Sexual Dysfunction History
Older ideas about the harmful effects of sin, guilt, bad habits, or evil spells on sexual function in both men and women have been replaced by the medicalization of sexuality, but these viewpoints are still prevalent today. In reality, many different theories are used to explain sexual dysfunction and dissatisfaction, and biological reasoning is just one of them.
Sexual dysfunction in men
Maintaining a level of male sexual function that is acceptable is crucial in today’s societies. Even though ejaculation disorders and low libido are included in the category of sexual dysfunction in men, erectile dysfunction which is the inability to maintain an erection was the most common issue from antiquity until the present.
Penetration was a sign of manhood and a requirement for a positive reputation in the Greek and Roman conceptions of sexuality. As a result, medical professionals who were impacted offered recipes for healing substances, and pornographic writers created humorous tales about men who didn’t pass the important test. To combat, treat, and explain male sexual dysfunction, philosophers of the 18th century accepted the idea that men and women have different sexual spheres. However, even though this significant issue could not be disregarded, the nineteenth-century culture that insisted on privacy found discussion of such topics repugnant.
During that time, the writers of middle-class marriage guides popularized the idea of the “spermatic economy,” which holds that excesses cause a loss of masculine strength and endurance, which can eventually lead to impotence. Additionally emphasized were the risks of spermatorrhea, prostitution, masturbation, and STDs. Early in the 20th century, theories of male sexual dysfunction shifted from moral to psychological. Impotence was recognized as a problem for both men and women following World War II, and the development of the field of endocrinology in the 1920s validated the scientific study of the male reproductive system.
Numerous historians assert that sex therapy, psychoanalysis, and even surgery have been totally overtaken by Viagra (sildenafil). The Food and Drug Administration authorized the first oral treatment for erectile dysfunction in 1998. It was created at Pfizer Laboratories essentially by accident. Whether the ensuing impotence medications actually transformed sexuality is still up for debate.
Sexual dysfunction in women
The recognition of this kind of issue dates back further, even though the term “female sexual dysfunction” was only recently introduced to the medical literature. The diagnosis of nymphomania was not unusual even in the 16th century, and the Victorian era saw a notable rise in the proportion of women suffering from this illness. New theories of sexual dysfunction emerged as a result of the psychiatric and sexological fields overlapping development at the end of the 19th century. Certain sexual dysfunctions, like the inability to achieve vaginal orgasm, were considered the basis of “frigidity” based on Freud’s statements (most notably in the works of Hitschmann and Bergler).
Early in the 20th century, there was a surge in marriage counseling literature in the US and the UK that highlighted the importance of sexual pleasure in marriage. Given the significant emotional, physical, and spiritual differences between men and women, sexual dysfunction in women was viewed as a technical problem that was a component of a larger social phenomenon that needed to be addressed through education. In 1952, issues like coldness were categorized under “Psychophysiological autonomic and visceral disorders” in the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Although dyspareunia was added to the list, the second edition, which was released in 1968, was comparable.
Only the third edition of the DSM, published in 1980, saw significant changes, moving from psychoanalytic to biological psychiatry. An umbrella chapter on psychosexual disorders has been added in place of distinct categories for sexual deviations and psychophysiological genitourinary disorders. Historically, female sexual dysfunction has generally been regarded as a descriptive or general term rather than a diagnostic one. Even though it was made up of several diagnostic categories, treatment was still sought as though it were a true monocausal condition. Medical literature from the 20th and 21st centuries has addressed sexuality’s social dimensions and its potential to treat sexual dysfunction in great detail.
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