Private Self-consciousness, Attribution of Responsibility, and Perfectionistic Thinking in Secondary Erectile Dysfunction

Abstract

Sex therapists have observed that men who develop secondary erectile dysfunction (SED) are often self-focused in attention and self-blaming for problems in the sexual situation. Further, it has been observed that men with SED seem to believe that they must always perform perfectly in sex. This investigation reports on whether such observations of sexually dysfunctional men in the sexual situation tend to be true of them in general, that is, whether they tend generally to be more self-conscious, to attribute responsibility for negative outcome situations to themselves, and to be perfectionistic in their thinking more than do men who are sexually functional. A discriminant analysis of the combined effect of the three variables is also presented.