FRIGIDITY IN WOMAN

Abstract

It is characteristic of psychic disorders that their onset is often so insidious and symptom manifestations so subtle as to escape completely the attention of both the patient and the physician. It is not surprising, therefore, that the subject of female frigidity, so universally common, should have so far escaped the better insight of the medical profession, and that it should have fallen to the lot of the psychotherapist to illumine this dark corner of human behavior. Toward the solution of this and related problems, the pioneer psychoanalyst, Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, devotes two large volumes which contain material and discussion of about ninety cases, some analyzed with great clarity and detail. The work treats of the psychic disorders of woman's love life which manifest themselves as sexual frigidity (dyspareunia, anesthesia).1The account, like that of impotence in man, is difficult for the reason that psychic and physical disorders influence