Premature Ejaculation

PREMATURE EJACULATION OR ejaculation praecox is the most frequent dysfunction in the male and is characterised by sudden ejaculation of the semen, just prior to or immediately after vaginal penetration during coitus. The word praecox means premature or 'before time'. In other words, it is a condition where the man has no voluntary control over his ejaculation. He is quick on the trigger once he starts intercourse.

Premature ejaculation was not rated a major sexual problem till recently. In a man's world sexual enjoyment was a male privilege the feelings of the female did not count. Even Alfred Kinsey labelled a man who could discharge in 30 seconds a superior individual, although it is 'inconvenient and unfortunate from the standpoint of the wife in the relationship'. In the last two decades, the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme Lasting longer has now become a male obsession, in fact a disease, since Masters and Johnson demonstrated that the female can reach more than one enjoyable orgasm during intercourse. The all consuming desire of males today is to make their partners multi orgasmic. M, the author of The Sensuous Male, labels premature ejaculation a 'major disaster'.

After centuries of suppression, women have become orgasmconscious and deem it a male's duty to make them orgasmic and fulfilled. This performance pressure has over burdened the male, resulting in premature ejaculation becoming a major cause of sexual dysfunction in the West. The Westerly winds of change are sweeping over Bharat, and it is not unusual for the degreed, pedigreed modern female to drag her male partner to the doctor for treatment of premature ejaculation.

What is premature ejaculation?

Different authorities have given varying definitions of the disorder. Alfred Kinsey in a study of the sexual behaviour of about 1200 American males observed, 'For three quarters of all males, orgasm is reached within two minutes of the initiation of the sex act and for not an inconsiderable number the climax may be reached within less than a minute or even within 10 or 20 seconds after coital entrance. Far from being abnormal, the human male who is quick in his sexual response is quite normal among the mammals'. Most animals discharge immediately after penetration. For instance, chimpanzees ejaculate within 30 seconds after intromission.

Masters and Johnson consider a male a premature ejaculator 'if he cannot control his ejaculatory process for a sufficient length of time, during intravaginal containment, to satisfy his partner in at least 50 per cent of their coital connections'. A medical centre in the USA has defined a premature ejaculator as an individual who cannot control his ejaculation for at least 30 seconds after vaginal penetration.

Helen Singer Kaplan disagrees with definitions of premature ejaculation which 'are related to the time it takes a man to reach the plateau stage in the sexual response cycle'. The essence of prematurity, she says, is the 'absence of voluntary control over the ejaculatory reflex, once a high level of sexual excitement is reached'. A premature ejaculator cannot control his orgasm and, secondly, he does not feel the intense erotic or pleasurable sensations when he is aroused. Dr. Kaplan calls this phenomenon 'genital anaesthesia'