Extreme excitement and desire may cause temporary impotence. The number of stimuli arriving from the brain is too vast and paralyzes the centre of erection. A violent lover, who has for a long time repressed his desires, plunges his entire organism, in the moment of their realization, into a kind of ecstasy. His soul, i. e., the immaterial part of his being, concentrates in the object of his desires all his force and vitality. He appears entirely to forget his organs which ordinarily serve to transmit his desires. It is hence first necessary for him that everything be restored to the ordinary channel, that the moral over-excitation ceases or that it returns at least to the normal type of simple excitation, before the centre of erection will have power to exercise its function.
Want of responsiveness from the mate has sometimes a disadvantageous effect upon the man. Hence obstacles, on the side of the woman, will not seldom cause psychic impotence. The history of the following case is characteristic of this kind of disturbances:
A young medical student made the acquaintance of a young girl who had previously given birth to a child. The girl did not want to reveal her secret to her lover, and fearing that, as a medical student, he might discover her secret in initu, she refused to grant him her favor. One evening while alone with her in his room, he tried hard to accomplish his desire by persuasion, caresses, and other means. When just at the point to break her resistance, the erection suddenly ceased, and the penis shrunk to half its normal size. From this moment he suffered from complete impotence. Even nocturnal erections did not take place any longer. The impotence resisted every kind of treatment, until, one day, the girl wrote the patient that she was now willing to yield to his desires. At the first meeting following the letter, puella tentavit actively to arouse his passion, and he succeeded in having a powerful erection actionis peragendo. From this moment he was cured from his ailment and enjoyed his full virile power of former days.
This case shows the vast influence the psyche is wielding even upon the unconscious state of the brain during sleep. The stimulation of the inhibitory centre was so strong as to prevent even the occurrence of nocturnal erections.
In illicit relations, the fear of surprise or of infection, shame or loathing may have inhibitory effects upon the centre of erection and cause psychic impotence.
Violent shocks to the nervous system, as great fright, pain, or grief, etc., and all other strong emotions which often affect the urinary system by causing temporary frequent micturition, polyuria, or glycosuria, may also give rise to disturbances of the sexual functions and cause psychic impotence of a transitory nature.
Over-estimation of the difficulties of defloration sometimes causes temporary impotence in nervous newly married men. The timidity of inexperience may in the same way have the effect of an anaphrodisiac.
Sometimes the exaggerated veneration of his young wife may cause temporary loss of vigor in the young husband. The thought that such an exalted personality, as his young innocent wife, should have to submit to such an indignity (not a few have this strange opinion of the conjugal act), works as an inhibition of the proper performance of the act.
The most frequent cause of psychic impotence is the thought of failure. An accidental single failure through the temporary abuse of alcohol, tobacco, coffee, or tea or through intense desire may occur, some day, which in the healthy man would pass unnoticed. But the nervous man will begin to brood over this failure, and this brooding will prevent the formation of associative paths in the brain at every subsequent attempt of coition. In nervous men, the imagination, having once become impressed with groundless fears, may retain them with extreme tenacity and busy itself with constant brooding in solitude over the fancied ills. Thus a disorder of adjustment is established, and a psychic trauma is created, through the subconscious effects of cryptogrammic nerve-currents. This psychic trauma is translated into fear again. The subconscious cerebral processes lead to the formation of ideas, later recallable in memory. These morbid ideas become the substratum of future anxiety-attacks. A pathological state is thus induced where the natural course of erection fails to follow the sexual excitement. In this way a veritable disease is produced, where there is a strong desire without full power. Every additional failure provokes more intense broodings which are naturally again the cause of failure. Thus a vicious circle is created which may render an occasional innocent failure a permanent impotency.
Atonic impotence.—The most frequent form of impotence of copulation, in fact, the impotence “par excellence,” is the atonic impotence. This is the impotency which is generally caused by venereal excesses, either in copulation, masturbation, mental erethism, frustrate eroticism, or last but not least, conjugal onanism or coitus interruptus. These excesses cause the exhaustion of the centre of erection, irritation of the centre of ejaculation and a debilitation and enervation of the genital nerves. For when the lumbar centre of erection fails to respond, there is a deficiency in activity, excitability, mobility, and tonicity of the entire genital apparatus.