It is a clinically accepted fact that most impotence and frigidity are psychological in origin rather than physical. This is a somewhat misleading way to put the fact. Human beings are not divided up into mysterious minds and simplistic bodies. Once we get beyond broken legs the whole damned human being is pretty mysterious. We don’t know much about them yet. As of now we havn’t even figured out white rats. Psychological problems, on some level, it seems likely, are the results of certain neurological configurations. Misery can be programmed environmentally into people, and often is. One has certain sorts of compulsions or certain sorts of emotional responses probably both because one has a certain sort of brain and certain forms of stimuli have been applied to it. Dispositions to respond which are not useful to the organism are not hard to burn into the brain by conditioning processes. Similarly, incompatible responses can be programmed into human beings. This is cruel, but we do it all the time. We produce, by contrary programmings, contradictory tendencies to act. This often, then, produces indecision, doubt, agony, hesitation and neurosis. The sexual area, of course, is an unusually rich field for such conflicts because here the familial and societal conditionings are often at variance with natural tendencies which, of course, self-program affirmative responses, given certain behavioral acts. For example, receiving pleasure tends to reinforce a given response, say, touching the genitals. On the other hand, a societal prohibition, welded into the brain before the child has a chance to evaluate it, may indefinitely act to qualify and impair genital performance. It is no wonder some men have a hell of a time getting up a public erection, i.e., one before another person, a woman. Similarly it is no wonder some women have a hell of a time getting up a public orgasm, i.e., one before another person, a man.

There is a difference, of course, when the impotence or frigidity is the result of such programmings and not the result of injury or congenital defect in the involved organs. It is the latter cases, of injury or congenital defect, which constitute “physical” impotence. The former cases, results of the reception and processing of stimuli, are those which are often spoken of as “psychological.” They are, of course, no less real. They are as real as nerve paths in the brain. Once this is understood the attitude that “psychological impotence” is somehow reprehensible, as if it were a moral or social fault, is seen to be uninformed. It can be as obdurate and vicious as a broken back or castration. On the other hand, it is also, like some forms of physical impotence, capable of dissolution. Habit patterns can be weakened and broken; new habits can overwhelm them.