of orgasmic attainment.

On this occasion, the business had gained an important new source of financial return and the unit had celebrated their success with dinner and the theater. She was orgasmic that night by manipulation only. Thereafter, there was no significant level of response regardless of the mode of stimulation. It was a high level of male frustration that brought the unit to the Foundation for treatment.

Orgasm and Masturbation

These were a few cases of masturbatory orgasmic inadequacy. The classification represents a stage of woman’s sexual responsivity and, other than for categorizing purposes, has no assigned value and will not be illustrated in depth. There are two types of history that dominate this classification.

The first: is the story so often obtained from women guilt-ridden from masturbatory experimentation. They try to masturbate as young women, and after failing a time or two, simply withdraw from experimentation with the concept that they have fallen from grace. Later in their mature sexual experience, genital-area manipulation as a means of sexual excitation is at best moderately successful, but they are not orgasmic except during coition.

The second: is that of the female “don’t touch” syndrome. When taught that masturbation is evil they react by avoiding any approach to self-stimulation during adolescence and their maturing years. They may be orgasmic during socially acceptable coital opportunity but cannot be manually or orally elevated to orgasmic return.

The sexually dysfunctional woman as affect the male sexual function has been discussed in depth. There are so many variations on the theme of orgasmic inadequacy that many chapters could have been written, and the subject still would not have been covered adequately.

The concepts of a duality of psychosocial and biophysical structuring which influence woman’s sexual response patterns has been advanced. If any woman’s sexual value system is either undeveloped or damaged by an imbalance of either of these two theoretical systems of influence, the return may be varying degrees of orgasmic inadequacy.

When faced with the clinical responsibility of treatment demand for primary or situational orgasmic dysfunction, the cotherapist must have established theoretical concepts of sexual dysfunction if he is to treat effectively.

Categories
Sexual Dysfunction

Inexperience Sexual Male

For many women, one of the most frequent causes for orgasmic dysfunction, either primary or situational, is lack of complete identification with the marital partner.

The husband may not meet her expectations as a provider. He may have physical or behavioral patterns that antagonize.

Most Important
He may stand in the place of the man who had been much preferred as a marital partner but was not available or did not choose to marry the distressed woman. For myriad reasons, if the husband is considered inadequate according to his wife’s expectations, a negative dominance will be created in the psychosocial structure of many women.

Such a situation is exemplified by the following:

Mr. and Mrs. C
were 46 and 42 years of age, respectively, when referred to the Foundation. The wife complained of a lack of orgasmic return. The couple had been married 19 years when seen in treatment. The marriage was the only one for either partner. There were three children, the eldest of whom was 17, the youngest 12. There were barely adequate financial circumstances.

Mrs. C’s adolescent background had been somewhat restrictive. Her mother was a dominant woman with whom she developed little rapport. Her father died when she was 9 years old. There was one other sibling, a sister 8 years younger. Mrs. C went through the usual high school preparation, had two years of college, and then withdrew to take secretarial training and go to work in a large manufacturing company.

During her formative years there was a number of friends, none of them particularly close with the exception of one girl with whom she shared all her confidences. Mrs. C as a girl was fairly popular with boys, dated with regularity, and went through the usual petting experiences, but decided to avoid coital connection until marriage. She had no masturbatory history but described pleasure in the petting experiences, although she was not orgasmic.

Shortly after her twenty-second birthday she fell in love with a young salesman for the company in which she worked. Theirs was a very happy relationship with every evidence of real mutuality of interest. She came to know and thoroughly enjoy his family, and they made plans to marry.

Three weeks before the marriage, her fiance, on a business trip, met and a week later married another woman, a divorced with two children. The jilted girl was crushed by the turn of events. This had been her only serious romantic attachment, and it had been a total commitment on her part.

Their Sexual Expression: petting and manipulated her fiance to ejaculation regularly.

Although she had been highly stimulated by his approaches she had not been orgasmic. Coital connection had not been attempted.

Six months later she married Mr. C, whom she thought kind and considerate. Their sexual experiences together were pleasant, but she achieved nothing comparable to the high levels of excitation provided by the first man in her life.

She described life with her husband as originally a good marriage. The children arrived as planned and the husband continued to progress satisfactorily in his business ventures, but husband and wife had very few mutual interests.

As the years passed Mrs. C became obsessed with the fact that she had never been orgasmic. She began to masturbate and reached high levels of excitation. Straining and willing orgasmic return without being able to fully accept the unrealistic nature of her imagery and fantasying, she failed, of course, in accomplishment.

Inexperience Husband
Her husband, with very little personal sexual experience other than in his marriage, had no real concept of effective sexual approach. She repeatedly tried to tell him of her need, but his cooperative effort, maintained for only brief periods of time, was essentially unsuccessful.

After 12 years of marriage, Mrs. C sought sexual release outside the marriage with a man sexually much more experienced than her husband.

