1

Sexual Frigidity at Mid-century: The Social Construction of a Public Health Epidemic

Leslie Margolin POROI

Since Foucaults History of Sexuality, a growing number of scholars have been drawn to the ways human sexuality is constituted through discourse.1 Sexual preferences and practices are not a simple reflection of our essential selves, these scholars argue, but are better understood as continuously developed and sustained constructions. These constructions often depend on medical testimony. While physicians and other health experts usually portray themselves as disinterested observers, in this literature they appear profoundly interested: selecting, defining, framing, and advocating their versions of sexual reality over other possible versions. The concept of womens sexual frigidity is an especially good example. In the 1920s and 30s, physicians may have seen womens sexual frigidity as a serious threat to families given its capacity to push husbands to seek sexual satisfaction outside of marriage, which in turn often leads to the introduction of venereal infection into the family circle, in the destruction of romance and affection, and in the breaking up of homes,2 but it was also seen as relatively normal, something to be expected, since women had always been regarded as less sensual and hot blooded than men. In the words of gynecologist Theodore van de Velde, inadequate sensibility in coitus at the beginning of active sexual life must be accounted physiologically normal in women: they have to learn to feel voluptuous pleasure and actual orgasm.3 While such assessments were never completely abandoned, mid-century psychiatrists and gynecologists increasingly rejected them in favor of the view that absence of sexual desire (a womans desire for her husband) indicates a deeply-rooted psychological disorder. As Vienna-trained psychiatrist Edmund Bergler told one of his patients, Personality and symptoms are interconnected. Every time we talk about your wish to be rejected, refused, disappointed, we are talking about your frigidity.4 Bergler and his co-author Eduard Hitschmann, Director of

the Vienna Psychoanalytic Ambulatorium,5 coined the term true frigidity to differentiate this conceptualization from the earlier, superficial variety, which they termed pseudo frigidity,6 with Bergler later claiming the problem so widespread that it is the emotional plague.7 In the words of psychiatrist Marie N. Robinson, whose book on womens sexual frigidity, The Power of Sexual Surrender, sold over a million copies, no other public health problem of our time even approaches this magnitude,8 a particularly curious assessment because only a few years earlier womens coolness and modesty had been regarded as natural. It is also curious because no comparable claim was being made with regard to mens sexual reticence, as if gynecologists and psychiatrists had never heard women complain that their husbands lack sexual interest9 and womens magazines never published articles such as When Husbands are Less Ardent.10 It is curious, finally, because this was not a fringe issue. In fact, concern over womens sexual frigidity so penetrated mainstream gynecology and psychiatry during the 1940s and 50s, that in 1950, The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article which began by with the claim, Frigidity is one of the most common problems in gynecology. Gynecologists and psychiatrists, especially, are aware that perhaps 75 percent of all women derive little or no pleasure from the sexual act.11 Although several recent studies have addressed the anomalies and biases underlying frigidity discourse,12 none have examined the mid-century shift into true frigiditythe new imperative to trace this true condition down to its psychological roots, to recognize it as common and malignant, and to use that characterization to judge and pathologize women. This paper explores this shift through a content analysis of the writings of Eduard Hitschmann and Edmund Bergler, authors of Frigidity in Women, and of the writings of their disciples,

Eugene G. Hamilton, William S. Kroger, Marie N. Robinson, Frank S. Caprio, Flanders Dunbar and Renatus Hartogs. I pay particular attention to Hitschmann and Bergler since they were the first to differentiate true from pseudo frigidity, and because they were the first to elevate the problem of frigidity to the level of public health epidemic. Freud may have been the father of the vaginal orgasm, according to Anne Koedt,13 and he may have been the architect of the theoretical structure underlying the new conceptualization of frigidityviz., that womens sexual development is far more complicated and precarious than mens since only women must exchange sexual zones (from clitoris to vagina) and primary love objects (from mother to father)but Freud was not, as Angus McLaren declared, preoccupied with frigidity.14 He never published a book or paper on frigidity and in fact rarely used the word. When he did use the word, it was with pronounced hesitation, as in this excerpt from his 1933 Introductory Lecture on femininity: The sexual frigidity of womenis a phenomenon that is still insufficiently understood. Sometimes it is psychogenic and in that case accessible to influence; but in other cases it suggests the hypothesis of its being constitutionally determined and even of there being a contributory anatomical factor.15 By contrast, Hitschmann and Bergler showed no hesitation. They not only regarded the belief that most women lacked sexual warmth as foundational, they could explicate the effects of that deficiency in the most minute detail. Unlike Freud, they were not reflecting on the possibility of womens frigidity; they were not attempting to refine their understanding. Rather, they were spreading the doctrine that womens neuroses in their many and complex manifestations could be reduced to a single measurable disease process. Bergler summed it up this way:

The consequences of frigidity are tragic for the woman. They lead from dissatisfaction, depression, hysterical symptoms, to the typical defense mechanismdenial by the woman that she is ill and constant changing of husbands and male friends. Every new affair ends in the same psychic fiasco; yet the blame is always projected: The woman is not ill; the man is to blame.16 What follows examines how such claims were documented. Conceptualizing medical texts as accounts,17 I deliberately avoid the issue of truth or error: whether there really were as many truly frigid women as Hitschmann, Bergler, and their followers claimed (not a mere 10 percent but probably 80 to 90 percent18) or whether the methods used to diagnose them were empirically valid. Rather, I focus on how medical authors saw, described, and explained this new concept. The purpose of this methodological stance is not only to specify how physicians persuaded themselves and their readers that sexual frigidity represents a public health threat of the first magnitude, but also to explore how their language portrayed men and their sexuality as the norm and women and their sexuality as opposite, lesser, deficient pathological. Widening the Net Frigidity had always been understood as an absence of sexual excitement, but Hitschmann-Bergler defined that absence in substantially broader, more inflexible terms: It is no matter whether the woman is aroused during coitus or remains cold, whether the excitement is weak or strong, whether it breaks off at the beginning or the end, slowly or suddenly, whether it is dissipated in preliminary acts, or has been lacking from the beginning.

