The idea that orgasm can be forced is typical of the thinking of a frigid woman. We have seen that, because she is basically frightened, basically mistrusts her husband’s love of her and her own femininity, she has to feel that she is “in control” all the time. The trouble with that standpoint is that in real orgasm a woman must be out of control; must willfully, delightedly desire to be entirely so.
The delusion that the orgasm can or should be sought as an end in itself and not as the result of a deep inner change of the kind discussed in the preceding chapters of this section has been fostered by many of the books which have dealt with the problem of frigidity or with the role or responsibility of woman in marriage. One recent book counseled the conscious contraction of certain muscles during intercourse, holding that this would heighten sexual pleasure. Other books emphasize the importance of position during intercourse. Their tacit or stated contention is that orgastic potency can be achieved by mechanical means.
The simple fact is that concentrating on one’s sensations during intercourse, wondering if one is feeling the “right” feeling, can destroy real sexual passion more completely than any technique I can think of. We know this from scores of patients. Such a clinical and objective attitude toward local sexual sensations merely reflects the frigid woman’s need to be in control of a situation and her fear of surrendering herself to her man. She can get little more from this obsessive scrutiny of her sexual reactions than an even more frustrating experience than usual.
Is there, then, an attitude one can take toward orgasm before one has achieved it? Yes, there is, and we have found it a helpful and productive one. This attitude may be summarized in this fashion: If one has truly pursued the goal of self-surrender, uprooting and exposing attitudes left over from childhood and youth, the ability to achieve orgasm must inevitably arrive. Until that time, and particularly during intercourse, one must put the matter out of one’s mind entirely.
The growth of a woman’s ability to have orgasm is a natural growth. It has been impeded by her psychic attitudes; it resumes its development when these attitudes change. It is as natural a move as the move from winter to spring. Gradually she finds herself allowing her new tenderness and concern for her husband to become a part of the meaning of her sexual embrace. She sees and feels the pleasure her sexual thawing brings him, and this process becomes circular, his increased pleasure giving her more pleasure. And with his pleasure in mind she now seeks out more and more those things that please him, and her exploration leads inevitably to the discovery that what pleases him most, outside of his own sensations, is her pleasure. This mutual spiraling of feeling ultimately climaxes in her unconscious decision to give him the greatest psychological pleasure of all, her total surrender to the delights he can bring her.
For many women the ability to surrender physically comes rather swiftly; to others it is a very gradual process, as though the unconscious mind needed to build up a reserve of reassurances before it felt perfectly secure. In either case, but particularly in the latter, they can be forewarned of one important thing: sexual thaw will not proceed uninterruptedly; there is no straight line from frigidity to true womanhood. I should like to explain this more fully.
When, in the sexual embrace, a woman allows herself to experience more pleasure as her physical sensations increase, a part of her unconscious mind very frequently takes alarm and causes her to draw back from any further immediate advance.
If you stop to ponder this point you will find it readily understandable in terms of our former discussions. The experiences and relationships upon which frigidity is based took place a long time ago, often in very early childhood. They occasioned fear in the child, fear of sexuality, of surrender to one’s sensual impulses, or powerful guilt. Now, as one starts to move toward a resumption of one’s sensuality, it is almost certain that these irrational, buried fears will try to reassert themselves.
In most cases it is not necessary to uncover the childhood incidents upon which these fears were based. If one will insist on pursuing the techniques for inner change I have described here, these fears will finally become inoperative in the sexual area. It is, however, necessary to know that you are experiencing such fears. Generally speaking, they do not show themselves directly. A woman will not say to herself: “That new sensual experience I had last night is causing me alarm.”
The fear separates itself from the sensual experience and expresses itself indirectly. The woman may find herself once again becoming quarrelsome, critical of her husband; old feelings of deprivation or of inferiority may reassert themselves with apparently new vigor. And the new sensual capacity may retire once more from view. The reason: the old defenses are protecting one against the new femininity.