He did excite her to high plateau levels of sexual demand, but she always failed to achieve orgasmic release. This connection lasted off and on for a year and was only the first of several such extramarital commitments, always with the same disappointment in sexual return.

She was never able to avoid fantasy of her former fiance whenever she approached orgasmic return, but her fantasy included a primarily negative impetus. Her frustration at “marrying the wrong man” was a constant factor in her coital encounters, as it was in most other aspects of her life.

As time passed she blamed her husband increasingly for her lack of orgasmic facility and became progressively more discontented with her lot in the marriage. She began to find fault with his financial return and social connections.

In short, Mrs. C felt that her husband was not providing satisfactorily for her needs and inevitably compared him with the man “she almost married.” This man had become a relatively well-known figure in the local area, had done extremely well financially, and apparently had a happy, functioning marriage.

Although Mrs. C never saw her former fiance, she constantly dwelt on what might have been, to the detriment of the ongoing relationship. Mrs. C sought psychiatric support for her non orgasmic status but was unable to achieve the only real goal in her life, orgasmic release.

Finally, the husband and wife was referred to the Foundation to overcome professionally the conditioning of an adult lifetime and to cope with the requirements of her sexual value system impaired by the trauma it sustained when she was jilted by a man with whom she identified totally.

It is necessary adjust to both her social and her sexual value systems be made in the hope of reversing or at least neutralizing the negative input of her psycho social structure. There is no possible means of restructuring the negative input from “I married the wrong man” unless the problem is attacked directly.

First, in private sessions the immature deification of her former fiance must be underscored.

Second, Mr. C must be presented to his wife in a different light, not in a platitudinal manner, but as the female cotherapist objectively views him.

A man’s positive attributes as he appears in another woman’s eyes carry value to the dysfunctional woman. Then there must be stimulation of the biophysical structure to levels of positive input. This, of course, is initiated by sensate-focus procedures.

Finally, the contrived somatic stimulation must be interpreted to Mrs. C’s sexual value system both by the cotherapists and by her husband. If these treatment concepts are followed successfully there is every good chance to reach the goal of orgasmic attainment.

Categories
Sex & Dyspareunia

Male Sex Distress

Among the most distressing of the many factors in dyspareunia are the complaints of burning, itching, or aching in the vagina during or after intercourse. The existence of chronic vaginal irritation frequently robs women of their full freedom of sexual expresssion, for they are well aware that any specific coital connection may be severely irritative rather than highly stimulative.

Presuming adequate production of vaginal lubrication, rarely, if ever, does a woman complain of burning, itching, or aching during coition or describe these symptoms immediately after or even in a delayed postcoital time sequence without concomitant evidence of established pathology in the vaginal barrel.

This form of dyspareunia registered as a complaint by the female partner should have an important connotation to the cotherapist. This specific response pattern is not described by women who are subjectively impelled to register an excuse to avoid impending or threatened coital connection.

When women use the complaint of pain to avoid or delay the necessity for submitting to psycho genically unappealing coital experience, their most frequent complaint is one of severe pain with penile thrusting, “a hurting” deep in the pelvis.

When considering the complaints of burning, itching, or aching in the vagina, initially clinical concern is focused on infectious vaginal invaders. The primary sources of vaginal infection are coition and rectal contamination; secondary sources are manual contact, clothing material, insertion of foreign material, and functional disuse.

Support of and control of the acidity of the vaginal environment is the fundamental means of protection against the bacterial pathogens that can create symptoms of burning, itching or aching. The vagina naturally maintains a strongly acid environment as a protective mechanism against all forms of infectious invasion.

With an experimentally controlled environment, vaginal acidity has been established as varying clinically from pH 3.5 to pH 4.0. Thus, there is a rather wide margin for error in vaginal protection against concurrent infectious agents, for acidity must be sufficiently neutralized to raise the pH level to five or above, before bacterial invaders can flourish freely in the vaginal environment.

The one time that natural vaginal protection against infection breaks down is during the period of established menstrual flow. For many women vaginal acidity consistently registers in the neighborhood of pH 5 or above during menstrual flow, particularly if vaginal tampons are employed.

The neutralizing effect of blood serum constrained to the vaginal tract by retentive tampons directs vaginal acidity into pH 5 levels routinely. It is not surprising, then, that most vaginal infections either have clinical onset or flourish during menstrual flow.

Bacteria

The infective organisms most constantly encountered in vaginal infections, yet trichomonal and fungal forms of infection are seen frequently enough to provide additional causes for clinical concern. Probably the most persistent vaginal-tract invader in any woman’s lifespan are the coliform organisms (Strepto coccus faecalis, Escherichia coli, and the type of Streptococcus viridans), which are the basic contaminants of bowel environment.

