their deepest and strongest emotions. The technique of "feeling" one's way through one's problem is, as I have said, the method that really works with frigidity; it is one's present emotions, therefore, that constitute the major material of one's self-examination.
Actually understanding present feelings and attitudes reveals the past, for it was in the past that these attitudes were established; they have changed very little since their inception.
Why, then, did I go into the detailed childhood development of frigidity in my case histories? For the same reason that I gave all the other objective facts about frigidity before we approached this section. The more conscious knowledge one has of the entire problem of frigidity, the more one dares to face up to the responsibility for one's own problem—and the more one is able to face up to it also. For knowledge can free one of the ignorance and superstition upon which resistance to achieving psychic maturity is based.
I am not, on the other hand, holding that there is any fundamental objection to a scrutiny of early experiences or to helpful speculation about them. Sometimes, as in the case of an early seduction, or a rape that is remembered, early experiences can throw a therapeutic sidelight on one's present feelings. However, the myriad details that go into the formation of everyone's personality while growing up can be confusing if one tries to understand them all without the help of an expert guide; and it is not requisite for recovery to understand them all. So if self-examination of one's early experiences does not seem to be immediately helpful, I would abandon it entirely; I would confine myself to a "feeling through" of my problem in the present, undoing the harm the childhood attitudes are still causing in the here and now.