The sole criterion of frigidity is the absence of the vaginal orgasm.19 The first effect of this definitional expansion is that more women fell into the net. No longer did frigidity only mean disinterest in, or repugnance of, sex. No longer did the definition extend only to the woman whose whole sexual attitude is negative, who constantly reiterates that the procedure is dirty and disgusting, and feels disgust if subjected to that ordeal. Now it included the woman who feels sexually responsive, who enjoys preliminary acts and phases of coitus, even reaching clitoridean orgasm during these manipulations.20 A state of semi-arousal did not constitute a woman as semi-responsive or semi-normal; it constituted her as frigid, neurotic. Moreover, diagnostic confirmation did not have to wait till all the evidence was gathered together. Suspicion alone was needed to mark her with the unequivocally negative sign. Let us look, for example, at how Bergler managed to label a patients wife as frigid, sight unseen. The patient, a big businessman, who had been married twenty-three years had consulted Bergler for premature ejaculation. Asked how long intercourse lasted, the patient answered, Approximately 30 to 40 minutes. Bergler congratulated the man on his potency and then informed him of the empirical fact that typical intercourse lasts only two to three minutes. Bergler went on to say that this patient had understood as premature ejaculation his inability to protract intercourse until his wifes orgasm came. Since she reached one, seldom enough, only after an hour, she accused him of having premature ejaculation . When Bergler informed his patient that he did not suffer from premature ejaculation, the businessman jumped to his feet in triumph. Bergler immediately ordered him to return to his seat because he suffered from something worse. This something worse, Bergler explained, was the mans pathologic masochistic attachment to his frigid wife, who made him swallow all this nonsense

for a quarter of a century, exploited him financially on a grand scale and induced in him a strong feeling of guilt because of his alleged sexual inadequacy.21 The new expanded definition classified every woman as frigid if she is incapable of reaching vaginal orgasm during the sex act quite independently of whether she is aroused during the act,22 meaning that even women taking pleasure in sex and/or appearing sexual could be swept into the net. Thus, Bergler asked readers to imagine a beautiful, coquettish woman, with a great deal of natural, and still more artificial, charm. At first glance, she impresses one as being thoroughly womanly, the personification of sex appeal. Everything about her revolves around sexuality; every word and every glance seem to be sexual challenges to men.23 However, she is not what she appears. Quite a different picture emerges when the physician peers behind her erotic faade and discovers that she is full of unconscious hatred of the man, whom she cannot forgive for the very fact of being a man,24 which, as far as Bergler was concerned, settled the question of her frigidity. Much as Freud defined fourteen year old Dora as hysterical for feeling infuriated and disgusted when Herr K., the husband of her fathers mistress, tried to plant a kiss on her lips (This was surely just the situation to call up a distinct feel of sexual arousal in a girl of fourteen who had never been approached25), Hitschmann and Bergler believed that women who routinely respond to men with feelings of aversion and disgust are hysterical, and hysterical women are without exception frigid.26 Hitschmann, Bergler, and their followers never stated that all women are frigid. But any women could be, under their theory, and perhaps because they defined frigidity in negative termsthe absence of vaginal orgasmlittle was required for proof, and even less for

suspicion.27 For instance, a woman wrote to psychiatrist Renatus Hartogs, advice columnist for Cosmopolitan, with a seemingly innocuous issue: It seems Im often not in the mood to make love at the same time as the man I love. Im not frigidwhen Im being made love to, if the man is enthusiastic and patient I always have an orgasm. Her concern was that she did not feel overpowering desire in response to her lovers advances, and sometimes needed stimulationto be made to be excited. She concluded with the question, Is something the matter with me? Hartogs answer was an unequivocal yes. He first suggested that she might be having difficulty relinquishing inner controls and should consider the possibility that she uses sex as a weapon to dominate or disapoint the male. Despite the fact that the letter- writer never mentioned her childhood or parental relationships, Hartogs thought the most likely explanation for her problem was that she had unhappy and disturbing childhood experiences and an unfavorable parent-child relationship, which made her suspicious of the male of his urges and intentions. While her complaint was fairly specific, Hartogs found global implications and ended by advising her to examine her total attitude toward men, sexuality, intimacy, and emotional involvement.28 A Master Lens Among the many case studies illustrating true frigidity, I found none where the patient first complained of frigidity, but then, after her history had been scrutinized, the problem turned out to be something else. In fact, most of the case studies followed the reverse pattern with patients beginning treatment with a presenting complaint other than frigidity,29 but then, as treatment progressed, frigidity became identified as the central concern. For instance,

Hitschmann and Bergler described a patient who came to treatment for help with depression and a serious work inhibition. Far from seeking to increase her sexual responsiveness to her husband, she had been looking for ways to detach herself from him. Specifically, she wanted to improve her chances of holding onto her job which she hoped would give her pecuniary independence and therefore the means to leave. Hitschmann and Bergler, however, interpreted her desire to end her marriage as rooted in her own sexual pathology: The analysis showed that the patient unconsciously confirmed and enjoyed masochistically the sadism of her husband who had built up an altogether subtle system of moral torment. Significantly the patient was entirely frigid with her husband; her satisfaction lay in the enjoyment of anxiety pleasure, beside which there was also a strong need for punishment.30 Other patients reported by Hitschmann and Bergler came to treatment with animal phobias, agoraphobia, neurotic forebodings, promiscuity and infidelity, homosexual wishes, obsessive fears, but for each, in time, the analysis revealed the underlying dynamic as frigidity. Much as Heraclitus constituted fire, or Anaximes air, Hitschmann and Bergler turned frigidity into a simple, daring, yet primitive explanation for womens every neurotic complaint: Was the patient frustrated in her efforts to escape her husband or was she frustrated in her efforts to get closer to him? Frigidity was the explanation. Was she a nymphomaniac? Again, frigidity. Sexually over-active or under-active? Nervous? Phobic? Depressed? Listless? An alcoholic? A manhater? A compulsive personality or a multiple personality? Again, Hitschmann-Bergler distilled all those problems into a single flash of insight--frigidity. Consider how Marie N. Robinson, a psychiatrist devoted to the treatment of frigidity, performed such a distillation on Molly, a patient who entered treatment after she had aborted

