The Power of Sexual Surrender

SECTION IV. _the Bridge to Womanhood_

The Bridge to Womanhood

13 THE POWER OF LOVE 177

14 STEPS TO FREEDOM 182

15 THE MALE SEX: A NEW HORIZON 197

16 THE NATURE OF SURRENDER 209

17 SEXUAL SURRENDER 216

18 THE ROLE OF THE MALE 233

19 THE LORE OF LOVE 246

ADDENDA I 259

ADDENDA II 262

THE POWER OF SEXUAL SURRENDER

Chapter 1

PARADISE LOST

Happiness between men and women has never had such a radiant outlook as it has in this decade. Perhaps for the first time in the history of man the two sexes find themselves in a position to explore together the infinitely varied and rich potentialities of real love.

I am not being a blind optimist in making such a statement. In my profession as a psychiatrist I see enough of daily misery and destructive misunderstanding between men and women to keep a healthy skepticism very much alive in my mind about all human relationships, particularly those that depend for their continued existence, at least in part, on sexual love.

I can make such a statement about the potentialities of modern love for one reason--that women today have, beyond the shadow of any doubt, achieved complete equality with men. Above all, this equality can be observed as fully operative in the realm of love, sexual love. In the past thirty-odd years, and particularly in the last ten, the taboos, ignorance, and misunderstanding which had obscured our visions for centuries and prevented any real knowledge of feminine sexuality have been washed away.

We have been through a sexual revolution of major proportions. In the course of that revolution we have learned, through science, not hearsay, the real facts. We know now that woman has the same need for passion, the same capacity for sexual response that man has. We know that, down to the last detail, she is the equal and fitting companion for all his possible raptures, can know with her entire body and mind and can share in vivid companionship the delighted storms of sexual love that in the recent past were considered to be exclusively his province.

Few, however, realize how recent and how revolutionary this view of womankind actually is. The image of Victorian woman, that sexually frozen, emotionally withdrawn vestal virgin, has faded quickly from our minds. It is important, for many reasons, to recall her, however, if only briefly. She dominated our whole view of womankind up to the beginning of the 1920’s. By taking a quick look at her we can see how far we have come in so short a time. And we can see why the prospect for love has, in our time, brightened so considerably.

The prevailing attitude toward woman and her sexuality throughout the nineteenth century and up to the end of World War I was that sex, as we understand it today, did not exist for her. This belief was held by virtually everybody, and it is nowhere more clearly stated than by the medical authorities of that era. Thus Acton, a leading medical specialist in the functions of reproduction, whose views were widely influential, wrote: “The majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind.” He also stated that people who believed differently were making “a vile aspersion” against women. Two other doctors of the time agreed completely (and presumably after checking their facts). Fehling held that any appearance of sexual feeling in a young girl in love was “pathological.” And Windschied stated that if a female showed any innate or spontaneous sexual attributes “there is abnormality.”

These men were not crackpots. They were reputable and distinguished. This was the “scientific” view of the matter, and it was shared by most people, men and women alike. It throws into clear relief the potentialities of the present. Woman’s new and revolutionary self-awareness, her knowledge gained in the past thirty-odd years that without guilt or inhibition she may function in an atmosphere of total equality with men and eager acceptance by them, makes the past seem like a nightmare. It is as though man and woman had emerged from a long, long journey through a dreary jungle full of fear and shame to the verge of a paradisal valley where they actually may live, as in the fairy tales, happily ever after.

But now we come to the tragic flaw in this picture. For, though the possibilities lie before them, millions of women find they must stay on the verge of, never enter, the paradisal valley. They find themselves, in an age where true womanhood is highly valued, sexually frigid.

What does sexual frigidity mean? I shall explain the matter in greater detail later, of course, but I can give a preliminary, working definition now. Sexual frigidity is the inability to enjoy physical love to the limits of its potentiality. The frigid woman is, to a greater or lesser degree, blocked in her sensual capacities. Generally she cannot experience orgasm. If she has one at all it is weak and unsatisfying. Many frigid women, however, not only do not have any orgasm but may also lack the capacity to feel even the beginnings of sexual excitement. To some the sexual act is painful.

The frigid woman has learned to fear physical love, to run from it, and this fear has profound repercussions on her relationships with men. The reasons for her fear are hidden from her, are locked in her unconscious mind. Consciously she may wish, above all things, to achieve real closeness with her husband, to give and receive the greatest of all mutual joys between man and woman, sexual gratification. But she has not the capacity to receive this joy. It is beyond her will and control. It is as if she had a million dollars and could not spend a cent of it; as if she were surrounded by the finest foods and must starve. The very fact of the new equality she has won makes her problem even more humiliating, bitterer, more frustrating.

In my fifteen years as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst I have treated many, many women who have come to me in despair because of their partial or total inability to enjoy the sexual part of their marriage and because of the repercussions from this inability. I and hundreds of other psychiatrists have been fortunate in helping many of them to overcome their difficulties. We have found that before a woman can be expected to take full responsibility for reaching true sexual maturity she must really know all about herself, her sex and her problem. Then and only then has she the material in hand to start growing up, in all pleasure, to her full feminine stature.

If a woman is willing to work in all seriousness with a psychiatrist there is little question that she can be helped to overcome her sexual difficulty. The information she receives, the insights she obtains into the conditions which have kept her from experiencing real love can sweep away her ignorance, her misunderstandings, her irrational fears.

Her experience with the psychiatrist may help her husband, too, for with his wife’s consent the therapist will often see him for periodic discussions. These talks help him to understand her problem, to see deeply into the nature of his wife and therefore of all womankind. This knowledge allows the husband to be of direct help in effecting his wife’s release from the immobilizing grip of her frigidity. It helps him to be patient where he might have been irritable, tender when he might have been importunate; it keeps him from the major error of believing that he is to blame for her underlying condition and thus complicating the relationship by becoming defensive, as one unjustly accused would become--indeed, should.

The question then arises as to whether the kind of information a woman and her husband may receive during her therapy can also be helpful in book form.

I have given much thought to this question and have had many consultations with my psychiatric colleagues about it. We have come to the positive conclusion that a book on this subject can be of direct benefit to all women suffering from sexual frigidity.

I will go even further and say that the facts about frigidity that I present here--its origins, its causes, and its cures--must be known by every woman with a sexual problem if she wishes to be cured.

Frigidity is always rooted in incomplete knowledge gained in childhood and adolescence. We are not, as I have pointed out, far from the Victorian age. Any woman of thirty or more had, in all probability, parents who were reared in the traditions of Victorianism, which denied the sexuality of woman, connived with every available force to deny it, repress it, stop it at its source. These efforts were extraordinarily successful. And, too, any woman now in her twenties probably had parents who were deeply affected by the equally mindless and vicious protest against Victorianism which characterized this country from, roughly, 1920 to 1930--the period we now call the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age.

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