From the point of view of patterns of sexual functioning alone, a persistent vaginitis, from which pathogenic organisms repeatedly are cultured in the adult, sexually functioning woman, should always make the therapist question the possibility of occasions of rectal intercourse.

A popular technique employed during rectal intercourse includes the expected format of initial rectal penetration during the excitement phase and repetitive thrusting during the plateau phase of the male sexual response cycle.

Infected Penis

But many men withdraw from the rectum and plunge the bacterially contaminated penis into the vaginal barrel just before or during the stage of ejaculatory inevitability, terminating the orgasmic phase of their sexual cycle by ejaculating intravaginally. Recurrent coliform vaginal infections that are resistant to treatment may have origin in this coital technique.

When rectal intercourse is practiced, the ejaculatory episode should be confined to the lumen of the bowel. There should never be penetration of both rectal and vaginal orifices during any single coital episode, if the woman wishes protection against the probability of recurrent vaginal infections.

If coliform vaginitis persists despite both adequate treatment and patient denial of rectal intercourse, a direct rectal examination frequently will solve the therapist’s diagnostic dilemma. If a woman is experiencing rectal intercourse with some regularity, there may be a specific involuntary reaction of the sphincter to the rectal examination.

When the examining finger is inserted, the response of the rectal sphincter at first will be one of slight to moderate spasm, following the expected reactive pattern of most men or women undergoing routine rectal examinations. But if the examining finger is retained rectally for a few seconds, the sphincter may relax quite rapidly in a completely involuntary manner, as opposed to the routine response pattern of continuing in spastic contraction for the duration of the examination.

If involuntary sphincter relaxation develops, this response pattern, while certainly not reliably diagnostic, should make the cotherapist skeptical of the patient’s denial of rectal coital episodes.

The involuntary sphincter relaxation develops because the retained examining finger stimulates a pleasurable response for those women enjoying regularity of rectal coital exposure as opposed to those finding rectal examinations subjectively objectionable and objectively painful.

Clinical note:
The same type of involuntary sphincter relaxation may develop in male homosexuals whose preferred pattern of sexual expression includes interest in regularity of rectal penetration. Again, the involuntary sphincter response pattern has been used by the Foundation’s professional staff as a clinical diagnostic aid when dealing with homosexual male patients employing the rectum as the means of providing ejaculatory release for sexual partner or partners.

When the cotherapist can be reasonably certain by both history and examination of some regularity of rectal intercourse, techniques to avoid vaginal contamination with fecal material should be discussed at length with the women involved.

Although the basic premise of the clinical advice is to avoid recurrent episodes of coliform vaginitis if possible, there is an accrued secondary effect of reducing dyspareunia during occasions of intravaginal coitus.

Uncircumcised Penis

When trichomonal vaginitis is suggested by direct inspection of the vaginal barrel and confirmed by adequately stained vaginal smear or hanging-drop preparation of the vaginal discharge, which may be profuse and irritating.

The husband also should be suspected of harboring the trichomonads, possibly beneath the foreskin if he is uncircumcised, but more frequently in the prostate gland, the seminal vesicles, or the urinary bladder.

If both husband and wife are not treated simultaneously for this particular distress, the infection may become a source of chronic dyspareunia, as it may be exchanged frequently between marital partners during repeated opportunity at coital connection.

It does little good to treat the wife for trichomonal vaginitis and then have her reinfected by her husband. And it obviously does little good to treat the husband individually and have him reinfected by his wife. With chronic trichomonal vaginitis there may be recurrent bouts of dyspareunia, particularly with coital connection of any significant duration.

Fungal vaginitis is seen clinically more and more frequently. Incidence of this particular infectious entity used to be primarily confined to the late spring, summer, and early fall months, but now such pathogens as Monilia and Candida albicans are encountered regularly throughout the year.

Chronic fungal infection creates a debilitating situation for the recipient woman. Burning and itching is intense and swelling and weeping of soft tissues are frequent complications. Coital connection is virtually impossible due to the pain involved when a fungal infection dominates in the vaginal environment.

Infections with antibiotics frequently will protect women from the complications of fungal vaginitis.

Categories
Secondary Impotence

Male Impotence Cause

A typical history of an acute episode of alcohol consumption as an etiological factor in the onset of secondary impotence is classic in its structural content. The clinical picture is one of acute psychic trauma on a circumstantial basis, rather than the chronic psychosocial strain of years of steady attrition to the male ego as described in the case history for the premature ejaculator.

There has been a specific history of onset of symptoms of secondary impotence as a direct result of episodes of acute alcoholic intake in 35 men from a total of 213 men referred with a complaint of secondary impotence.

The onset of secondary impotence in an acute alcoholic episode is so well known that it almost beggars description. A composite example is that of a relatively “successful” male aged 35-55, college graduate, working in an area which gears productive demand more to mental than physical effort.

