Let me make myself absolutely clear, even at the risk of repeating myself. Frigidity is in the vast majority of cases, essentially a psychological problem. The only way it can be approached with any hope of resolving it is through the mind, by understanding it. Anybody who tells you differently is, to put it plainly and simply, wrong. And, if you have a real frigidity problem and try to ascribe other than psychological reasons for it (such as that your husband is the cause of it), you are doing your cause (that of getting over the problem) a grave disservice.
When I say that the problem of frigidity is a psychological one I am not overstating the case; I am, to simplify matters, rather understating it. The greatest contribution of psychiatry in the past sixty years has been the discovery of the central importance of sexuality in the development of the individual.
Dr. Therese Benedek in her classic work, Psychosexual Functions in Women, states the whole matter succinctly when she says: ". . . The sexual drive . . . is the axis around which the organization of the personality takes place."
When all goes well in the development of the young girl, both her personality and her sexual passions will flower, she will achieve a beautiful and integrated maturity. But if, as so often happens, thwarting or blighting experiences take place, the development of her personality and her sexuality will be frozen at their sources, and maturity will remain a never-never land whose very existence she will come to doubt.
If she wishes to resume her growth she must be fearless, she must find out and face the events that blocked her growth, the misunderstandings and ignorance that prevent her from reaping the rewards of true womanhood. She must insist, deep within herself, on achieving that true and passional relatedness with her man for which there is neither simulacrum nor substitute in woman's journey through life.
The bridge to emotional and sexual maturity is built of
