ROBERT J. FILEWICH, PhD: It can happen whereby you
do get erect, and as you're about to have sex, you lose your erection,
or it can be when you're actually in the course of having intercourse,
you lose the erection, or you don't get erect at all. So it can happen
in any of those kind of ways. Usually what happens is that the person
is focusing more or less on the final goal, which is orgasm or pleasing
the partner with an orgasm, and not really focusing on all the rest of
what goes on in the sexual encounter, which is really one of the things
that we try to do as therapists, to try to get the person to focus more
on the relationship and the sensory experiences that they're having as
opposed to the final goal -- more focusing on the process rather than the
product.
DAVID FOLK THOMAS: We'll stick with concentrating
on this male part of the issue, but are women also subject to performance
anxiety?
KEN ROSENBERG, MD: Of course women suffer from that.
It, again, is not called performance anxiety for women, it more characteristically
would be anorgasmia, the inability to have an orgasm, or vaginismus, the
inability to allow the penis -- or the finger, for that matter -- to enter
the vagina because a woman is so anxious that her vaginal muscles are contracting.
So for women, anxiety certain plays a role, and behavioral techniques and
medicines and couples therapy and all sorts of therapies could be of enormous
benefit for women as is true for men.
DAVID FOLK THOMAS: If you're a man and this is a
problem that you're having and you go to seek treatment, what is the treatment?
