Sexual Anesthesia

Sexual Anesthesia, a collective term for diminished sexual desire and reduced sensation of pleasure during sexual intercourse. Sexual Anesthesia has many synonyms—hypoesthesia, sexual coldness, anaphrodisia, dyspareunia, hypothymia, etc.—which partly encompass the aforementioned concept and partly elaborate on it. The causal factors of sexual anesthesia may be: 1) perversion of sexual feeling—homosexuality and autoerotism, which most often result in masturbation; 2) congenital and acquired developmental defects of the sexual organs, especially the glands (hermaphrodites, eunuchoids, castrates); 3) psychological influences—religious and educationally induced inhibitory factors; 4) diseases of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), neuritis and psychoses; 5) somatic diseases that exhaust the body; 6) local diseases leading to anatomical and functional disorders of the sexual organs.—In frequency, Sexual Anesthesia predominates in women: according to some authors, up to 40% of all women suffer from Sexual Anesthesia in the form of diminished desire. In men, it is more often expressed as reduced sensation of pleasure (orgasm).—Treatment is complex and depends on the combination of psychogenic and local factors in the etiology of the condition. A detailed analysis of the causes makes it possible to select appropriate psychological influences or general therapeutic measures and local remedies.