The perfect environmental situation for onset of secondary impotence is any occupational hazard where demands for high levels of psychosocial performance are irrevocably a part of the nine-to-five day and frequently carry over into an evening of professional socializing.

Alcohol Impotence

Mr. A is a man with a habit of alcohol before dinner, frequently a few glasses of wine with his meals, and possibly a whisky. Alcohol intake at lunch is an integral part of his business as well.

In short, consumption of alcohol has become a part of his life.

This man and his wife leave home one night for a party and alcohol is available in large quantity. Somewhere in the late evening, the party comes to an end. Mr. A has had entirely becomes tipsy and so his wife drives them home for safety’s consideration.

His wife retires to the bedroom, and with a sense of vague irritation, a combination of a sense of personal rejection and a residual of her social embarrassment, prepares for bed. Mr. A has stumble but with the aid of a strong banister and even stronger nightcap, manages to arrive at the bedroom door. Suddenly he felt that his wife is indeed fortunate tonight, for he is prepared sexually satisfied her.

Alcohol Hangover

It never occurs to him that all she wants to do is go to bed and avoid a quarrel at all costs. He jumped into the bed, moves to meet his imagined commitment, and nothing happens. He has simply had too much alcohol.

Dismayed and confused both by the fact that no erection develops and that his wife obviously has little or no interest in his gratuitous sexual contribution, he pauses to resolve this complex problem and immediately falls into deep, anesthetized slumber.

Next day, he is further traumatized by the symptoms of an acute hangover. He surfaces later in the day with the concept that things are not as they should be. The climate seems rather cool around the house. He can remember little of the prior evening’s festivities except his deeply imbedded conviction that things did not go well in the bedroom. He is not sure that all was bad but he also is quite convinced that all was not good.

Obviously he cannot discuss his problem with his wife, she probably would not speak to him at this time. So he putters and mutters throughout the evening and goes to bed early to escape. He sleeps restlessly only to face the new day with a vague sense of alarm, a passing sense of frustration, and a sure sense that all is not well in the household this Monday morning.

He pondered about it over a drink or two at lunch and another, and while contending with traffic on the way home from work, decides to check out this evening the little matter of sexual dysfunction, which he may or may not have imagined.

Sexual dysfunction within 48 hours!

If the history of this reaction sequence is taken accurately, it will be established that Mr. A does not check out the problem of sexual dysfunction within 48 hours of onset, as he had decided to do on his way home from work. He arrives home, finds the atmosphere still markedly frigid, makes more than his usual show of affection to the children, retires to the security of the cocktail hour, and goes to supper and to bed totally lacking in any communicative approach to his frustrated, irritated marital partner.

Tuesday morning, while brushing his teeth, Mr. A has a flash of concern about what may have gone wrong with his sexual functioning after the party night. He decides unequivocally to check the situation out tonight.

Instead of thinking of the problem occasionally, his concern for “checking this out” becomes of paramount importance. On the way to work and during the day, he does not think about what really did go wrong sexually because he does not know. Rather he worries constantly about what could have gone wrong.

Needless to say, there is resurgence of concern for sexual performance during the afternoon hours, regardless of how busy his schedule is.

Mr. A leaves the office in relatively good spirits, but thoroughly aware that “tonight’s the night.” He does have vague levels of concern, which suggest that a little relaxation is in order; so he stops at his favorite tavern for a couple of drinks and arrives home with a rosy glow to find not only a forgiving, but an anticipatory, wife, ready for the reestablishment of both verbal and sexual communication that a drink ‘or two together before dinner can bring.

Probably for the first time in his life, he approaches his bedroom on Tuesday night in a self-conscious “I’ll show her” attitude. Again there has been a little too much to drink-not as much as on Saturday night, but still a little too much.

And, of course, he does show her. He is so consumed with his conscious concern for effective sexual function (the onset of his fears of performance) that, aided by the depressant effect of a modest level of alcoholic intake (modest by his standards), he simply cannot “get the job done.”

When there is little or no immediate erective reaction during the usual sexual preliminaries, he tries desperately to force the situation-in turn, anticipating an erection, then wildly conscious of its abscence, and finally demanding that it occur. He is consciously trying to will sexual success, while subjectively watching for tumescence. So, of course, no erection.

While in an immediate state of panic, as lie sweats and strains for the weaponry of male sexual functioning, he simultaneously must contend with the added distraction of a frightened wife trying to console him in his failure and to assure him that the next night will be better for both of them.

Sexual Incompetence

Both approaches are equally traumatic from his point of view. He hates both her sympathy and blind support which only serve to underscore his “failure,” and reads into his wife’s assurances that probably he can do better “tomorrow” a suggestion that no longer can he be counted on to get the job done sexually when it matters “today.”

A horrible thought occurs to Mr. A. He may be developing some form of sexual incompetence. He has been faced with two examples of sexual dysfunction. He is not sure what happened the first time, but he is only too aware this night that nothing has happened. He has failed, miserably and completely, to conduct himself as a man.

