Some A-Typical Forms of Impotence and Frigidity

Symptoms and signs of psychogenically based cases of impotence and frigidity have been well studied psychoanalytically; the present writer has recently compiled the available clinical material (including types described in the literature, and his own contributions). (1) The purpose of the neologism, “counterfeit-sex,” was to draw the distinction between normal sex and the counterfeit: the former serves as expression of a biologically conditioned drive (upon that drive is unconsciously superimposed an unavoidable secondary psychic superstructure), whereas the neurotic counterpart unconsciously misuses genital sex for the expression of infantile repressed aims, completely unrelated to adult sex. The unconscious contents will vary in accordance with the different levels of regression, the common denominator being a repressed pattern, only secondarily expressed pseudo-genitally. To name but two examples: If a “wolf” of a specific type runs from one woman to another, he is ostensibly looking for “variety,” but in inner reality he wants to attest his potency to himself; in a protracted affair with one woman, his impotence would be proved, but by his preventive innuendo he avoids being put to the test. His pseudo-aggressive act—leaving the woman—serves as unconscious proof to himself that he does not have a passive masochistic attachment to an infantile image. Or, if a specific type of woman is frigid in marriage, and “enjoys” sex in a clandestine extra-marital affair, her sex is bound to the condition of the infantile-forbidden; she has not outgrown the infantile connotation, sex equals the forbidden. And so on, in hundreds of variations.

As usual in all attempts at systematization, there remains a fringe of additional material. Some of these rather atypical cases will be discussed in this paper.

It is well known that some men suffering from hysteria react to prospective fatherhood with disturbances of potency. Variations are