Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/177

 We have seen that erotic fixation on parents constitutes a stage in the growth process. Whatever it may be in other societies, primitive or otherwise, nudity in our society is associated with lustful feelings. Family nudism, I firmly believe, tends to fixate children on parents permanently by causing unnecessary stimulation and hence strong guilt feelings. The result can be similar to a direct seduction of the child.

Psychic frigidity is often confused with a temporal emotional condition we call situational frigidity. A woman suffering from situational frigidity has no basic sexual problem. Her responses have always been normal and her orgasm is both frequent and satisfying. However, some severe reality problem has arisen in her life which has caused a temporary eclipse of her sexual responsiveness.

On occasion a woman may become quite disturbed by this fact. Let me give an example.

Anne S. was thirty-five. She had had a happy marriage for ten years. In the first seven years of her marriage she had had two children, both girls. She had had no more fears of pregnancy and motherhood than she had had of sex. Her upbringing had been, from the psychiatric standpoint, exemplary. In every determinable way she was an excellent sweetheart, mother, and wife.

Six months before she came to see me she had given birth to her third child, a boy. In a very short time it became clear that the child was mongoloid. After several weeks of indecision she had finally yielded to the pressure of the doctor and her husband and the child had been committed to an institution. At the time she came to me she had just learned that its congenital defects would be fatal within two or three months.

When Anne had resumed her sexual relationship with her husband after the birth of this child she had been completely