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Many of the physical and mental disabilities attributed to old age are due more to society’s perception of ageing and to our institutions, which classify people as old, than to the biology of ageing.

In our society, old age begins at 65 – the usual retirement age. You may not feel old at 65, but you are classified as old, and it takes a good deal of mental fortitude to escape the belief that you are old. This is not helped by the ambivalent attitudes that many people -young, middle aged, and old – have to old age. Because of ‘conditioning’ during their formative years many people think of old age as a shameful period of life. They treat old people as if they belong to a sub-human species.

Homosexuality is neither a sin nor a pathology, it is an alternative life-style; yet in many Western societies homosexuals continue to be harassed, discriminated against, or, at best, barely tolerated. The fear of persecution, the guilt engendered within a homosexual by societal attitudes, and (as Dr West writes) ‘the intense and irrationally motivated hostility of Anglo-American culture to homosexuals, is to blame for many of the attendant social evils’ which beset homosexuals, shape their identity and distort their lives.

Societal attitudes towards homosexuality, whether overt or covert, although modified in recent years, are still strongly hostile. To be a homosexual is to risk oppression. The oppression may take the form of persecution or harassment by the authorities. It may take the form of discrimination in employment, as employers are reluctant to employ a known homosexual and often sack a homosexual employee who ‘comes out’ and acknowledges his homosexuality. This is especially the case in the teaching profession, although the seduction of children by homosexuals is unusual, as I have mentioned. Even those people who say they are tolerant of homosexuality add to the oppression of homosexuals, as they fail to distinguish between tolerance and acceptance. Homosexuals are victims of the oppression which results from a minority group being treated as figures of fun, to be mocked or derided (as in most films, plays, and ‘fag-stories’). While a homosexual may realize that the gibes of heterosexuals hide deep fears and an irrational hatred of homosexuality, the effect may be to make him insecure or flamboyant.

The problem in most cases of impotence is not in the man’s penis but in his brain, in his perception of his sexuality. As impotence is most often due to anxiety and to the fear of failure to perform sexually, it is logical that help should be obtained from a psychiatrist or psychologist. Unfortunately, psychiatrists, like other people, are the product of their childhood and their training. Those who adhere to one school of psychiatry have contempt for those who adhere to other schools. This applies especially in the psychiatry of sexual dysfunction. Hell hath no fury like a Freudian frustrated!

Psychoanalysis, by uncovering childhood problems, frustrations, and unhappy relationships with parents, may relieve some impotent men, but the method is time consuming, expensive, and the results are not very good. The place for psychoanalysis seems to be in the treatment of problems which may arise during the course of sex therapy. Conventional psychiatry is even less successful in treating secondary impotence.

Studies by several sexual counsellors show that men who are premature ejaculators frequently had sexually inhibited parents, who had taught the boy that sex was something rather shameful. In adolescence or young manhood the man’s first sexual encounter was associated with guilt. He may have had his first sexual experience with a prostitute who wanted the man to ‘finish it off quickly’, or it was in an inappropriate place where the couple could be surprised by parents or passers-by. The anxiety caused by this possible eventuality led to a furtive, speedy, and unsatisfactory sexual experience, which was often repeated.

The theory that most men with premature ejaculation have had stressful initial sexual encounters is not the only one. After all, many men have hurried or unrelaxed sexual encounters; trying to make it with one ear for the steps on the stairs; or one eye on the darkening lane; but only a few appear to become premature ejaculators. Moreover, men who have been cured of premature ejaculation often feel anxious when highly aroused sexually that they are going to ejaculate too soon – but they very rarely do.

The secretions, which make up so much of the semen volume, are important because they provide nourishment and energy for the millions of spermatozoa and permit the sperm to exercise their tails.

Looked at under a microscope, spermatozoa are seen to be complex. Each sperm has a head, a middle piece, and a tail. The head of the sperm is shaped like the head of a snake. The head carries all the genetic material to form a new human if it combines with the genetic material in the ovum. Covering the front of the head is a thickened cap. Behind the head is a cylindrical body or midpiece which contains the ‘engine’ of the sperm. The energy which is needed to enable the tail of the sperm to propel it through the uterus is produced here. The tail of the sperm is three times as long as the head and body. It propels the sperm by a thrashing, twisting movement.

Scattered all over the surface of the head and midpiece of the sperm are small spots which, as it were, ‘squirt out’ substances, called antigens. If enough of the substances are extruded, when the spermatozoa have been ejaculated in a woman’s vagina, some may enter her tissues and then her blood. If she is especially sensitive to the antigens, special cells ‘recognize’ the antigen as ‘foreign’ and rush to surround it and cover it, so that it is no longer recognized. If they fail to do this, the woman’s body produces substances called antibodies which combine with the antigen and make it innocuous. But her body is then sensitized to the sperm antigen and the cells which line her cervix may start secreting the antibodies. They then seek and cover the antigen-secreting spots on the sperm. If this happens they may make the spermatozoa stick together, or stop their tails thrashing so that they are unable to make the journey through the uterus and fertilize the egg.

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