He cannot attain or maintain an erection.

Further, Mr. A knows that his wife is equally distressed because she is frantically striving to gloss over this marital catastrophe. She has immediately cast herself in the role of the soothing, considerate partner who says, “Don’t worry dear, it could happen to anyone,” or “You’ve never done this before, so don’t worry about it, dear.”

In the small hours of the morning, physically exhausted and emotionally spent from contending with the emotional bath her husband’s sexual failure has occasioned, she changes her tune to “You’ve certainly been working too hard, you need a vacation,” or “How long has it been since you have had a physical checkup?” (Any of a hundred similar wifely remarks supposed to soothe, maintain, or support are interpreted by the panicked man as tacit admission of the tragedy they must face together: the progressive loss of his sexual functioning.)

From the moment of second erective failure,

72 hours after the first erection failure, this man may be impotent.

In no sense does this mean that in the future he will never achieve an erection quality sufficient for intromission.

Occasionally he may do so and most men do. It does mean, however, that any suggestion of wifely sexual demand either immediate in its specific physical intensity or pointing coyly to future sexual expectations may produce pressures of performances quite sufficient to reduce Mr. A to and maintain him in a totally no erective state.

In brief, fears of sexual performance have assumed full control of his psychosocial system.

Mr. A thinks about the situation constantly. He occasionally asks friends of similar age group how things are going, because, of course, any male so beleaguered with fears of sexual failure is infinitely desirous of blaming his lack of effective function on anything other than himself, and the aging process is a constantly available cultural scapegoat.

Sexual Approach

He finds himself in the position of the woman with a lifetime history of non orgasmic return who contends openly with concerns for the effectiveness of her own sexual performance and secretly faces the fear that in truth she is not a woman. In proper sequence he does as she has done so many times.

He develops ways and means to avoid sexual encounter.

He sits fascinated by a third-rate movie on television in order to avoid going to bed at the usual time with a wife who might possibly be interested in sexual expression. He fends off her sexual approaches and jumps at anything that avoids confrontation as a drowning man would at a straw.

His wife immediately notices his disinclination to meet the frequency of their semi established routine of sexual exposure. In due course she begins to wonder whether he has lost interest in her, if there is anyone else, or whether there is truth in his most recent assertion that he couldn’t care less about sex.

For reassurance that she is still physically attractive, the concerned wife begins to push for more frequent sexual encounters, the one approach that the self-pressured male dreads above all else.

Obviously, neither marital partner ever communicates his or her fears of performance or the depth of their concerns for the sexual dysfunction that has become of paramount importance in their lives. The subject either is not discussed, or, if mentioned even obliquely, is hastily buried in an avalanche of words or chilled by painfully obvious avoidance.

Sexual Anxiety

Within the next 3 months, Mr. A has to fail at erective attainment only another time or two before both husband and wife begin to panic.

She decides independently to avoid any continuity of sexual functioning, eliminate any expression of her sexual needs, and be available only should he express demand, because she also has developed fears of performance.

Her fears are not for herself, but for the effectiveness of her husband’s sexual functioning.

She goes to great lengths to negate anything that might be considered sexually stimulating, such as too-long kisses, handholding, body contact, caressing in any way. In so doing she makes each sexual encounter much more of a pressured performance and therefore, much less of a continuation of living sexually, but the thought never occur to her. All communication ceases.

Each individual keeps his own counsel or goes his own way. The mutual sexual stimulation in the continuity of physical exposure, in the simple physical touching, holding, or even verbalizing of affection, is almost totally withdrawn.

The lack of communication that starts in the bedroom rapidly spreads through all facets of marital exchange: children, finances, social orientation, mothers-in-law, whatever.

In short :
Sexual dysfunction in the marital bed, created initially by an acute stage of alcoholic ingestion, supplemented at the next outing by ah “I’ll show her” attitude and possibly a little too much to drink can destroy the very foundation of a marriage of 10 to 30 years duration.

As the male panics, the wife only adds to his insecurity by her inappropriate verbalization, intended to support and comfort but interpreted by her emotionally unstable husband as immeasurably destructive in subjective content.

The dramatic onset of secondary impotence following an in stance of excessive alcohol intake is only another example of the human male’s extreme sensitivity to fears of sexual performance.

In this particular situation, of course, the onset of fears of performance was of brief but dynamic duration as opposed to those in the preceding example of the premature ejaculator whose fears of performance developed slowly, stimulated by continued exposure to his wife’s verbal denunciation of his sexual functioning.

Discussed above are examples of combinations of psychological and circumstantial factors that contribute the highest percentage of etiological input to the development of secondary impotence. Continuing through the listing of major influences there remain environmental, physiological, and iatrogenic factors.