10

two unwanted pregnancies, the second resulting in a urinary infection which required hospitalization. While Molly did not identify herself as frigid, and was not seeking help with problems of sexual arousal or desire, Robinson was impressed by the fact that her new patient had recently begun an affair with an impoverished art student who, she surmised, obviously had no real feeling for Molly and no real ability to care for any other person. Robinson was also impressed by the fact that her patients orgasmic history seemed limited to forbidden and guilty acts with a person who was, in her mind, anathema to her parents.... For if a man was respectable, meant well by her, loved her, in her unconscious life she would immediately associate him with her parents and their approval, and this would kill all sexual feeling in her. She would be frigid with him.31 This then is how mid-century physicians turned frigidity into a plague: not only by seeing signs of the disease where their patients did not but by portraying sexual health in impossibly stringent and contradictory terms. To become sexually liberated in this discourse, Molly had to curb and focus her sexuality. To overcome one pathological inhibition, she had to embrace a whole set of new inhibitions, including abandonment of her clitoris, defined by frigidity advocates as a male organ, and the rejection of sex with socially inappropriate partners, against parental judgment, in defiance of a prohibition, in a situation meriting contempt.32 Orgasms outside marriage, whether vaginal or not, indicated frigidity.33 Consider also the case of Patricia, who, like Molly, did not begin treatment with Robinson for help with a frigidity problem: She came because she was having, in her words, another nervous breakdown. Though Patricia first complained of depression, listlessness, inadequacy, day long bouts of weeping, chronic insomnia, nightmares, and feelings of being

11

unable to cope with the manifold social and familial demands of life, as she gradually came to trust her psychiatrist, those symptoms faded into the background and the real problem emerged. Patricia had an unhappy marriage. She felt that her husband was cruel, selfish, demanding, and insensitive to her needs and most telling, she went to her marital bed as one might to the executioner.34 If it can be said that psychoanalysts read stories that are never finished, constantly displacing meanings to the next element on the chain of significationone symbol interpreted through a second, the second through the third, the third through the fourththen it can be said that frigidity advocates reversed that interpretative scheme. Their stories came to a sudden stop as soon as a sign of frigidity appeared. Thus everything became accessible, with nothing left to interpret or analyze, when Patricia told her psychiatrist that her husbands body appeared skinny, white, and ugly, with an enormous penis. It was as if he were nothing but a big disgusting sex organ, so offensive that she could feel no tenderness or warmthshe could not even simulate it. Forget the possibility that the husband may indeed have been cruel, selfish, demanding, and insensitive to her needs.35 Forget also the possibility that he was physically repulsive. The critical point is that through the frigidity lens, Patricia was repelled by her husband not because something about him evoked that response, not because her husbands behavior called forth that repulsion; she was repelled because of her pre-existing sexual pathology. Women Are to Blame

12

Earlier discourses on frigidity would have reached very different conclusions about Molly and Patricia. For instance, in 1926, in Frigidity in Woman, Wilhelm Stekel wrote, In reality no woman is frigid. Mans unadroitness and lack of experience is responsible in a large measure for the apparent sexual anaethesia in women.36 From Havelock Ellis perspective, The fact that a woman remains cool in the embrace of a man, or even in the embrace of several men successively, does not prove that she is not capable of strong sexual feeling; it only shows that these men were unable to awaken her sexual feeling.37 Since a womans passivity is innate, and therefore normal, according to Marie Bonaparte, her sexual response always depends upon the potency of her partner and especially upon the time he allows for gratification, which is usually achieved more slowly than his own.38 As gynecologist Robert L. Dickinson wrote, It takes two persons to make one frigid woman.39 Such assessments, however, carried little weight with true frigidity advocates. They were seen, first, as dangerously misleading because by declaring vaginal frigidity normal, the neurosis hiding behind this symptom is overlooked preventing medical scrutiny and treatment.40 Second, stressing the mans failure to awaken his wifes sexual feeling confuses cause with effect: The greatest Casanova is helpless against frigidity. It is not to be cured by tricks or by some special art of lovemaking.41 Even when the man is impotent, he is not responsible for his wifes frigidity: One must never forget that the coldness of the woman has an influence on the potency of the man. A sexually rejecting behavior on the part of the woman can call forth a psychic indifference toward her, even in a healthy man.42 In Psychiatrist Frank S. Caprios words, Few women realize that men are sexually sensitive. The penis may be merely an appendage of flesh but it has a soul as it were. When insulted it

13

behaves accordingly.43 Caprio went on to explain how many frigid wives, through an inconsiderate word or action, force their husbands to go on sexual strike. To illustrate, he shared the story of a man who attended a party with his wife where an attractive young woman approached and sat on his lap in a flirtatious fashion. This so outraged his wife that she slapped him across the face in front of everyone. A few weeks later, after she apologized, the husband attempted to put the incident behind him, but when he tried to resume sex relations with her, he could not perform. Caprio had no doubt as to the cause of the trouble: the husband had been psychically castrated by his wife. Though he continued trying to resume sex relations with her, he had no success. Finally in desperation he divorced his wife and married some other woman with whom he was sexually potent. His former wife never remarried and still regrets her costly mistake.44 This story has two morals. The first is that a woman is to blame when her husband leaves her for another. The second is that women have the capacity to make men impotent but only a woman is to blame for her failure to become sexually aroused. From Berglers vantage point, nothing is more laughable and, if you will, more tragic than a potent husband who believes he is responsible for his wifes frigidity.45 This is because a man looks upon his wifes frigidity from a position of absolutely stupid navete,46 a position the wife herself sustains through an almost endless series of manipulations and lies. Proof of this can be found in the consultation room where a woman who begins treatment for frigidity begs the therapist not to mention her frigidity to her husband who believes that she is beginning a cure for general nervousness.47 Proof can also be found in the bedroom where a great number of frigid women pretend to be satisfied, even after completely unsatisfactory intercourse.48 They

