Reaction to cutaneous (tickle) and sexual pleasure by normal and dermapathic subjects

We examined separately tickle perception and pleasure and anxiety during sexual sequence of 40 dermapathic (20 men and 22 women) and 39 normal subjects (20 men and 19 women) aged between 35 and 40 yr. The dermapathic patients have an inhibitory attitude towards tactile perception of tickling and high anxiety during the sexual sequence. Furthermore, they show positive association of anxiety and pleasure unlike the control group for whom the correlation between the two emotions is negative.