I will leave out all the details of our move here except to say that we are all settled down and in our wonderful new home. Anyway, I can’t wait to tell you that I am going to have a baby. It is a constant astonishment to me, for it is so different from my expectations. It all happened so easily. I don’t quite know how, but my fears and worries have left completely. I didn’t know life could be like this. I must be a new person. If the doctor hadn’t told me to stay relatively quiet I would be dancing in the streets. Sam says I sound like a honeymooner, but he’s really delighted. To think what I have deprived both of us of because of a lot of nonsense!
The strangest thing is that I can’t remember the things I used to talk about in the group. I wonder if this happens to everybody. I keep asking myself: What was so painful? What was it that made me always angry with Sam? And I’ve found a new deep love for my mother. I am not angry with her, only sorry that she had to miss so much. You probably won’t remember, but when I asked my mother how she had felt when she was pregnant she had said quite sharply to me: “Put such thoughts out of your mind. You’re young, so enjoy yourself. You’ll know all about it soon enough, too soon.” The reply seemed so ominous and foreboding to me. Plus the fact that she was constantly complaining about all things female. I guess I had picked up her attitude in toto without realizing it, until I aired the effects on me for the first time with all of you.
I tell you this so that you will know the fears do go when you are able to get them out and see them for what they are. I love you all, and I am deeply grateful to you, and I shall never, never forget the help my talk with all of you has given me.
With love and deep gratitude,
Margaret
Chapter 7
ANATOMY AND DESTINY
We have seen two important reasons why women can, in the course of growing up, be deflected from true sexual maturity. Let us now look at a third, and equally important, reason.
I have already described the so-called clitoridal woman to you, but now I must tell you more about the implications of her problem. You will remember that in the female genitalia both the clitoris and the vagina are capable of experiencing orgasm. This fact is of decisive importance to the problem of frigidity in women.
Why? It means, in effect, that women have two distinct sexual organs, both capable of bringing her release from sexual tension. In the unconscious sense many women can “choose” one type of sexual satisfaction in preference to another. This ability to choose often spells disaster, for one of these methods of gratification represents immaturity and is allied to neurosis.
A man has only one organ: his penis. He has been given no anatomical alternative. If, as happens in relatively rare cases, upsetting early experiences cause him to block off his sexual feelings, he simply becomes impotent. He will experience this impotency as a tremendous and tragic deprivation and will be powerfully motivated to overcome it. Those who have witnessed the sufferings of a man with such a problem will know just how powerful his drive back to health is.
The mature female’s orgasm takes place within the vagina; the fact that a woman can experience this kind of orgasm generally marks her as a fully developed woman in all aspects of her personality.