14

maintain this illusion of enjoying sex vaginally by holding the thighs closely together or they pretend to be highly excited, producing acrobatic movements.49 Or, just as often, they blame their failure to become sexually aroused on their husbands, as did one of Berglers patients, Mrs. H., when she described her husband as a block of ice, completely lacking in tenderness, unwilling to give her as much as a kiss or loving glance. When Bergler met with Mr. H. to assess the merits of his patients complaints, he found a man who gave the impression of being under court-martial. He was tense, his features frozen. Bergler asked, What about your alleged lack of tenderness? I hate the word, he answered bitterly. I get it as a reproach, served for breakfast and dinnerits my good luck that I dont take lunch at home. My wifes first word after awakening, her last one before going to bed, has something to do with that damned tenderness. It drives me crazy. Do you consider yourself a tender person? I dont know any more what the word means? My wife uses it as a whip.50 What messages did this dialogue convey? First: the woman is a shrew, the man, a sacrificial lamb. Under the cover of seeking tenderness, she nagged, demanded, criticized, until she finally obtained what she unconsciously desired: a sexless marriage. Second: the woman cannot be trusted. She portrayed herself as her husbands victim without acknowledging the role she played in creating her bloodless, benumbed block of ice, a style of reportage Bergler found characteristic of frigid women, in general. According to him, women suffering from the

15

inability to experience vaginal orgasm can be expected to always employ the most artful alibis and excuses in shifting blame onto their spouse (e.g., My husband has no respect for me as a lady. He asks me to use obscene words in bed, Normal sex has no attraction for my husband. He asks for all kinds of perversions, claiming Im a neurotic fool for refusing, My husband constantly reproaches me with frigidity. He just wants to be seduced and has no conception that civilized sex and jungle rape are two different things, My husband derives some vicarious pleasure from making all kinds of sexy allusions in the presence of our friends as if I were the sexual property of his friends too.), yet it never occurs to any of them to ask themselves why they chose their neurotic husbands in the first place, or how they accounted for their own frigidity.51 As Robinson summed up, the chief characteristic of women with this type of problem is evasiveness.52 The diagnostic problem posed by frigid womens lack of candor is easy enough to understand. If they could not be taken at their word, if they could not be trusted to give an honest straightforward account of their sexual arousal, their frigidity would have to be assigned on the basis of some other, more reliable source. Which is why true frigidity advocates proposed the examination of their vaginal contractions. As Hitschmann and Bergler insisted, the only objective sign of frigidity is absence of involuntary muscular contraction in the pelvic region during female orgasm.53 To test this hypothesis, gynecologist William S. Kroger, Berglers co-author, performed an experiment on a prostitute, Miss G. C., age 34, who claimed she could deceive her clients into believing she was having a vaginal orgasm by voluntarily contracting her pelvic and perineal muscles. Kroger inserted a Kegel perinometer into her vagina, and after she was asked to simulate orgasm, found that she was indeed able to move

16

the needle up 30 to 40 points at will. However, when he inserted his fingers into the depths of her vagina, and again asked her to simulate orgasm, he found she had no ability to contract the deeper vaginal muscles,54 which, while appearing to confirm the Hitschmann-Bergler hypothesis, led to another, related question: if measuring the contractions of the deeper vaginal muscles during coitus constituted the final test of frigidity, then how were physicians to make these observations? How could they gain access to something so private? The answer was simple, almost obvious. Bergler and Kroger argued that access could be facilitated through the cooperation of the patients husband: These contractions are felt in the part of the penis deepest in the vagina; hence vaginal orgasm can be readily ascertained by the male during the sex act provided he is aware of this fact.55 Thus, Kroger and Freed recommended that in cases where the frigidity diagnosis is uncertain, the physician should make inquiries of the husband as to the wifes response. He may help the husband to understand his wifes predicament by pointing out that in only one thing is the wife completely helpless, and that is in controlling the involuntary contractions of the pelvic and perineal muscles which occur at the end of coitus.56 What physicians gained by enlisting the husband in this way was not only direct access to his patients actual, unfiltered sexual responses; they gained the capacity to define her, supervise her, and neutralize any impulse toward resistance. As Bergler put it, A man can be deceived by a clever woman in many thingsin love, sensitivity, sexual interest, pleasure in intercourse. In only one thing is she helplessthe production of involuntary contractions.57 Expanding the Discourse

17

Critical though this information might have been for Hitschmann, Bergler and other physicians, it was not sufficient; it did not put an end to the inquiry since, for them, true frigidity was not a singular, either/or phenomenon. Again, undeterred by the threat of logical inconsistency (The sole criterion of frigidity is the absence of vaginal orgasm), they argued that it had gradations. Once a woman had been identified as truly frigid, that is, lacking involuntary contractions of the deeper vaginal muscles, her frigidity had to be located on a scale, the highest grade of which was total frigidity with vaginal anesthesia where the woman is wholly without sexual interest during intercourse. One grade lower, total frigidity with vaginal hypesthesia, the woman had slight excitement at the beginning of coitus and very slight sensitivity of the clitoris. Hitschmann and Bergler referred to the next grade as relative frigidity with vaginal hypesthesia, characterized by slight excitement throughout the act, which was followed by a fourth grade, relative frigidity with vaginal sensitivity, consisting of rising excitement but with no orgasm. In a fifth grade, clitoric orgasm with vaginal hypesthesia, there is orgasm in the clitoris but not the vagina, and, in the sixth, frigidity of the nymphomanic type, the woman feels strong excitement, mounting repeatedly, but, of course, no vaginal orgasm.58 So fine, and at the same time, so arbitrary were these gradations, that it seems no simple matter to understand where each woman belonged on the scale or just why it was necessary to position her. The one clear thing is the over-riding need to make women speak about their sexual responses, to understand where they originated, their precise location and intensity, and to do so in the most explicit terms. A couple of decades earlier physicians advised silence: Now, if you are one of those frigid or sexually anesthetic women, dont be in a

