Sexual Desire/Libido

Libido or colloquially sex drive, is a person’s overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Sex drive is determined by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, levels of hormones such as testosterone are believed to affect sex drive; social factors, such as work and family, also have an impact; as do internal psychological factors, like personality and stress. Sex drive may be affected by medical conditions, medications, lifestyle and relationship issues. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly increased sex drive may be experiencing hypersexuality, or puberty in which the body builds up chemicals and causes a higher sex drive. However, there is no universally agreed measure of what is a healthy level for sex. Asexual people may lack any sexual desires.

A person may have a desire for sex, but not have the opportunity to act on that desire, or may on personal, moral or religious reasons refrain from acting on the urge. Psychologically, a person’s urge can be repressed or sublimated. On the other hand, a person can engage in sexual activity without an actual desire for it. Males reach the peak of their sex drive in their teens, while females reach it in their thirties. Multiple factors affect human sex drive, including stress, illness, pregnancy, and others.

Sexual desires are often an important factor in the formation and maintenance of intimate relationships in both men and women, and a lack or loss of sexual desire can adversely affect relationships. Changes in the sexual desires of either partner in a sexual relationship, if sustained and unresolved, may cause problems in the relationship. The infidelity of a partner may be an indication of that a partner’s changing sexual desires can no longer be satisfied within the current relationship. Problems can arise from disparity of sexual desires between partners, or poor communication between partners of sexual needs and preferences.

Sigmund Freud defined libido as “the energy, regarded as a quantitative magnitude of those instincts which have to do with all that may be comprised under the word ‘love’. It is the instinct energy or force, contained in what Freud called the id, the strictly unconscious structure of the psyche. Building on the work of Karl Abraham, Freud developed the idea of a series of developmental phases in which the libido fixates on different erogenous zones—first in the oral stage (exemplified by an infant’s pleasure in nursing), then in the anal stage (exemplified by a toddler’s pleasure in controlling his or her bowels), then in the phallic stage, through a latency stage in which the libido is dormant, to its reemergence at puberty in the genital stage. Freud pointed out that these libidinal drives can conflict with the conventions of civilized behavior, represented in the psyche by the superego. It is this need to conform to society and control the libido that leads to tension and disturbance in the individual, prompting the use of ego defenses to dissipate the psychic energy of these unmet and mostly unconscious needs into other forms. Excessive use of ego defenses results in neurosis. A primary goal of psychoanalysis is to bring the drives of the id into consciousness, allowing them to be met directly and thus reducing the patient’s reliance on ego defenses.