Chapter 77

Sexual Disorders

Stephen B. Levine

Stephen B. Levine

Department of Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, Beachwood, OH, USA

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First published: 16 April 2008

Summary

Sexual disorders are a relatively invisible, highly prevalent set of problems created by combinations of personality development, individual psychology, interpersonal psychology, biology, and culture. They can seriously interfere with courtship, pleasure in living, reproduction, and loving. Despite their low research priority for psychiatry, they impinge upon clinical practice in numerous ways. This chapter provides an introductory overview of two major categories of disorders: the sexual dysfunctions, which include problems with sexual desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain during intimate contact, and sexual identity problems, which encompass anomalies of gender identity and the paraphilias.

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