ABSTRACT
Physical and emotional pain is often easier to bear if one has an understanding of its cause, and both doctors and patients are anxious to find out why things happen. For many people the easiest path is to believe that the symptom has a purely physical cause. There may, of course, be some anatomical abnormality that, for example, can diminish the power of an erection in an older man. The wish to find an understandable physical explanation for symptoms is equally strong in some women. For them, 'hormones' are often blamed. The types of symptom that may be associated with a sexual difficulty are almost endless: contraceptive difficulties, genital and vague abnormal pains, menstrual upsets and a whole variety of anxieties and depressive feelings. Many of these complaints may have more than one cause, and doctor and patient have to try and untangle them together.
