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

THE ART OF LOVEfication another method proves more successful. Sometimesyears elapse before the conditions and the methodare found which alone render coitus agreeable or eventolerable to a woman. Due attention to the preliminarycourtship of the act of intercourse and to the method mostsuitable for adoption suffices to cure the majority of casesof sexual frigidity in women.These things, as we are now beginning to learn, cannotwisely be neglected by the physician. The sexual gratificationof the woman is even a part of the act of fecundation,for her share in that act is not purely passive. Adistinguished gynecologist of an earlier generation, MatthewsDuncan, placed stress on this need of sexual pleasurein the woman in order to ensure fecundation, and Kischwith other later authorities have confirmed that doctrine.It cannot be essential when we think of the vast numberof children who have certainly been conceived withoutpleasure on the mother's part. But Kisch found thatdyspareunia (by which he means absence of gratification inintercourse) was with remarkable frequency associatedwith sterility; he found it in 38 per cent, cases of sterility,but neglects to state its average frequency.The elementary fact, to which reference has here sooften been made, is that courtshipis a natural and evenessential preliminary to everyact of sexual intercourse.Usuallyit is for the male to take the initiative in this,when he divines that the right moment has come (forhe must not expect the woman to tell him this)and totake the most active part, although there isnothing reallyabnormal in his partner's assumption of the more activepart, and the art of love can scarcely be exercised whenthe female is merely passive. On the purely physical side,it is not until, by the preliminary play of courtship, thewoman's genital regionis bathed in the glandular secretion[347]