Psychology and sex
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Especially before the development of dependable methods of contraception, the control of sexual behavior was of extreme practical importance to parents in some societies. The methodologies employed by parents to try to prevent their children from prematurely becoming parents themselves could have a profound effect on the minds of those children. In some societies, guilt was inculcated in an attempt to prevent premarital sexual activity, and the guilt could contaminate the entire self image of the individuals who, after all, were biologically predetermined to have the "guilty" sexual impulses that their families (and, usually, their religions) were trying to head off. In other societies, shaming was done with the same goals and with similar psychological damage possible.
The ability to function sexually depends a great deal on activities that occur not in the sexual organs but in the brain. When the individual has been psychologically traumatized by abusive practices intended to control premarital sexual activities, he or she may be unable to perform well even after marriage has presumably legitimized sexual intercourse. Dysfunctions for males may include: inability to achieve an erection, penile insensitivity, premature ejaculation, etc. For the female they may include: frigidity, inability to achieve orgasm, vaginismus, etc. These problems may lead to secondary problems if, for instance, affected individuals self medicate with alcohol, marijuana (in the case of premature ejaculation), or even more dangerous drugs.
The treatment of sexual dysfunctions and the problems of low self esteem, guilt, self-destructive impulses, etc., has been one of the main activities of helping professions such as psychiatry, clinical psychology, etc.
Havelock Ellis
According to Ellis in My Life, his friends were much amused at his being considered an expert on sex, what with the fact that he suffered from impotence until the age of 60, when he discovered that he was able to become aroused by the sight of a woman urinating. Ellis named the interest in urination "Undinism" but it is now more commonly called Urolagnia.
His book Sexual Inversion, the first English medical text book on homosexuality, co-authored with John Addington Symonds, described the sexual relations of homosexual men and boys, something that Ellis did not consider to be a disease, immoral, or a crime. The work assumes that same-sex love transcended age-taboos as well as gender-taboos, as seven of the twenty-one examples are of intergenerational relationships. A bookseller was prosecuted in 1897 for stocking Ellis' book. Although the term homosexual itself is attributed to Ellis, he wrote in 1897, “‘homosexual’ is a barbarously hybrid word, and I claim no responsibility for it,”<ref>Online Etymology Dictionary at www.etymonline.com</ref> the hybridity in question being the word's mix of Greek and Latin roots. Other psychologically important concepts developed by Ellis include autoerotism and narcissism, both of which were later taken up by Sigmund Freud.
