characteristics common to all the frigidities. Knowledge of both these facts, as you will discover, is important to the cure of the frigid woman.
In giving these stories I cannot, of course, include examples of all the pitfalls that are encountered from childhood to adulthood. That would require much more space than I have here. I will attempt, rather, to select cases of frigidity caused by experiences most common to our society.
The first case, then, is one of total frigidity. This kind, as you may recall from our earlier description of it, is one of the most severe forms of sexual disorder in women and is widely prevalent. Without further ado I give you the case of a woman we shall call Patricia Agnew.
When Patricia Agnew came to my office for her first interview, she had not come, consciously, to consult me for a frigidity problem or to discuss the results of such a problem on her marriage. She came because she was having, in her words, "another nervous breakdown."
She was not a very good-looking woman, though she had nice teeth and large blue eyes. It was her figure that was striking. In direct contrast to her inner attitude, her figure was round and voluptuous, almost the American ideal of what is considered "sexy." Her lips were full and sensual, but she held them tightly together, which gave her a censorious, critical, old-maidish look. She was thirty-six years old.
Her "nervous breakdowns" (she persisted in using the expression, though it was clearly inapplicable in her case), she told me, were recurrent. She had had them for three successive years. Each of them had started with a very marked increase in inner tension. She would feel growingly unable to cope with the manifold social and familial demands of her life; a great sense of inadequacy would set in gradually and she would become listless and depressed. Finally the
