For this reason I should like to urge that those who are trying the techniques advocated here continue with the regular daily sessions I mentioned at the beginning. At this point much of the mental activity in such sessions with oneself will be a simple matter of watching—of watching the process unfold in oneself, even of celebrating these advances of the unconscious.
In this role of constant observer, however, the conscious mind can also be ready for more aggressive activity. Any tendencies of the old pattern to reassert itself, for angers, fears, fantasies to come out in new guises, can thus be noted and dispensed with before any real damage can be done. Such pullbacks are not only possible but usual, and it is well not to abandon the sessions with oneself until they have disappeared entirely—or as entirely as they’re going to.
The process of inner growth that follows when a woman is ready to surrender to her real nature, we have found, traces a rather clear pattern. Some of the new feelings overlap, but mostly they emerge in a given order, each unfolding separately but related to the other as petals to a bud. Let us take them in the usual order of their coming.
As the woman who has suffered from frigidity explodes her groundless fears one by one and explores a new attitude toward men, toward love, toward motherhood, feels a new esteem for her husband—as all these things happen, her lifelong restlessness begins to depart. For the first time she realizes just how restless she has been, how unsatisfied; she feels how precariously balanced her life, inwardly and outwardly, has always felt. Now something deep within her relaxes, lets down. When this happens she is beginning to experience the essential attribute of all that is truly feminine, spiritual tranquillity.
The arrival of this tranquillity, or even the arrival of intimations of it results from the fact that she is really allowing herself to trust her husband in a very deep sense. It means that she finally realizes that she no longer has to fear or to oppose his strength, but that she can now rely on it to protect her, to give her the secure climate necessary for the full flowering of her femininity.
Feminine tranquillity of spirit is a grace and a beauty of the first order. It is the psychological cornerstone of the happy family. Based on an abiding faith in the goodness and loyalty of her husband, it emanates from a woman who has found herself and pervades those about her, giving them unity and strength. The children of such a mother are strong against the neurotic restlessness of these difficult times. The husband of a wife who has achieved such tranquillity returns from his work to his home as to an oasis, redoubles his loving efforts to make her ever more secure.
Because she can trust no man, the frigid woman’s approach to the tasks of life has a difficult, painful, frenetic quality. She feels responsible for everything; guiltily responsible. Details and trivia overwhelm her. She has no unity and has to fight herself, her resentment, her self-rejection to get the simplest things done—her household work, planning the dinner, carrying and fetching the children. Everything looms.
With the development of the new quality of tranquillity those details of life that once seemed so difficult become simple. And because they are feminine tasks, household work, planning or getting dinners, keeping the children busy or in line—whatever life demands—soon lose their irksome and irritating quality and become easy, even joyful.
As tranquillity moves over to serenity, becomes more and more a part of her psychic character, a woman begins to realize what a miraculous and wonderful thing womanhood is. Most frequently this realization is ushered in by a sudden awareness of the miracle that her body is able to perform: the miracle of childbirth.
In her frightened heart the frigid woman has always detested and feared her capacity to become pregnant. To her this faculty has seemed onerous and burdensome, a curse. In pregnancy she feels trapped, sick at heart and in body during it, increasingly frightened of delivery as the day of confinement approaches. She views all this as woman’s burden; men, those enviable creatures, are free of such a frightening duty. Indeed, has she not heard that men use pregnancy as a technique of keeping women subject to them! Thus she frets and rages and trembles, rejecting her destiny.