Hypnotic sexual disorders

As every doctor knows, sexual difficulties are so many and varied that it would be impossible to go into any detail in suggesting specific treatment in the limited scope of this work. It is desirable to locate causes for every sexual disorder. The nature of the cause will largely determine the nature of the suggestions to be used.

For example, a patient suffers from homosexual tendencies: your preliminary analysis of the patient's history convinces you that the condition is acquired, rather than congenital, and therefore subject to cure. Your suggestions will then be to the effect that the patient really is not homosexual—his tendency is merely the result of certain experiences he has had that have tended to deviate his sex desires from the normal object—that contact with his own sex is repugnant to him—he derives no real satisfaction, etc.

This is especially true in cases of frigidity. Almost all authorities are agreed now that very few women are really frigid. The causes of the apparent frigidity may be many: misguided teaching by parents or other adults resulting in the idea that everything pertaining to sex is vile, filthy and should be strictly repressed; premature sex experience with its attendant sense of guilt; the husband's lack of knowledge of how to perform the sex act so as to achieve mutual satisfaction, etc.

Once the cause has been located, the character of suggestions used to produce the desired result is obvious. For example: "You will cease to think of sex as something vile which you must repress—you are completely a normal woman, and possess natural and strong sexual desire—you will respond to your husband's love-making without any resistance or repression—you will find complete satisfaction in your marital relations— your sexual thoughts will be dominated by the idea of beauty and love—you will find the sex relation natural and beautiful."

Impotence in the male is another sexual condition for which the physician is frequently called upon to prescribe a remedy. Wilhelm Stekel in his important work Psychic Impotence claims that most cases diagnosed as impotence are in reality merely psychic impotence. The span of man's virility, according to Stekel, is from the cradle to the grave. Some single experience, or several negative influences, creates in the sufferer's mind the fear of impotence, and this fear inhibits the normal sexual development. Remove the fear, or other negative associations, and normal functioning returns. If this be so, and Stekel's claims have received wide support, hypnotism should clearly be a strongly indicated treatment for this condition. First clear up the cause, then proceed, as above, with suggestions that he will demonstrate complete virility, etc.

Hypnotic sexual disorders