Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/134

 *ents do not intend their watchfulness to imply this at all is not relevant. That's the way the young one too often interprets it, and in a gesture of defiance she may do something that will really injure her.

Equally seriously affected, if not more so, is the young girl who feels extremely rebellious but who submits to overzealous parental authority out of fear. I have seen several girls with this problem. What generally happens is that they have pulled back, because of undue parental influences, from indulging the personality-enrichening dreams of adolescence. This causes them to remain on the threshold of womanhood, lost in an emotional dependency which belongs to an earlier phase of development. By and large, the problems of such girls when they come to womanhood tend to be more severe than those of the girls who rebelled.

In making these observations on parental strictness I am in no way advocating a laissez-faire attitude. Every young girl needs to feel the force of the parents' moral feelings; they give her guidance and a feeling of security. She will, however, generally react more normally and healthfully if the moral attitudes are expressed and interpreted rather than laid down as ukases.

We have now seen the stages of development that lead to maturity in woman and the pitfalls she may encounter on the way. With this final information in hand we are at last ready to look at frigidity itself. The next section, therefore, will treat of the frigid woman herself, and I will show you, with specific cases, how the kinds and degrees of frigidity develop and what concrete problems they bring in their train. With such models in mind we will then be prepared to examine the constructive steps which individuals who suffer from this problem must take to win their freedom, to cross the bridge to womanhood.