Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

MARRIAGEit is usually termed, frigidity, which has indeed been estimatedI do not know by what method as occurring innearly seventy percent of women. Such wild statementsmust be put aside.Among his one hundred normal marriedwomen of the educated class Hamilton could onlyfind one case of actual frigidity in the sense of persistentabsence of sexual desire and sexual feeling; although afew women were only able to respond to auto-erotic orhomosexual stimuli. In a long chapter on this subject inOne Thousand Marriages Dickinson points out that"frigidity" is not to be regarded as a fixed state or a definitecongenital condition. Its causes are multiple: inphysique, temperament, education, habit (including ignoranceand auto-erotic practices),the husband's inadequacy,etc. The most consistently "frigid/' he remarks,are the auto-erotic; yet, strictly speaking, the auto-eroticare not frigid at all, and may be highly sensitive to thosesexual stimuli which appeal to them.The chief reason why women are considered "frigid"lies less in themselves than in men. It is evident throughoutthat while in men the sexual impulse tends to developspontaneously and actively, in women, however powerfulit may be latently and more or less subconsciously, itsactive manifestations need in the first place to be calledout. That, in our society, is normally the husband's functionto effect. It is his part to educate his wife in the lifeof sex; it is he who will make sex demands a consciousdesire to her. If he, by his ignorance, prejudice, impatience,or lack of insight,fails to play his natural part,his wife may, by no defect of her own, be counted as"frigid." It so happens that, during a long period fromwhich we are only now beginning to emerge, when all sexknowledge was suppressed or treated as unworthy of consideration,a large proportionof men were unable to[39]