once. The vaginal sensations had begun halfway through the intercourse and had been maintained right up to the point of orgasm, when her clitoral sensations once more took over. She recalled that afterward she had been surprised and quite pleased but had soon "forgotten" the whole experience.
There could be no doubt that Toni's anger at her husband and her migraines started right after this sexual experience. And there could be no doubt that they were intimately related experiences. Though her personality structure and the psychological events which caused her kind of frigidity were different from Patricia's and from Joan's, they were alike in one regard. All three had the deepest and most abiding fear of real vaginal sensation and ultimately, of course, of vaginal orgasm.
This fear is a profound one in the clitoridal or masculine woman. Toni, rather than admit to herself how frightened she was of this vaginal experience, chose unconsciously to ruin her personal relationship with her husband, to denigrate all those characteristics which she had formerly loved in him—his charm, his ability to relax, his quiet and warm understanding, his refusal to be driven by circumstances, and his insistence on enjoying the small, warm, everyday events of life. To protect herself from knowing the real nature of her problem, she had to blame him for her difficulties. She even had to make up the difficulties, for though he was a rather passive man he was also a very attractive and loving one.
The vagina is the very center of femininity, of female love, as we have seen. If the individual fears this love, she learns unconsciously to block vaginal sensations. If, however, at any point in her life she is beguiled into feeling sensation there, she will have a severe anxiety reaction, flee from the experience in any way she can. And this brings us to the psychological structure of this kind of problem.