In the final analysis:
Regardless of listing category, secondary impotence is triggered by combinations of these etiological factors rather than by any single category with the obvious exception of psychosocial influence. Once onset of erective failure has been recorded, regardless of trigger mechanism, involved, the individual male’s interpretation of or reaction to functional failure must be dealt with on a psychogenic basis.

The etiological factors recorded above are little more than categorical conveniences. From his initial heterosexual performance through the continuum of his sexual expression, every man constantly assumes a cultural challenge to his potency.

How he reacts to these challenges may be influenced directly by his psychosocial system, but of particular import is the individual susceptibility of the man involved to the specific pressures of the sexual challenge and to the influences of his background.

When considering etiological influences that may predispose toward impotence, it always should be borne in mind that most men exposed to parallel psychosexual pressures and similar environmental damage shrug off these handicaps and live as sexually functional males.

It is the factor of susceptibility to negative psychosocial input that determines the onset of impotence. These concepts apply to primarily as well as secondarily impotent men.

When considering environmental background as an etiological factor in secondary impotence, the home, the church, and the formative years are at center focus.

What factors in or out of the home during the formative years tend to initiate insecurity in male sexual functioning?

The preeminent factor in environmental background reflecting sexual insecurity is a dominant imbalance in parental relationships dominant, that is, as opposed to happen stance, farcical, or even fantasized battles for family control.

Secondary, but still of major import is the factor of homosexuality, which is to be considered in the environmental category. In no sense does this placement connote professional opinion that homophile orientation is considered purely environmental in origin.

Since homosexual activity may have derogatory influence upon the effectiveness of heterosexual functioning, the subject must be presented in the etiological discussion. The disassociations developing from homophile orientation are considered in the environmental category only for listing convenience.

Categories
Premature Ejaculation

Male Superior Position

Yet another reason for emphasizing the female-superior and the more effective lateral coital positioning is that the most popular position in our culture, the male-superior positioning, presents the greatest difficulties with ejaculatory control.

If the coital connection is to be brief with both partners obviously wishing rapid pelvic thrusting to release of their high levels of sexual tension, coital positioning does not matter. But if there is desire to prolong the connection either for mutual pleasure or because the female partner needs more opportunity to feel and think sexually, the male superior position, which places the greatest strain on ejaculatory control, should be avoided when possible.

On every occasion, before female-superior coital position is established and then possibly converted to a lateral mounting arrangement, a comfortable period of precoital sex play is encouraged. The wife should employ the squeeze technique at least two or three times before penetration is attempted.

It takes a significant period of time to alter an early imprinting of the pattern of rapid ejaculation.

However, in the two-week treatment program, sufficient competence in ejaculatory control can be developed to alleviate mutual fears of performance, obviate the spectator role, and provide all the opportunity necessary for continued improvement in control subsequent to release from the acute stage of therapy.

Before the couple leaves the clinic, the cotherapists emphasize the fact that problems of ejaculatory control continue to a minor degree for at least the subsequent year. Several techniques to encourage continuing success in ejaculatory control are described for marital-partner benefit. The unit is reminded that after returning to the demands of their everyday world, regularity of sexual exposure is of primary concern.

For the first six months the squeeze technique should be employed on at least a once-a-week basis prior to coital opportunity; the remainder of the unit’s sexual opportunities during the week are encouraged to develop in a natural, unconstrained fashion. This approach provides the man with the necessary means for transition from a controlled sexual experience to a completely extemporaneous opportunity.

It is also suggested that the couple take advantage of the wife’s menstrual period each month to provide at least one session of 15 to 20 minutes devoted specifically to male sexual stimulation with manual manipulation and repetitive application of the squeeze technique for control of the ejaculatory process.

Ejaculatory Control Techniques

Usually are indicated for a minimum of six to twelve months after termination of the acute phase of therapy. During the routine follow up discussions after termination of the unit’s acute phase of treatment decision to terminate use of the squeeze technique is made by professional evaluation of the degree of control during the unit’s spontaneous matings.

It also is important to emphasize that if circumstances lead to separation of marital members for a matter of several weeks, coital exposure after the couple is physically reunited may find the male returning to his role as a premature ejaculator. Obviously, the procedure in this situation is to reemploy the squeeze technique for several consecutive coital exposures.

If constituted with warmth and understanding ejaculatory control will return rapidly.

With adequate warning of the possibility of these complications, a more relaxed concept of freedom of sexual approach is possible for couples contending with severe premature ejaculation.

Numerable approaches to the treatment of premature ejaculation have been described, discarded, or conducted with varying levels of professional acceptance. Hypnotic suggestion, both in natural and drug-induced states of receptivity, has been a popular approach to the problem.

Penis Cream

There has been widespread acceptance of anesthetic creams and jellies prescribed for application to the erect penis theoretically to reduce neurogenic end-organ sensitivity to the stimuli of manipulation or vaginal containment. Specific drug preparations, tranquilizers, barbituates, etc., have been prescribed in an effort to dull male sensitivity to stimuli in general and to stimuli of sexual content in particular.

