5. The sexual sphere has a greater extension, and is more diffusely distributed than in man.
6. The spontaneous appearances of sexual desire have a marked tendency to periodicity.[31]
7. The sexual impulse exhibits in woman greater variability, a greater extent of variation, than in man—alike when we examine separate feminine individuals, and when we compare the different phases in the life of the same woman.
This great extension of the feminine sexual sphere is illustrated, for example, by the case reported by Moraglia, of a woman who was able to induce sexual excitement by the masturbation of fourteen different areas of her body.
How much more woman is sexuality than man is can be observed in asylums, where the conventional inhibitions are withdrawn. Here, according to Shaw’s observations, the women greatly exceed the men in fluency, malignity, and obscenity; and in this relation there is no difference between the shameless virago from the most depraved classes of London and the elegant lady of the upper circles. Noise, uncleanliness, and sexual depravity in speech and demeanour, are much commoner in the women’s wards of asylums than on the male side. In all forms of acute mental disorder, according to Shaw, the sexual element plays a much more prominent part in woman than in man.
Another experienced alienist, Dr. E. Bleuler, confirms this permeation of woman with sexuality. In a recently published work he remarks:
“The whole ‘career’ in the average woman depends on sexuality; marriage, or some equivalent of marriage, signifies to her what to man a position in business signifies—viz., her ambition in all relations, the happily conducted struggle for simple existence, as well as for pleasure and for all else that life can bring, and only after these, sexuality also, and the joy of having children. Not to marry, and also extra-conjugal sexual indulgence, induce in woman inevitable consequences, with strongly marked emotional colouring; to the average man all this is a trifling affair, or it may even be a matter of absolute indifference. And we have further to consider the limits imposed by our civilization, which make it impossible for the well-brought-up woman to live, and even to think, as she pleases in sexual matters, and which demand the actual suppression of sexual emotions, not merely of the outward manifestation of these emotions. Is it to be wondered at that in these circumstances, in mentally disordered women, we encounter once more the suppressed sexual feelings, those sexual feelings which really comprise at least half of our natural existence?—I say at least half, for the analogous impulse, the nutritive impulse, seems really to be inferior in strength to the sexual impulse, in civilized as well as in savage human beings.”
In the majority of cases the sexual frigidity of woman is, in fact, apparent merely—either because behind the veil prescribed by conventional morality, behind the apparent coldness, there is concealed an ardent sexuality, or else because the particular man with whom she has had intercourse has not succeeded rightly in awakening her erotic sensibility, so complicated and so difficult to arouse.[32] When he has succeeded in doing so, the sexual insensibility will in the majority of cases disappear. A striking example of this is seen in the following case:
Case of Temporary Sexual Anæsthesia.—Girl twenty years of age. Early awakening of the sexual impulses. Already practised onanism at the age of five years; often for the sake of sexual stimulation introduced hairpins into the vagina, until one day one of these remained, and had to be removed by operation. Notwithstanding this, she soon resumed masturbation, using for this purpose a finger, a candle, etc. Ultimately this became a daily practice, which she continued until she was eighteen years of age. She then first had sexual intercourse with a man, in which, however, she remained quite cold; this was the case also in subsequent attempts with this man and with others. Finally she met a man with whom she was in sympathy, who succeeded in inducing in her sexual gratification, by exchange of rôles, and corresponding alteration in the position in intercourse. Later, intercourse in the normal position also induced complete sexual gratification; since then onanism has been entirely discontinued, and in coitus the orgasm occurs speedily in one or two minutes.
Where sexual frigidity in woman is enduring in character, we have to do either with inherited influences, with sexual developmental inhibition, the psycho-sexual infantilism of Eulenburg, or with some disease (especially hysteria and other nervous disorders), and with the consequences of habitual masturbation.