Impotence, frigidity and depersonalization

A review of important psychoanalytic literature in the perplexing area of depersonalization focuses primarily on its phenomenology and genesis. Case material from two patients elucidates a relatively neglected, specific substate. These two analyses center about prominent complaints of impotence and frigidity which are seen as equivalents of, or screens for, underlying depersonalization. Only by understanding and working through the genesis of the masked depersonalization could these sexual dysfunctions be adequately treated. Depersonalization was also manifest outside the sexual sphere, but its presence there led to a more thorough elucidation of its etiology, in which actual childhood observations of the primal scene were of paramount importance. A comprehensive description of depersonalization phenomenology is offered which considers this state as a compromise formulation with contributions from each structure of the mental apparatus. Normal and pathological determinants of the sesation of a split within the self into observing and participating aspects are described, as is the genesis of feelings of alienation and estrangement.