Many men have tried with varying degrees of success to lower their natural sexual tension levels by ingestion of sizable quantities of alcohol before anticipated sexual encounter.

Frantic men consume a never ending list of potions, nostrums, and poisons, all designed to reduce rapidity of ejaculatory response, all curiously directed to a male’s sexual functioning alone without regard for his partner’s involvement. Any form of sexual inadequacy is a problem of mutual involvement for partners in a marriage.

With a wife’s full cooperation, her willingness to learn and to apply the basic principles of ejaculatory control, and the warmth of her personal involvement expressed openly to her mate, reversal of this crippling marital distress is essentially assured. As further support of this argument for the necessity of involvement of the wife in the resolution of a well established premature ejaculatory pattern, it should be pointed out that the squeeze technique is not effective if done by the male attempting to teach himself control.

If a man manipulates his penis to erection and then applies the squeeze technique to control an imminent ejaculatory response, he usually can halt the natural progression of sex tension increment and successfully depress his ejaculatory urge.

However, once this man returns to the stimulation of a heterosexual relationship, it is as if he had made no prior solitary attempts at control. What is obviated by solitary attempts to learn ejaculatory control is the fact that with a female partner the individual male cannot entirely set the pace of sexual functioning, nor can he entirely, deny the sexual stimuli absorbed from the obvious psycho sexual involvement of his marital partner.

In The 11 Years:

186 men have been treated for premature ejaculation. There have been 4 failures to learn adequate control during the acute phase of therapy. Adequate control is defined as sufficient to provide orgasmic opportunity for the sexual partner during approximately 50 percent of the coital opportunities. The failure rate is 2.2 percent.

Three of the failures were with couples; and one was with a man previously divorced because of his premature ejaculatory pattern, who brought a replacement partner to the treatment program.

In two of the four instances there was no real motivation on the part of the male partner to learn ejaculation control. These men had accompanied their non orgasmic wives as a cooperative venture, but when they learned that they were in fact contributing to their wives’ sexual dysfunction they refused further cooperation. They simply could not accept a reversal of their deeply ingrained double standard of sexual function.

There is no specific explanation for the two remaining failures to control the premature ejaculatory tendencies of the men involved. Both units were fully cooperative but the techniques simply did not work. One of these men, 64 years old, was the only failure among 19 men 50 years or older treated for premature ejaculation.

A brief note of clinical warning is in order. After learning to control a premature ejaculatory tendency, 23 of the couples treated by clinic personnel were confronted by a brief period of secondary impotence just before or shortly after termination of the acute phase of therapy.

Sexual Function Improvement

Most couples, delighted with the significant improvement in sexual functioning, enter a period of marked frequency of coital connection as compared with their sexual exposure rate just before visiting the clinic.

Sometimes the male partner simply cannot meet the suddenly elevated frequency demand and encounters an episode of erective failure. He only has to have one such experience before all his fears of performance flood his consciousness. What new form of dysfunction is this? Has the treatment caused it? His initial anxiety reaction is of serious proportion.

The thought that he was sexually satiated for the moment never occurs either to the concerned husband or his sexually enthusiastic wife. Care must be taken by authority to warn couples of the possibility of a transitory experience with impotence, as they are adjusting their overwhelming pleasure with their newfound sexual function to the practicality of the male’s level of sexual responsivity.

With prior warning the couples take an episode of impotence in stride, even laughing at the concrete evidence of their sexual greediness. Without adequate warning, a persistence of symptoms of secondary impotence is possible, for the fears of performance and spectator roles return to their dominant position before adequate explanation of the distressful event is available,

In brief, the problem of premature ejaculation is uniquely one that can be resolved effectively and permanently. For successful resolution of the problem, a man needs some understanding of the origin of distress, a knowledge of techniques to establish control, and, above all else, a cooperative, involved sexual partner.

Categories
Male Sex & Vaginismus

Male sex and Vaginismus

Male sex and vaginismus is a psycho physiological syndrome affecting women freedom of sexual response by severely, if not totally, impeding coital function. Anatomically this clinical entity involves all components of the pelvic musculature investing the perineum and outer third of the vagina.

Physiologically, these muscle groups contract spastically as opposed to their rhythmic contractual response to orgasmic experience. This spastic contraction of the vaginal outlet is a completely involuntary reflex stimulated by imagined, anticipated, or real attempts at vaginal penetration.

Vaginismus is a classic example of a psychosomatic illness.

Vaginismus is one of the few elements in the wide pattern of female sexual dysfunctions that cannot be unreservedly diagnosed by any established interrogative technique.

Regardless of the psychotherapist’s high level of clinical suspicion, a secure diagnosis of vaginismus cannot be established without the specific clinical support that only direct pelvic examination can provide. Without confirmatory pelvic examination, women have been treated for vaginismus when the syndrome has not been present.

