This problem washed out very quickly, for it was lightly held in the soil of Joan’s personality. And yet in exploring it we found it had exactly the same structure as Patricia Agnew’s problem: a basic overattachment to her father that had occurred in early childhood and had not been resolved. The difference was that the attachment on Joan’s part had been a much milder one than Patricia’s had been, and therefore, while it did have a lingering aftereffect, it did not encompass Joan’s entire personality and was therefore far easier to deal with.
There were two things that made Joan’s relationship with her father less destructive than Patricia’s had been. First, Joan’s father was not so overpoweringly loving and attentive to the little girl during the first six years of her growth. Second, Joan’s mother had a very distinctive and strong personality of her own, and Joan had had a good relationship with her all during her formative years. This neutralized to a certain extent the overstimulating effect of her father. It had allowed her to identify with her own sex in a healthy manner, to give her the feeling that it was a fine thing to be a sweetheart, wife, and mother.
Joan’s frigidity problem was helped in a few sessions. One day she came to me and was very upset. Her last intercourse had been successful and had culminated in the strongest orgasm she had had up to this time. But as usual, the next day had been an anxious one and she had had a severe backache.
As she talked about it she suddenly said: “I had the most amazing dream; I’ve just recalled it.” She had been on a swing in a playground, she told me, and her father had been pushing her. “I flew higher and higher,” she said. “It was like flying. The sensations were delicious. I hoped he would never stop. Then suddenly I looked around and he had turned into some kind of criminal or something. He seized me and I screamed, but somehow I knew nobody could hear me. I then suddenly remembered something a girl friend had actually told me in college when a group of us were discussing rape. She had said that a woman might be killed if she resisted. And she said that if it ever happened to her she would just relax and try to enjoy it. I recalled this now, and the criminal in my dream did rape me and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I came to a terrific climax, a kind I’ve never had in real life.”
She had awakened at this point but then went back to sleep and had the following nightmare. “Women policemen were pursuing me for having committed some crime,” she said. “They’d almost catch me, but I’d get away. Finally one of them did catch me, but when I looked in her face she was smiling at me tenderly and she said: ‘Don’t worry; it’s not so terrible after all.’”
Knowing what you know already, it should not be too hard to see what Joan’s dream means. The swinging, with her father doing the pushing, represented her very early sexual feelings toward her father. When these became too direct she disguised them by turning her father into the criminal rapist. Actually she was the one who felt like the criminal, and this is borne out by the fact that in the following dream she was pursued by the police. It is significant that they were policewomen, for the little girl feels very strong guilt toward her mother because of the forbidden and taboo sex feelings toward her father. The forgiving attitude of the policewoman represented both her good relationship with her mother and her inner readiness to get over the problem.
There could scarcely be a better illustration of the whole theory of modern psychoanalysis than this. To Joan, at least, it was eminently clear. Her terror, expressed by her dream of the pursuing policewomen, disappeared before that session was over, and she stood ready to move into a mature and satisfying sexuality with her husband. With her conscious mind she now knew that she had been frightened of complete sexual love because, in the highest reaches of passion, her feelings for her husband unconsciously reminded her of the “dangerous” feelings she bad once felt for her father; thus she dared not indulge them to the utmost. Understanding the irrational basis of her fears allowed her to dispense with them.
Chapter 11
THE MASCULINE WOMAN
She was a strikingly handsome woman. I looked at her as she sat opposite me in my office and I remember being struck by the extreme femininity of her appearance: the glossy, clean softness of her brown hair, the peaches-and-cream texture of her complexion, the care she had given her toilette and her clothes. Everything was perfect. I recall I thought then: “Perhaps a little too perfect. It’s almost as if she is dressing for a role.”
First impressions are not always correct, but in this case mine were. My new patient, whom I shall call Toni (her real nickname was also based on a boy’s name) was suffering from the form of frigidity that is often called the “masculinity complex.” She was, in short, the “clitoridal woman,” whose general characteristics we looked at briefly before. Her case is so typical and illustrates so many aspects of this very widespread type of frigidity that I have selected it to tell here.