IMPOTENCE – RESTORING
It is obvious that the man who comes for treatment is far more personally insecure, and has far greater anxiety, than a man with one of the other sexual problems. His deep conviction that his manhood is suspect, and that he is a sexual failure, is augmented by his anxiety that other people will learn of his sexual inadequacy. He may fear that his wife has told her friends of his defective sexuality.
The man’s partner is also frustrated. She has tried comfort, she has tried sympathy, she has tried aggression, in an effort to help her man, with no effect. She, too, becomes tense and anxious, as she thinks that his impotence is due to her lack of physical appeal, or that he is obtaining sexual relief with another woman while denying her any sexual experience. She may be worried that he is a latent homosexual.
The essence of the therapy is to restore the man’s belief in his sexuality, not just to treat his symptoms of impotence. At the same time his partner’s fears for her man’s sexual ability need to be changed. Sex therapists seek to replace the fears by pleasure. They seek to enable the couple to re-establish that human sexual contact is pleasurable. They seek to enable the couple to re-establish (or to establish for the first time) communication with each other about sexual matters. They seek to remove inhibitions and childhood or adolescent hang-ups.
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