Frigidity in Women1

Despite the long-standing theoretical and clinical interest of psychoanalysts in female sexuality, the panel discussion summarized in this report was the first of this Association to consider specifically the problem of frigidity. It was appropriately organized under the chairmanship of Helene Deutsch, who chose in her introduction to take a stand based on her many years of work in female psychology. Because her remarks provide a succinct statement of the considered viewpoint of one who is the respected dean of this field of psychoanalytic investigation, more attention will be given to them in this report than is usually devoted to the chairman's orientation of a panel.

Helene Deutsch said that after the publication of her two volumes on female psychology in 1944, consultations, short-term therapy, and other contacts with the subject had given her an opportunity for a macroscopic review of the psychic events and psychopathology which she had previously seen microscopically in analysis. She was shocked by the high incidence of so-called frigidity in women and disappointed in the results of psychoanalytic treatment for it. Cases of very severe neurotic illness had been helped without eliminating this problem. She saw psychotic women and aggressive, masculine women who experienced intense vaginal orgasm, while loving, giving, maternal, and happy women did not, even though they felt fully gratified.

Many conditions, she said, have to be fulfilled before a woman reaches orgastic capacity: (1) influences of pregenital and preoedipal developments have to be conquered; (2) oedipal problems have to be solved; (3) bisexuality has to be resolved; (4) the main source of sexual inhibition, feminine masochism, has to be under full control; (5) object relations must be on a postambivalent basis. Not only may disturbances in every single phase of development become a source of frigidity, but so may the psychological meaning of reproductive functions themselves, including coitu