A very specific form of impotence, called koro, occurs in China and South-East Asia. The word is of Malay origin and means the head of a tortoise. It describes a psychiatric syndrome, in which the usually older patient becomes convinced that his penis is shrinking and will disappear into his abdomen (like a tortoise’s head), finally resulting in death. Koro may be an expression of schizophrenia, a serious depression, epilepsy, a delirium, but may also occur in withdrawal from heroin, and very occasionally is the result of a brain tumour.
The Chinese term for the phenomenon is suo-yang, which means ‘shrivelling penis’. There are various explanations for the fact that koro apparently occurs mainly in China. One of these is connected with Chinese philosophy and its yin-yang principle. According to this philosophy, man, the world and the cosmos are assigned two fundamental forces. Yang stands for hardness, firmness, the heavens, light, god, truth, drought, the left-hand and front side, and masculinity. Yin stands for the earth, calm, softness, the moon, darkness, deceitfulness, liquid, the right-hand and rear side, and femininity. For the man this means that both a drastic loss of yang and an excess of yin can lead to problems. According to this view nocturnal emissions and masturbation cause a loss of yang. Normal coitus, between man and woman, that is, results in a ‘healthy’ exchange of yin and yang fluids.
More than in other cultures extensive use is made in China of potency-enhancing medicines. Quite understandable if one knows that male potency is directly related to the cosmic characteristics of the yang principle.
Koro also occurs in Western culture. In 1985 an article appeared in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry about an American patient in his fifties. He had reported to an emergency clinic with extreme anxiety, palpitations and hyperventilation. Shortly before he had visited a prostitute, who before giving him oral sex had washed his glans and penis — according to the patient — with a strange chemical substance. Immediately afterwards, he claimed, his penis had started to shrivel. He had seen a strange smile on her face, and felt as if he were under a spell. It emerged that he was afraid of dying suddenly. He
was admitted, after which it gradually became clear that he followed a solitary, schizoid lifestyle, and also drank far too heavily. Such stories were recorded in Europe too as far back as the fifteenth century, though not by psychiatrists, but by notorious witch-hunters. As is almost always the case, it is the woman who was demonized!