Treatment for Premature Ejaculation 

[ Home ] [ Prevalence of premature ejaculation ] [ How prevalent is premature ejaculation? ] [ Definition of premature ejaculation ] [ Why I stopped my PE ] [ The medical view of premature ejaculation ] [ Treatments for premature ejaculation ] [ End premature ejaculation now ] [ Treating premature ejaculation ] [ How to last longer in bed ] [ How to stop premature ejaculation 2 ] [ Stop premature ejaculation now ] [ Premature ejaculation information 1 ] [ Premature ejaculation information 2 ] [ Premature ejaculation information 3 ] [ Premature ejaculation information 4 ] [ Premature ejaculation information 5 ] [ Premature ejaculation infommation 6 ] [ Premature ejaculation information 7 ] [ Premature ejaculation information 8 ] [ Premature ejaculation information 9 ] [ Achieving simultaneous orgasm ] [ Premature Ejaculation Information ]

Definition of Premature Ejaculation

Variation in the time between penetration and ejaculation - and premature ejaculation itself - is a common and normal. However, when the time before ejaculation is really short at every attempt at intercourse, the cause of the early ejaculation may be neurobiological, medical and/or psychological. Premature ejaculation has invoked many different theories, approaches and treatment methods but few of them have been shown to work.

At the heart of the debate is the need to find a reliable definition of the term premature ejaculation, In this context we may need to distinguish between premature ejaculation as a complaint and PE as a syndrome.

As a complaint, premature ejaculation may just be a part of the normal variation of time to ejaculation in different men, or it may be the result of some kind of medical condition. What this means in practice is that men who only occasionally come too soon could be said to have natural variable premature ejaculation, while in those men where early ejaculation is present from the first sexual encounter and occurs every time they have sex, and maybe very soon after penetration, there is a diagnosis of lifelong premature ejaculation to be made. On the other hand, men who say that they have premature ejaculation but who ejaculate after a reasonable time, for example perhaps 5 to 10 minutes after penetration, may be diagnosed as having premature-like ejaculatory dysfunction. (This seems to me to do nothing more than satisfy the scientists' need for classification - it does not seem like a helpful category. Surely men who last ten minutes in bed are normal and do not have any kind of premature or early ejaculation?)

Certainly men who fall into this latter category seem to have more of a psychological problem than a real one, and probably need counseling, and education about what is normal during sex.

Those men who have lifelong premature ejaculation and always last for a very short time in bed, and are desperate to last longer in bed or to last longer during sex generally may find a cure in the treatment methods explained on this website.

An alternative which has been proposed is treatment with drugs.

The Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders

Definitions of PE tend to be subjective, though the DSM (fourth edition, revised text) also known as the DSMIV-TR, published by the United States Psychiatric Association, defines it as persistent or recurrent ejaculation after minimal stimulation before, on, or just after penetration and before the man wishes it. The DSM goes on to acknowledge the subjective element in this definition by acknowledging that the doctor must recognize those factors which affect duration of the excitement phase of sexual intercourse: these include age of the sexual participants, newness of the sexual partner or situation, and how often the man has had sex in the recent past.

So in other words, premature ejaculation can be though of as only occurring when an early ejaculation causes distress or interpersonal difficulty. That's an interesting concept, because not being able to last long enough in bed is for many men a really distressing situation. Indeed, most men who come quickly would be extremely grateful for any cure which enabled them to last longer during sex. According to the ICD (10th edition) which is issued by the World Health Organization, premature ejaculation is the inability to delay ejaculation enough to enjoy lovemaking, and takes the form of ejaculation before penetration or very soon after the start of intercourse, though they define it as within 15 seconds of intercourse starting, which seems to be extremely restrictive. Many men who cannot last longer than a minute would consider themselves to have premature ejaculation. In any event, what is clear is that satisfying intercourse is often not possible regardless of how long the man lasts before he ejaculates.

So on the one hand we have a definition which speaks of fifteen seconds of sex before ejaculation; on the other we have a definition which requires a man to experience distress during sex. Both of these definitions are subjective, of course, and the absence of a time cut-off point which all can agree on makes them of potentially limited use. After all - doesn't  a man know when he has premature ejaculation?

I think the answer to this is - no, not always, for he may not know how long the average time between penetration and ejaculation actually is, nor may he know how his sexual performance compares to other men's, and he may be under pressure form his partner because, for example, of her failure to reach orgasm during intercourse, while in fact his sexual performance is quite normal.

What is premature ejaculation - continued here.