The Power of Sexual Surrender

by Marie Nyswander Robinson

The clitoridal woman seeks to obtain her typical orgasm in two ways. In intercourse she will sometimes strive to bring her clitoris into direct contact with the penis, thus obtaining the stimulation necessary for her to achieve climax. Most women, however, are not able to gratify themselves in this way. Intercourse seems to deaden their sexual feelings, even their clitoral feelings. It is as though the male penis in the vagina represented a dangerous and hostile presence. Such women are only able to come to their clitoridal climax either by masturbating themselves or having their husbands do so before or after intercourse.

The clitoridal woman—that is, the woman who experiences orgasm on her clitoris alone—is very definitely suffering from a form of frigidity. Indeed this form of frigidity is extremely widespread, and we will devote much space to it later, tracing the origin of the difficulty and the indications for treatment.

Since we have a name for the clitoridal type of sexual frigidity, let us, for the sake of clarity, also give a name to the form of frigidity first described, that which is characterized by a subnormal degree of sensation in the entire genital area and weak and infrequent orgasm. This form of frigidity is called sexual anesthesia in textbooks, and I will use that phrase here when I refer to it. The word “anesthesia,” as you probably know, simply means the absence, or relative absence, of sensation.

Now that we have named names I should like to say that I wish the problem of frigidity were as uncomplicated as this description makes it sound. If it were we’d simply have the problem of a large number of women who weren’t getting all the pleasure out of life that is possible. But there is far more to it than that.

The sad fact is that frigidity usually has a profound psychological repercussion on the individual. Her inadequacy is rooted in her childhood or adolescence, in early fears and misunderstandings, in events largely forgotten now. Around these early experiences, as crystals around a string, have clustered a whole series of personality traits that make life very hard for her and, much too often, unbearable for those nearest and dearest to her—her husband and her children.

To put it most directly, frigidity is generally a product of neurosis. And, most importantly, the frigid woman’s neurotic behavior is in direct proportion to the degree of her frigidity. I have found it to be true that, the more frigid a woman is, the more neurotic her behavior becomes, the more inimical to her own good and to the good of her family.

It is these psychological repercussions that make the problem of frigidity a serious one for the individual and society. The frigid woman’s often grossly neurotic psychological traits are raising havoc with our marital institution in the form of unhappiness, divorce, and maladjustment in her children.

Women will usually face the fact that they are sexually frigid; generally they have to; the knowledge is forced upon them. But they will rarely face the fact that they have personality difficulties that are directly related to their obvious sexual difficulty.

Let me give you an illustration.

Last year a very intelligent woman came to see me. She was an associate professor of history at a leading university and, according to her, her only complaint was that she could not have an orgasm during intercourse. She was unusually frank in describing the sexual aspect of her problem in her first interview, and when she had finished the description of her reactions and lack of them she had described a woman with a rather severe sexual anesthesia. She had neither clitoral nor vaginal sensation and could claim only some vaguely pleasant sensations on her labia. She had nothing approximating an orgasm.