Performance anxiety, one of the most common causes of sexual dysfunction, is an unpleasant demonstration ofthe negative power of the human mind. Men who begin to obsessively worry that they won't be able to get an erection, or whose minds are filled with memories of the last time they failed to get an erection, eventually can't get an erection. Likewise, women who worry excessively about being sexually responsive or who worry that they won't be passionate enough for their partner are apt to find that turning on turns into work. In either case, the person's fears, anxieties and self-doubts become so overwhelming they smother out everything else, even the powerful physiological impulses of sex.

Part of the problem is suggested by the very phrase performance anxiety.
These people have come to see sex as a kind of performance, as if they were addressing the United Nations or playing in the World Series, rather than simply exchanging physical pleasure with another person. As if, instead oflying there in bed with their lover, they were surrounded by TV lights, crowds in the grand¬stands and the entire White House press corps. Once you start thinking of sex this way, it's only natural that you start worrying about "failure" -especially if you've "failed" in the past.

And it's only one more step to what, M.D., and Virginia Johnson, of the Masters and Johnson Institute in St. Louis, called "spectatoring"¬mentally stepping outside yourself and watching your own performance. When you find a part of yourself sitting in the grandstands, watching yourself-almost as if there's a third person in the bed with you and your lover-you can't pos¬sibly be fully engaged in lovemaking. A part of you is looking down at the rest of you - judging, criticizing, even grading your every move. How could anybody really express themselves sexually, much less enjoy it, under such circumstances?