18

hurry to inform your husbands about it. To the man it makes no difference in the pleasurableness of the act whether you are frigid unless he knows that you are frigid. And he wont know unless you tell him, and what he doesnt know wont hurt him.59 Mid-century physicians, by contrast, not only wanted women to speak about their sexual sensations, they were determined to track them down to their most hidden depths, to rank and to categorize them, and to enroll husbands in the enterprise. For them, no detail was too small to expose, talk over, weigh, differentiate, judge. But these discursive expansions are perhaps not the most important. For behind the pretext of solving a womans frigidity problem, psychiatrists and gynecologists, using the language and theoretical structures of psychoanalysis, passed judgment not only on her sexuality, but on her autonomy; not only on her sexual sensations, but also on her potentialities and ways of functioning. To clarify the reach of this inquiry, one need cite only Hitschmann- Berglers Case A, the study of how sexual frigidity chilled every dimension of a twenty-six year old womans life, making her greedy, envious, hateful, sulky and vengeful, producing general irritability, evil temper toward the good-natured, self-sacrificing husband, inhibited working capacity, thoughts of killing her husband and marrying his brother, fantasies of murdering her child, and other fantasies, including one where she envisions her husband on his back with erect penis, and then attempts to tear him up or cut him up, to bite off his penis, or even nip it off with her vagina. And because frigidity implicated not only Case As dreams, fantasies, and early childhood memories but also the full range of her behavior in each of her adult relationships, curing her, according to Histchmann-Bergler, produced a global transformation: Through psychoanalysis she has changed into a happy being, capable of making others happy,

19

glad of her motherhood, but also satisfying her ambition professionally. The vexatious, unhappy marriage, with the threat of adultery hanging over it, thus became permanently satisfying for both partners. An unreasonably resentful personality, feeling crippled and slighted, has achieved a full blooming. A woman, freed from vaginal frigidity, has become a different and socially valuable person.60 To sum up, the true frigidity questions were not only: Is this woman frigid? To what level of frigidity does she belong? What are the signs of her arousal? They were also: How can we identify the forces that produced her frigidity? How did it emerge within her? What is wrong with her personality, her attitudes and fantasies, and the quality of her relationships? In other words, the discourse that seemed obsessed with a womans genitals, by their feelings and contractions, was also interested her heart, her intentions and activities, with particular emphasis on the ways she performed as her husbands companion and housekeeper. As Robinson formulated the discursive scope, The sad fact is that frigidity usually has a profound psychological connection on the individual. Her inadequacy is rooted in her childhood or adolescence, in early fears and misunderstandings, in events largely forgotten now. Around these early experiences, as crystals around a string, have clustered a whole series of personality traits that make life very hard for her and, much too often, unbearable for those nearest and dearest to herher husband and her children.61 To illustrate the latter point, Robinson described how one of her frigid patients made her husbands life miserable by continually dressing him down for neglecting to put his razor away and for leaving his pajamas in an untidy heap in a corner. These bad habits did not merely annoy her; they enraged her. She believed that her husbands untidiness reflected his desire to humiliate her, to demonstrate

20

that she had nothing better to do than pick up after him and wait on him hand and foot, and the more she spoke on this, the more hostile and belligerent she became, revealing how frigidity is not only inside women and is not limited to sexual matters. Rather, it affects each relationship a woman has, in its totality, from major issues and events, to the most mundane and least consequential.62 Constructing Normal Women As Bergler, Hitchsmann, and other physicians constructed the pathology and inferiority of the frigid, they simultaneously constructed the contrasting health and superiority of the non- frigidthe startling antithesis between the frigid woman who responds with astonishment and coldness, even with disgust, envy and hate, to being kissed, touched or caressed, as well as to the sexual act itself, and the healthy woman who, warmly passionate and fully alive, accompanies the orgasm with cries of rapture.63 To the degree they portrayed frigid neurotic women as unwilling to give men the satisfaction that they are capable of making them enjoy coitus, to that same degree they implicitly, and often explicitly, portrayed normal non-frigid women as delighted to give men that very satisfaction. As gynecologist Eugene G. Hamilton explained in a paper written for Missouri Medicine, the normal non-frigid woman is always ready to make love when her husband is ready (barring sickness, or certain times in pregnancy). Her deep altruism makes her extremely sensitive to his moods, and she will not find it in herself to treat him as if he were a robot, become angry or feel rejecting if, when the button is pushed, he does not respond. She will die a thousand deaths rather than make him feel sexually inadequate.64 Hamilton went on to explain that a normal non-frigid woman always follows

21

her husbands sexual lead. He decides whether they are going to make love, and the kind of lovemaking they will engage in and, in pure delight she follows him completely. Whether he feels lusty, gentle and tender, experimental or passive, she picks up the mood and responds delightedly.65 From Caprios perspective, if it can be said that during the sexual act, the frigid wife hears an inner voice telling her, Now is your time to display your sexual authority; punish him, take the pleasure out of his affection, then, at the opposite pole, the non-frigid woman hears an inner voice saying, With my body I thee worship.66 The more negative the characterizations of the frigid, the more deliriously positive the descriptions of the non-frigid, so that if the frigid woman expresses her frustration in the form of nagging, irritability, temper tantrums, weeping spells, etc.,67 the non-frigid woman must then be remorseless with herself and search for and exhume every last vestige of hostile and irrational emotion.68 If the frigid woman always has one complaint or other to lodge against her husband, humiliating him in company,69 the non-frigid woman, by contrast, recognizes that her aggression is directed towards his enemies, never toward him.70 In other words, in this discourse, we always had the ideal of the normal non-frigid woman at the same time asand precisely becausewe had her antithesis. That the frigid woman is full of anger and hatred for her husband,71 implied that the non-frigid woman listens, consoles, and helps him in any way she can. Her watchwords are: Patience, tenderness, understanding and forgiveness.72 Similarly, that frigid women are usually restrained, ill at ease and feel inadequate unless they are with their inferiors,73 that they are easily angered, aggressive and jealous,74 implied that the non-frigid woman seeks agreement, unity, and her

