And I should like to put the mind of all such women to rest on one particular point I cannot count the number of times that women with a clitoridal problem have asked me whether I believed that, just under the surface, they had a homosexual problem or at least strong homosexual inclinations. The answer is invariably no.
Let me give you an example of one such typical case. Not long ago a young nurse came to see me. She was extremely upset and wept copiously before she could bring herself to tell me her problem. She had been married for about a year and had found that she could not have an orgasm during intercourse. It was necessary for her husband to manipulate her clitoris for a rather extended period of time before she could come to a climax. After she told me this she remained silent for a long time. Then she burst out with it. “Doctor, I think I’m homosexual.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, I had this dream, and I was hugging the head nurse in the hospital and I felt very warm and good inside.”
“Any other damning evidence?” I asked.
Now she really blushed. She hung her head, and one could hardly keep from going over and patting her head and saying there, there. “Yes,” she said. “When I was twelve. With this other girl. We used to, used to … ” Words failed her.
“Play with each other sexually?” I asked as gently as possible.
She looked at me, wide-eyed and said, “Yes,” nodding tragically.
She had had no repetition of the experience since she had really grown up, and I was able to set her mind completely at rest on that matter. She was not at all homosexual. That symptom is a very severe one, of course, and not always amenable to treatment. It always implies that the woman prefers women to men; she falls in love with objects of the same sex. She has no conscious interest in men sexually.
Our little nurse’s “homosexual” dream simply meant that she was having a disturbing time with her husband sexually and wanted a “mother image” to protect her from her difficulties, help her through them. She got one in me, of course, and her need for such a mother was probably why she selected a woman psychiatrist in the first place.