Conversely, there have been cases of vaginismus diagnosed by pelvic examination when the clinical existence of the syndrome had not been anticipated by therapists. The clinical existence of vaginismus is delineated when vaginal examination constitutes a routine part of the required complete physical examination.

Categories
Male Sex & Vaginismus

Male Painful Sex

Vaginismus occasionally develops in women with clinical symptoms of severe dyspareunia (painful intercourse). When dyspareunia has firm basis in pelvic pathology, the existence of which escapes examining physicians, and over the months or years coition becomes increasing painful, vaginismus may result.

The patient is not reassured by console that “it’s all in your head” or equally unsupportive pronouncements, when she knows that it is always severely painful for her when her husband thrusts deeply into the vagina during coital connection.

As examples of this situation, vaginismus has been demonstrated as a secondary complication in two cases, of severe laceration of the broad ligaments. Also recorded are two classic examples of onset of vaginismus, the first in a young woman with pelvic endometriosis, the second in a 62 year old postmenopausal widow (without sex-steroid replacement therapy) who through remarriage sought return to sexual functioning after seven years of abstinence.

The two women developing a syndrome of vaginismus subsequent to childbirth laceration of the broad ligaments supporting the uterus (universal-joint syndrome) have similar histories. A composite history will suffice to demonstrate the pathology involved.

Mr. And Mrs. D
was seen with the complaint of increasing difficulty in accomplishing vaginal penetration developing after 6 years of marriage. There were two children in the marriage, with onset of severe dyspareunia oriented specifically to the delivery of the second child. The second child, a post mature baby of 8 pounds 14 ounces, had a precipitous delivery.

There is a positive history of nurses holding, the patient’s legs together to postpone delivery while waiting for the obstetrician. As soon as sexual activity was reconstituted after the delivery the patient experienced severe pain with deep penile thrusting. During the next year the pain became so acute that the wife sought subterfuge to avoid sexual exposure.

The intercourse frequency decreased from two to three times a week to the same level per month. On numerous occasions the patient was assured, during medical consultation, that there was nothing anatomically disoriented in the pelvis and that pain with intercourse was “purely her imagination.”

Supported by these authoritative statements, the husband demanded increased frequency of sexual function. When the wife refused, the unit separated for serveral months. During these month period, the woman assayed intercourse on two separate occasions with two different men, but with each experience the pelvic pain with deep penile thrusting was so severe that her obvious physical distress terminated sexual experimentation.

The couple was reunited with the help of their religious adviser, but with attempted intercourse vaginal penetration was impossible. After 8 months of repeatedly unsuccessful attempts to reestablish coital function, the unit was referred for therapy.

Couple E
married 8 years when seen in the Clinic. They mutually agreed that coital connection had not been possible more than once or twice a month in the first two years of marriage. Each time, the wife had moaned or screamed in pain as her husband was thrusting deeply into her pelvis. After the first two years of marriage, every attempt at vaginal penetration had been unsuccessful.

Both had been under intensive psychotherapy, the husband for three and the wife for four years, when referred to the Foundation. During the routine physical examinations, advanced endometriosis was discovered, and severe vaginismus was demonstrated.

In due course the wife underwent surgery for correction of the pelvic pathology. After recovery from the surgery she returned with her husband for therapeutic relief of the vaginismus which, as would be expected, still existed despite successful surgical correction of the endometriosis.

Couple F
a 66 year old husband and his 62 year old wife, were seen in consultation. When the wife was 54 years old, her first husband died after a three-year illness during which sexual activity was discontinued. She remarried at 61 years of age, having had no overt sexual activity in the interim period.

She had never been given hormone-replacement therapy to counteract the natural involution of pelvic structures. First attempts at coital connection in the present marriage produced a great deal of pain and only partial vaginal penetration.

With reluctance the wife sought medical consultation. Her physician instituted hormone-replacement techniques. After a 6-week respite, further episodes of coital activity also resulted in pain and distress.

Despite the fact that by this time the vaginal walls were well stimulated by effective steroid replacement, the new husband found it impossible to attain vaginal intromission. The wife had developed obvious psychosocial resistance to the concept of sexual activity in the 60 plus age group based on the pain that had been experienced attempting to consummate her new marriage.

And a real sense of embarrassment created by the need for medical consultation and the necessity of admitting that she had been indulging in coital activity at her age.

As a result of the trauma that developed with attempts to renew sexual function subsequent to almost ten years of continence, she developed involuntary spastic contraction of the vaginal outlet. Judicious use of Hegar dilators and a detailed, thorough, and authoritative refutation of the taboo of aging sexual function (based on the belief that sexual activity in the 60, 70, or even 80 year age groups represents some form of perversion) were quite sufficient to relax and relieve the vaginal spasm.