For women, it has been found that treatment can improve sexual function, thus helping restore sexual desire. Depression and libido decline often coincide, with reduced sex drive being one of the symptoms of depression. Those with depression often report the decline in libido to be far reaching and more noticeable than other symptoms. In addition, those with depression often are reluctant to report their reduced sex drive, often normalizing it with cultural/social values, or by the failure of the physician to inquire about it. Physical factors
Physical factors that can affect libido include endocrine issues such as hypothyroidism, the effect of certain prescription medications (for example flutamide), and the attractiveness and biological fitness of ones partner, among various other lifestyle factors.Anemia is a cause of lack of libido in women due to the loss of iron during the period.Smoking, alcohol use disorder, and the use of certain drugs can also lead to a decreased libido. Moreover, specialists suggest that several lifestyle changes such as exercising, quitting smoking, lowering consumption of alcohol or using prescription drugs may help increase ones sexual desire. Medications
Some people purposefully attempt to decrease their libido through the usage of anaphrodisiacs. Aphrodisiacs, such as dopaminergic psychostimulants, are a class of drugs which can increase libido. On the other hand, a reduced libido is also often iatrogenic and can be caused by many medications, such as hormonal contraception, SSRIs and other antidepressants, antipsychotics, opioids, beta blockers and Isotretinoin.
He also explained that it is analogous to hunger, the will to power, and so on insisting that it is a fundamental instinct that is innate in all humans.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 infants pleasure in nursing), then in the anal stage (exemplified by a toddlers 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. (Karl Abraham would later add subdivisions in both oral and anal stages. )Freud pointed out that these libidinal drives can conflict with the conventions of civilised 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 patients reliance on ego defenses.Freud viewed libido as passing through a series of developmental stages within the individual. Failure to adequately adapt to the demands of these different stages could result in libidinal energy becoming dammed up or fixated in these stages, producing certain pathological character traits in adulthood.