would find just the opposite fact. The frigid woman, of whatever variety she may be, never sees the man she wants to love as he is. His individual and essential quality is entirely unknown to her and unknowable by her. He is a series of projections from her past. He is a composite of the fears, the errors, the misunderstandings of her infancy and childhood. The real union of love is therefore impossible with this quasi monster she has conjured up.
Thus we can see that the major task of the frigid woman is to rid herself of these projections she makes upon mankind in general and upon her own man in particular. She must see through them and divest herself of them, come to see men in their true role vis-à-vis woman and her husband in all his uniqueness and with all his potentiality.
That is step one.
When she has done this there is another step she must take. If one thinks of the description of love I have given, one realizes that it implies a very great security within oneself, an acceptance of one's own uniqueness and essential femininity. But the frigid woman fears and rejects femininity, as we have seen, feeling it to be a dangerous trap. She must learn to alter this basic and negative attitude entirely. She must see how childish and false, how utterly self-*depriving this view of womanhood is and give it up.
Thus we see that in frigidity the two main doors to psychological and sexual union—to love, in short—have been closed and locked.
If these two doors can be opened again, the frigid woman will have resolved her problem.
Just these two doors? Is this not an oversimplification? To these two questions I can give unequivocal answers: yes to the first and no to the second. These are the two roots of the problem. Attack them head on, resolve them, and the major part of the task has been done.
