Chapter 2
THE NORMAL ORGASM
The first thing I am going to do on this, so to speak, journey with you is to give you a view of your destination. I am going to describe an orgasm to you. I am going to describe it in detail.
We occasionally do this in psychiatry when dealing with a frigidity problem, and sometimes it has astonishing results. I have seen women who, after hearing for the first time a complete description from an authoritative and objective person of what to expect of themselves in the act of love, almost immediately win through to the sensual goal they had been deprived of.
On one occasion a patient of mine, who over a period of months had worked through a rather severe frigidity problem, detailed to her younger sister the wonderful sexual experience she was now able to have. The younger sister had been married only two months and had not once reached sexual climax. She had seriously contemplated consulting a psychiatrist about her “problem.” The very night her older sister described true orgasm to her she was able to achieve her own first complete satisfaction with her husband.
However, my chief motive in approaching the subject of frigidity by describing the normal orgasm is not to try to bring about a sudden or miraculous cure. In cases where such a sudden release of mature sexuality is achieved and thaw comes like a sudden spring, the frigidity problem is generally, even though it may appear to be deep-seated, a superficial one, lightly rooted in the personality.
The real reason I start with the orgasm is that a picture of the normal is an absolute necessity if you are to understand deviations from it with any real clarity. It is a truism that in order to understand illness in the body it is first necessary to understand health. Every doctor knows this and so do his teachers, for in medical school he first learns, through classes in anatomy and physiology, the structure and functions of the healthy body.
I think you will understand frigidity more thoroughly if we pursue the same technique here, first describing the genital anatomy of woman and from there proceeding to a description of the normal orgasm, what it is, where it is located, its function in the healthy man and woman, and other pertinent material.
Despite the wide dissemination of sexual information in our time, many women often show an astonishing ignorance of their own genital region and of the character and meaning of sexual response, including orgasm. I have had patients who did not know that they possessed a clitoris, others who made no distinction between their urethra and their vagina; some have not known of the existence of the uterus as a separate organ, and some, in confusion about their uniquely feminine secretions, have believed that women can have a seminal ejaculation as men do. Perhaps most of the readers of this book will have no such misinformation, but nevertheless I feel it is wise to review the simple facts pertaining to the feminine genitalia.
Before making a detailed description of woman’s sexual apparatus, I should like to make a preliminary observation which can help you to understand the sexual nature of woman. It is this: that while women are capable of having true sexual gratification in the same sense and with the same intensity as men, they have one important difference in their responses. The man, when he is aroused, feels the sexual desire directly in his genitals. A woman’s first sexual sensations are not usually genital but are felt over her entire body, on her skin surfaces, everywhere; this is followed by sexual excitation in her genitals, and this is an important fact for both men and women to understand. Ignorance of this fact has given rise to many misunderstandings between the sexes, for of course it makes the woman somewhat slower in reaching the moment when she is ready for intercourse than the man is. It must be taken into consideration by both parties to an act of love.
A woman’s genital apparatus is both internal and external. The external genitalia are called the vulva when they are referred to all together. The most obvious part of the vulva is the part we called the major (or sometimes outer) lips, which enfold the rest of the genitalia. If these lips are parted we see two smaller lips; these are called the minor lips and have a very high degree of sexual responsiveness. Even in books for laymen the Latin words are often used for these two organs: labia majoris and labia minoris, which mean, simply enough, the major lips and the minor lips.