22

husbands happiness and peace of mind above all things. Having done this she has tapped the greatest psychologic joy of womanthat of giving.75 Robinson referred to the latter quality as essential female altruism, which blossoms in her joy in giving the very best of herself to her husband and to her children. She never resents this need in herself to give; she never interprets its manifestations as a burden to her, an imposition on her. It pervades her nature as the color green pervades the countryside in the spring, and she is proud of it and delights in it.76 If a frigid woman never sees her husband as he is, if his individual and essential quality is entirely unknown to her and unknowable by her,77 then the non-frigid woman makes the understanding of him one of her most important activities. By gaining such knowledge she is ultimately able to go to the very root of his personality, making an even deeper merging with him possible. Such understanding implies, of course, a great sensitivity to all his reactions. It makes her, too, inquire urgently (and creatively) into herself, so that no blocks to their deep psychologic communion can develop.78 The formula is consistent. Non-frigidity equals giving to men; frigidity equals withholding from them. A normal non-frigid wife takes no respites from devotion. She lives in a continuous frenzy of selflessness and self-abasement before the needs of husband and children. If she experiences any doubt as a result of these choicesany strange stirringshe has to stop herself by an act of will at the very threshold of that feeling and wipe it from consciousness. This repudiation is essential, according to Robinson, for five reasons: (1) Angry, rebellious feelings toward a husband are wrong: They have no real basis in fact; they do not pertain to the male as he is. No matter how real these negative attitudes appear to be, remember that they are only feelings, not reality.79 (2) A husband is an ally and protector: Far

23

from seeking to enslave our sex, to exploit us through his strength and his aggression, man has put these two great and basic characteristics at our service. It is (and always has been) this fact that makes it safe for us to be women, to bear his children with a sense of security, to rear them, knowing that he is there, always and forever, earning our bread, watching over us ceaselessly, keeping his terrible anxieties about us and our safety to himself so that we will not worry as he does.80 (3) Surrendering to him makes a woman beautiful: Drawn expressions relax, anxious forehead wrinkles disappear, thin-lipped mouths soften. Indeed her whole body rounds and softens, taking on the look associated with a tender and giving femininity.81 (4) Surrender produces sexual fulfillment: The ability to achieve normal orgasm can be called the physical counterpart of psychological surrender. In most cases of true frigidity it follows on a womans surrender of her rebellious and infantile attitudes as the day the night.82 And (5) surrender results in a trance-like euphoria characterized by a tremendous surging physical ecstasy in the feeling itself, in the feeling of being the passive instrument of another person, of being stretched out supinely beneath him, taken up will-lessly by his passion as leaves are swept up by the wind.83 The image of the normal non-frigid woman that emerges from such analyses is the same as the fluffy, passive feminine creature gaily content in the world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies, and home that filled womens magazines such as McCalls and Ladies Home Journal during the 1950s.84 Both portrayed womens subordinate role as natural, unalterable, and the source of innumerable advantages. The difference is that frigidity discourse came from physicians, and during the 1950s, with few exceptions, only the medically trained could write about the minutiae of sexual technique and arousal. They could discuss sexuality and body

24

parts with an explicitness forbidden to popular journalists and, given their status as clinicians, they had a direct influence over womens lives, particularly the lives of women who were ill and came to them for help. The Aftermath Frigidity was sanctioned as a diagnosis in the 1952 version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, but did not appear in the 1968 version, or any subsequent version. Between 1940 and 1979, fifty articles listed under Psychological Abstracts contained the term frigidity in the title but none after 1979.85 During the 1950s, The Yearbook of Obstetrics & Gynecology advised physicians to investigate patients for true frigidity following routine gynecological check-up, but never again afterward.86 This disappearance cannot be explained by diminished interest in womens sexual dysfunctions. The very opposite is true since that interest exploded with the publication of Masters and Johnsons Human Sexual Inadequacy in 1970.87 Rather, it reflects the influence of biological positivists such as Masters and Johnson and Kinsey who objected to frigidity research on scientific grounds: its reliance on case studies and small clinical samples, its disdain for controls and statistics, and its preoccupation with what could neither be observed nor measured unconscious processes.88 It also reflects the influence of second wave feminism. Beginning with Mary Ritter Beards critique of the cult of Freud,89 by the late-1960s feminist scholars had launched a full-scale assault on the practice of characterizing human traits as either masculine or feminine, with many focusing on the social and personal costs of feminine sexual dysfunctions, such as frigidity.90 In Dana Densmores words,

25

The suffering that countless women have endured because they were told that if they didnt have vaginal orgasms they were frigidthat they were neurotic and selfish and unwomanly and sexually maladjusted and unable to let go and give and secretly resented the power of their husbands and envied themthis suffering is staggering and heartbreaking.91 As a consequence of such critiques, sexuality researchers could no longer concentrate on womens desire alone, on their orgasmic responses alone, but were expected to situate them alongside mens, in a discourse aiming at gender neutrality. From an inquiry that focused on the essential differences between men and women, sexuality research shifted to mens and womens essential commonalities.92 Masters and Johnson in particular promoted the view that womens sexual responses are fundamentally similar to mens, so that if mens are seen as unfolding in more or less fixed stages, stage-specific conceptualizationse.g., excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolutionshould be the norm for women too.93 If inhibited sexual desire and orgasmic dysfunction are pathological in women, they should be pathological for both sexes in very similar ways. Thus, the definition of Inhibited Sexual Desire for Women in the DSM-III (partial or complete failure to attain or maintain the lubrication-swelling response of sexual excitement until completion of the sexual act) paralleled the definition of Inhibited Sexual Desire for Men (partial or complete failure to attain or maintain erection until completion of the sexual act94), as if some fundamental equivalency exists between a womans physiological sexual responses and a mans, and as if differences between a womans and mans subjective and objective realities, their socially-shaped wishes and aspirations, sex roles and sex role socialization, count for naught.

