You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Psychotherapy of Impotence and Frigidity. Abe Pinsky. Sept. 24, 1952.
Similar threads of disturbed interpersonal relationships and intrapsychic conflicts accompany male impotence and female frigidity. From an analytic point of view the differences between them are of secondary importance and stem from a combination of differing cultural attitudes and unavoidable anatomical factors in both sexes. Both symptoms represent a lack of total relatedness to the sex act; yet one speaks, on the one hand, of impotence, which indicates lack of power, lack of ability to perform, weakness and inadequacy, and, on the other hand, of its female counterpart as frigidity, which implies coldness, aloofness and lack of responsiveness.
There are important differences in the effects of these symptoms on the lives of the two sexes. The impotent male is in far greater trouble than the frigid woman. Impotence in the male is gross, starkly visible, cannot be kept secret and men are likely to seek immediate help. The frigid woman, equally neurotic, may keep her difficulty hidden. She may be unaware of it, or, if aware of it, may invest it with pride. She rarely comes to the analyst with frigidity as her chief complaint and when she does it is usually due to the prompting of a dissatisfied partner.
In order for an individual to consummate the sexual act he must first of all be capable of erotic arousal. Secondly, he must be capable of developing an erection. Thirdly, he must be able to maintain his erection for a suitable length of time and be able to penetrate. Finally, he must be able to experience an ejaculation with orgasm. An individual may be, therefore, impotent at any one of these stages of the sexual act. I feel that premature ejaculation is a manifestation of psychic impotence in anxiety-ridden men and differ with biologically oriented writers like Kinsey1, who believe males achieving orgasm very quickly are superior to other men.
There are qualitative or situational factors that bear on