Rational-emotive therapy in the treatment of erectile failure: an initial study

Abstract

Sixteen males with erectile failure, married or living with their partners, were assigned to either 12 bi-weekly sessions (6 weeks) of Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) or a 6-week waiting-list control group. Active treatment administered by a graduate student in psychology with special training in RET resulted in patients making significantly more sexual intercourse attempts, reporting significantly reduced sexual anxiety, and having a significantly higher number of successful intercourse attempts than the waiting-list control group. While 6-9 month follow-up revealed that most treated patients had fallen back toward the pretest baseline (lower rates of successful intercourse), group means as a whole were still significantly higher than pretreatment intercourse success rates. The significance of these findings are discussed.