The Midas-syndrome An inherent psychological marriage-problem

Indubitably many a senior psychiatrist will have had to answer the slightly amused though bewildered question of the young resident in psychiatry on the male outpatient department: “Is there anything else in psychiatry besides male sexual insufficiency?” Depending on the sex, experience and outlook of the senior officer the resident will receive a cynic, esoteric, hopeful or resigned answer and find himself in a position to obtain a clearheaded point of view and usually enters the road of psychoanalytic investigation into this matter, only to obtain a partially satisfactory solution. No wonder; his question, partly meant as a boutade, was too vaguely formulated.

What exactly had the young doctor in mind?

In view of the detailed descriptions and classifications of male impotency of which the literature abounds, we will restrict our investigation to the data, that have a direct bearing on the situational interaction a marriage offers. For the present purpose we will leave out of our field of vision the neurotically determined disturbances of male sexual activity.