Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/175

 must die." At that point she woke up in an absolute panic which lasted for over an hour.

The intern in the dream stands, of course, for the young doctor she knows. The man with the dollar sign on his hat stands for her banker father. Sex is all right, and she wishes for it as long as it is furtive and hidden. The moment it becomes respectable ("Please marry me") the hidden and guilty act will be made known and her father will punish her in the most horrible way possible.

She had, as you can see, never resolved her early guilt feelings about the childhood seduction. Her whole life had been built around this early experience.

Molly's relationship with the young doctor did not prosper, but in the course of our work she finally did meet and marry a very fine man. On the basis of insights she had had, she had decided to postpone intercourse with him until after the marriage. When the love-making began she at first responded sexually, but in a matter of a few weeks she became quite frigid.

This reaction of course represented, as in the case of the intern, her lifelong fear. However, since she had faced up to her psychological frigidity, had stopped running away into pointless and meaningless relationships, the resolution of this problem was merely a matter of time, of "working through" the guilt feelings she had never dared to face before.

The form of psychic frigidity represented by Molly's case has always, in my experience, been caused by a childhood seduction. The seduction usually takes place between the fourth and seventh year, and the child reacts to the experience with strong sensual pleasure accompanied by guilt. This guilt is handled by a withdrawal from the parents and from values they represent. And sensual pleasure becomes an end