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Freud felt that the psychic process paralleled the physiological; that it was a dependent variable. His sexual theory is a purely psychoanalytic one in which the biological evidence must be supplied at a later date by the physiologist and anatomist. In an effort to do this, Heiman discusses recent findings in regard to the nature of the sexual response in women.
The vagina plays a dual role—in propagation and sexual pleasure. Phylogenetically, the two manifestations of the normal female response, lubrication and muscular contraction, were chiefly in the service of reproduction, and only later came to promote the pleasure, unique among female mammals, of orgasm. In the main, the surface one third of the vagina can be regarded as serving pleasure ends and the deeper two thirds, including the uterus, as serving the ends of procreation.
In coitus, the synchronized, rhythmic movements of uterus, vagina, and phallus facilitate the passage of sperm from penis through vagina to uterus. Contrary to Freud's opinion, the female is an active coöperator in conception, and her various neurotic disturbances can prevent conception or gestation.
Coitus is genetically associated 'to the sucking experience of the woman as an infant, … to pregnancy, to the birth of the baby-to-be-conceived, and to the suckling of that baby'. Through identification with her own mother and her own child, three generations are united in coitus, and the male serves as the