26

The main implication of this rhetorical shift, in Leonore Tiefers view, is that The DSM nomenclature, under the guise of strict gender equity ignores womens sexual preferences in favor of the primacy of the genital function.95 To put this somewhat differently, men and women appear the same in this new rhetoric because both are imagined as men. This is not an inconsequential change. It is not inconsequential because women who fail to enjoy sex in the genitally-focused way men are presumed to enjoy itin particular, in the genitally-focused way of youthful, heterosexual menbecome newly vulnerable to being swept into the psychiatric net. And this is exactly what happened. Contemporary estimates of the prevalence of womens disorders of desire and arousal appear almost as large as mid-century estimates of the prevalence of true frigidity with Female Hypoactive Desire Disorder appearing in 10 to 46 percent
of the general population, Female Sexual Desire Disorder in 6 to 21 percent, and Female Orgasmic Disorder in 4 to 7 percent.96 While a constructionist perspective cannot address whether such

estimates are validor whether women really are more likely to suffer from disorders of desire and arousal than menthis perspective does address how physicians persuaded themselves and others that such estimates and gender differences matter. We saw, for example, how psychiatrists and gynecologists connected true frigidity to an almost endless array of womens negative character traits and symptoms, creating a sense of its prominence and inevitability, a gender specific malady that implicated so many women in so many ways that by the close of the 1960s, physicians were speaking not only of sexual frigidity but of womens fear of being frigid as an explanation for sexual pathology.97 What made true frigidity take hold, however, what made it accepted for more than two decades, is that it did not merely weigh on people as a force that blamed and stigmatized. It also provided incentives. Mens

27

incentives included validating a Stepford-like fantasythe wish for a wife who responds with patience, tenderness, understanding, and forgivenessyet has a sex drive constantly set to on, a woman who follows her mans sexual lead in pure delight and would rather die a thousand deaths than make him feel sexually inadequate. Womens incentives included the promise that through hard psychoanalytic work and psychological surrender they could transform, like Hitschmann and Berglers Case A, from an irritable, unfeminine woman, feeling in every way inferior, into a happy being, capable of making others happy, confident in her femininity and the love of her husband and children.

28
1

See for example Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.,

1990); .Janice M. Irvine, Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sex Addiction, Social Text 37 (1993): 203-226; Alison Moore and Peter Cryle, Frigidity at the Fin de Siecle in France: A Slippery and Capacious Concept, Journal of the History of Sexuality 19(2010): 243-261; Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (Chicago, 2007); Carole Groneman, Nymphomania: A History (New York, 2001), David F. Greenburg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago, 1990).
2

Walter R. Stokes, Sexual Frigidity in Women, Medical Annals of the District of Columbia, 2(1933), 264. Theodore van de Velde, Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique (New York, 1926), 262. Edmund Bergler, Counterfeit Sex: Homosexuality, Impotence, Frigidity (New York, 1958), 294-295. This was a free psychoanalytic outpatient clinic. Eduard Hitschmann and Edmund Bergler, Frigidity in Women: Its Characteristics and Treatment, (New York, 1936).

The original German edition was published in Vienna, 1934.

7

Bergler and William S. Kroger, Kinseys Myth of Female Sexuality (New York, 1954), 168. Marie N. Robinson, The Power of Sexual Surrender (New York, 1959), 46. Frigid women constantly complain about their husbands neglect, Bergler wrote in Divorce Wont Help (New

York, 1948), 82.

10

Clifford R. Adams, When Husbands Are Less Ardent, Ladies Home Journal (Nov., 1957), 56. William S. Kroger and S. Charles Freed, Psychosomatic Aspects of Frigidity, Journal of the American Medical

11

Association, 143 (1950), 526. See also note 81 for how deeply and broadly the true frigidity influenced mainstream medicine.
12

See for example Groneman (2001); Moore and Cryle (2010); Suzanne Laba Cataldi, Sexuality Situated: Beauvoir

on Frigidity, Hypatia 14 (1999) 70-82; Peter Cryle, A Terrible Ordeal from Every Point of View: (Not) Managing Female Sexuality on the Wedding Night, Journal of the History of Sexuality 18 (2009):44-66; Alison Moore, Frigidity, Gender, and Power in French Cultural History: From Jean Fauconney to Marie Bonaparte, French Cultural Studies 20 (2009): 331-349; Alison Moore, Relocating Marie Bonapartes Clitoris, Australian Feminist

29
Studies 24 (2009): 149-165; Nellie L. Thompson, Marie Bonapartes Theory of Sexuality: Fantasy and Biology, American Imago 60 (2003) :343-378 .
13

Ann Koedt, The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, Notes from the First Year (New York, 1968), 11. Angus McLaren, Twentieth-Century Sexuality: A History, (Malden, Mass., 1999), 7. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (New York, 1933), 180. Bergler, The Problem of Frigidity, Psychiatric Quarterly 18 (1944), 389. To illustrate how influential this paper

14

15

16

was and how deeply true frigidity theory penetrated mainstream gynecology, the first two sentences of the quoted passage (The consequences of frigidity are often tragic for the woman ), appeared almost word for word in the 1953-1954 Year Book of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Chicago), under the heading frigidity in women, page 273, without quotation marks and without crediting Bergler.
17

See for example, Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967). Bergler and Kroger, 7. Hitschmann and Bergler, 20. Bergler (1948), 79-80. Bergler, Newer Genetic Investigations on Impotence and Frigidity, Menninger Clinic Bulletin 11 (1947), 57. Bergler (1948), 80. Bergler (1944), 382. Bergler (1944), 382. Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (New York, 1963), 43. The German edition appeared in 1905. Hitschmann and Bergler, 23, 48. Undeterred by the threat of logical inconsistency, Hitschmann-Bergler argued that even women who exhibit no

