ABSTRACT
Psycho-sexually impotent patients are wont to complain that they 'do not feel' their penis; others mention marked feelings of coldness in the genital region, while others again speak of the sensation of the penis shrinking up; all these illusions are intensified at the moment of attempted coitus. One of these patients once wakened at night with the sensation that he had 'no feeling' of his penis at all; he experienced great anxiety and had to convince himself by touch that he really had a penis. The anxious clutching at the penis proved to be a compromise between the wish to masturbate and the dread to be so sorely punished for it. Besides unconscious (onanistic) incest phantasies, castration threats are the most frequent causes of psychic impotence; most often it is both (fear of castration on account or the incestuous wish).
