Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/27

 man she has done so because she, all unknown to herself, was deeply afraid of true male virility.

In saying the husband is rarely if ever to blame for a frigidity problem I am running counter to a vast body of information that has been published; in the 1930's in particular, book after book appeared, each showing conclusively that a happily married sexual life depended on the male's skill in arousing the woman. In such books the husband was instructed to manipulate or caress her for X minutes in Y number of erotic zones. By then, presumably, she would have reached such a state of excitement that true sexual satisfaction could not possibly fail her. Any failure of a woman to respond adequately in the marital bed was always supposed to be due to faulty technique on the husband's part.

This is simply not true. Caressing or manipulating the genitalia or secondary erotic zones of certain types of frigid women would only result in exacerbated nerves or in a condition of inwardly screaming protest. In other types, caressing might give temporary satisfaction but in the long run could really be harmful from the psychological standpoint, deepen or encourage immature methods of gratification.

In short, while a husband, through tenderness and understanding, may help a woman face the true nature of her problem, he is never responsible for the existence of her frigidity and cannot, through any mechanical means, get her over it.

I might add that neither can any man other than her husband.

Another misconception about frigidity: Women who suffer from a greater or lesser degree of frigidity often come to believe that there is something wrong with them glandularly. Through a misunderstanding of something they've read or heard, they get the idea that somewhere, somehow, there is a drug that will cure them. A gynecologist I know tells me