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

sign of neurosis or other mental illness can legitimately be labeled frigid. These normal yet frigid women could be swept into the net on the basis of their eccentric and generally irritating character traits, and included: (1) The excessively clean and stingy (anal) woman, entirely absorbed in her household. (2) The mentally restless woman, with overmasculine sublimation, constantly trying something new in an effort to enhance her reputation. (3) The woman who is forever attracting new men and trying them out in love affairs, seeking in vain a man who can

30
satisfy her, sometimes becoming a wanton through frigidity. (4) The one who is mystically inclined and seeks preeminence in another sphere. (5) The common type who compensate by card playing, excessive expenditure of money for clothes, traveling alone, etc. (6) The resigned wife, suffering masochistically, who knows how to derive guilt and suffering from marriage. (7) The wife who always has one complaint or another to lodge against her husband, humiliating him in company, without quite knowing why. (8) The woman who compensates for her disappointment in love through harmful overtenderness toward her children. (9) The woman who withdraws within herself, masturbating with feelings of guilt, even after coitus. (10) The type childwife, etc. (p.4).
28

Renatus Hartogs, Analysts Couch, Cosmopolitan (Oct., 1969) 60. Hitschmann and Bergler, 43. Hitschmann and Bergler, 38-39. Robinson, 117-122. Hitschmann and Bergler, 21. Bergler and Kroger, 87. Robinson, 98. Robinson, 98. Wilhelm Stekel, Frigidity in Woman (New York, 1926), 123. Quoted in Stekel, 118. Marie Bonaparte, Passivity, Masochism and Femininity, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 16 (1935), 327. Quoted in Hannah M. Stone and Abraham Stone, A Marriage Manual (New York, 1937), 256, with 1931 as the

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

quotation year.
40

Bergler and Kroger, 184. Bergler (1944), 389. Bergler (1944), 389. Frank S. Caprio, The Sexually Inadequate Female (New York, 1953), 145. Caprio, 147.

41

42

43

44

45

Bergler, (1944), 380.

31
46

Bergler (1948), 380. Bergler (1944), 380. Hitschmann and Bergler, Frigidity in WomenRestatement and Renewed Experiences, Psychoanalytic Review

47

48

36 (1949), 51.
49

Bergler (1947), 57. Bergler (1948), 70. Bergler, Conflict in Marriage (New York, 1949), 110-111. Robinson, 72. Hitschmann and Bergler (1949), 51. Bergler and Kroger, 71. Bergler and Kroger, The Dynamic Significance of Vaginal Lubrication to Frigidity, Western Journal of Surgery,

50

51

52

53

54

55

Obstetrics, & Gynecology 6 (1953), 713.

56

Kroger and Freed, Psychosomatic Gynecology (Philadelphia, 1951), 295. Bergler (1944), 379. Hitschmann and Bergler (1936), 20-21. William J. Robinson, Married Life and Happiness (New York, 1922), 84. Hitschmann and Bergler (1936), 50-57. Robinson, 43. Robinson, 133. Hitschmann and Bergler (1936), 18. Eugene G. Hamilton, Frigidity in the Female, Missouri Medicine 58 (1961), 1041. Hamilton, 1041. Caprio, 84, 44. Caprio, 14. Hamilton, 1047. Hitschmann and Bergler (1936), 5.

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

32
70

Bergler (1948), 216. Bergler (1944), 385. Bergler (1948), 217. Flanders Dunbar, Emotions and Bodily Changes (New York, 1954), 534. Bergler (1944), 382. Hamilton, 1049. Robinson, 32. Hamilton, 1046. Hamilton, 1046. Robinson, 135. Robinson, 149. Robinson, 155-156. Robinson, 157. Robinson, 158. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York, 1963), 36. Mark L. Elliott, The Use of Impotence and Frigidity: Why Has Impotence Survived, Journal of Sex and

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

Marital Therapy 11 (1985): 51-56.

86

See note 13 for a discussion of how the true frigidity theory influenced The Year Book of Obstetrics and

Gynecology (Chicago) during the 1950s.

87

Janice M. Irvine, 1993. See Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia,

88

1948); Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, and Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Bloomington, Indiana, 1953); William Masters and Virginia Johnson, Human Sexual Response (Boston, 1966); Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Inadequacy (New York, 1970).
89

Mary R. Beard, Woman as Force in History: A Study in Traditions and Realities (New York, 1946).

33
90

See for example, Koedt (1968); Mary Jane Sherfey, The Evolution of Female Sexuality in Relation to

Psychoanalytic Theory, Journal of the American Analytic Association 14 (1966): 28-125. Susan Lydon, Understanding Orgasm, Ramparts 7 (1968); Ti-Grace Atkinson, The Institution of Sexual Intercourse, in Notes from the Second Year. This essay can also be found in Atkinsons collected essays, Amazon Odyssey (New York, 1977); Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (New York, 1970); Barbara Seaman, The Liberated Orgasm, Ms. 1 (1972):55-59; Dana Densmore, Independence from the Sexual Revolution, in No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation, reprinted in Radical Feminism (New York, 1973): 107-118.
91

Densmore, 103. Leonore Tiefer, Critique of the DSM-III-R Nosology of Sexual Dysfunctions, Psychiatric Medicine 10 (1992): 227-

92

245.
93

See Masters and Johnson (1966, 1970). See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3 . ed.
rd

94

(Washington, D.C., 1980) and Cynthia A. Graham, The DSM Diagnostic Criteria for Female Sexual Arousal Disorder, Archives of Sexual Behavior 24 (2009), 241.
95

Tiefer, 242. Jennifer E. Frank, Patricia Mistretta, and Joshua Will, Diagnosis and Treatment of Female Sexual Dysfunction,

96

American Family Physician 77 (2008), 636. .

97

Hartogs (1969), 60.