Freud - Complete Works (402 page)

   Wherever primitive man has set up
a taboo he fears some danger and it cannot be disputed that a
generalized dread of women is expressed in all these rules of
avoidance. Perhaps this dread is based on the fact that woman is
different from man, forever incomprehensible and mysterious,
strange and therefore apparently hostile. The man is afraid of
being weakened by the woman, infected with her femininity and of
then showing himself incapable. The effect which coitus has on
discharging tensions and causing flaccidity may be the prototype of
what the man fears; and realization of the influence which the
woman gains over him through sexual intercourse, the consideration
she thereby forces from him, may justify the extension of this
fear. In all this there is nothing obsolete, nothing which is not
still alive among ourselves.

The Taboo Of Virginity

2355

   Many observers of primitive races
living to-day have put forward the view that their impulsions in
love are relatively weak and never reach the degree of intensity
which we are accustomed to meet with in civilized men. Other
observers have contradicted this opinion, but in any case the
practice of the taboos we have described testifies to the existence
of a force which opposes love by rejecting women as strange and
hostile.

   Crawley, in language which
differs only slightly from the current terminology of
psycho-analysis, declares that each individual is separated from
the others by a ‘taboo of personal isolation’, and that
it is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise
alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility
between them. It would be tempting to pursue this idea and to
derive from this ‘narcissism of minor differences’ the
hostility which in every human relation we see fighting
successfully against feelings of fellowship and overpowering the
commandment that all men should love one another. Psycho-analysis
believes that it has discovered a large part of what underlies the
narcissistic rejection of women by men, which is so much mixed up
with despising them, in drawing attention to the castration complex
and its influence on the opinion in which women are held.

   We can see, however, that these
latter considerations have led us to range far beyond our subject.
The general taboo of women throws no light on the particular rules
concerning the first sexual act with a virgin. As far as they are
concerned, we have not got beyond the first two explanations, based
on horror of blood and fear of first occurrences, and even these,
we must point out, do not touch the core of the taboo in question.
It is quite clear that the intention underlying this taboo is that
of
denying or sparing precisely the future husband
something
which cannot be dissociated from the first sexual act, although
according to our introductory observations this very relation would
lead to the woman becoming specially bound to this one man.

The Taboo Of Virginity

2356

   It is not our task on this
occasion to discuss the origin and ultimate significance of taboo
observances. I have done this in my book
Totem and Taboo
,
where I have given due consideration to the part played by primal
ambivalence in determining the formation of taboo and have traced
the genesis of the latter from the prehistoric events which led to
the founding of the human family. We can no longer recognize an
original meaning of this kind in taboos observed among primitive
tribes to-day. We forget all too easily, in expecting to find any
such thing, that even the most primitive peoples exist in a culture
far removed from that of primaeval days, which is just as old as
our own from the point of view of time and like ours corresponds to
a later, if different, stage of development.

   To-day we find taboos among
primitive peoples already elaborated into an intricate system of
just the sort that neurotics among ourselves develop in their
phobias, and we find old
motifs
replaced by new ones that
fit together harmoniously. Leaving aside these genetic problems,
then, we will go back to the idea that primitive man institutes a
taboo where he fears some danger. Taking it generally this danger
is a psychical one, for primitive man is not impelled at this point
to make two distinctions, which to us it seems cannot be
disregarded. He does not separate material from psychical danger,
nor real from imaginary. In his consistently applied animistic view
of the universe, every danger springs from the hostile intention of
some being with a soul like himself, and this is as much the case
with dangers which threaten him from some natural force as it is
with those from other human beings or animals. But on the other
hand he is accustomed to project his own internal impulses of
hostility on to the external world, to ascribe them, that is, to
the objects which he feels to be disagreeable or even merely
strange. In this way women also are regarded as being a source of
such dangers, and the first act of sexual intercourse with a woman
stands out as a danger of particular intensity.

The Taboo Of Virginity

2357

   Now I believe that we shall
receive some indication as to what this heightened danger is and
why it threatens precisely the future husband, if we examine more
closely the behaviour under the same circumstances of women of our
own stage of civilization to-day. I will submit in advance, as the
result of this examination, that such a danger really exists, so
that with the taboo of virginity primitive man is defending himself
against a correctly sensed, although psychical, danger.

   We consider it to be the normal
reaction for a woman after intercourse to embrace the man, pressing
him to her at the climax of satisfaction, and we see this as an
expression of her gratitude and a token of lasting bondage. But we
know it is by no means the rule that the first occasion of
intercourse should lead to this behaviour; very frequently it means
only disappointment for the woman, who remains cold and
unsatisfied, and it usually requires quite a long time and frequent
repetition of the sexual act before she too begins to find
satisfaction in it. There is an unbroken series from these cases of
mere initial frigidity which soon vanishes, up to the cheerless
phenomenon of permanent and obstinate frigidity which no tender
efforts on the part of the husband can overcome. I believe this
frigidity in women is not yet sufficiently understood and, except
for those cases which must be blamed on the man’s
insufficient potency, calls for elucidation, possibly through
allied phenomena.

   I do not want to introduce at
this point the attempts - which are so frequent - to take flight
from the first occasion of sexual intercourse, because they are
open to several interpretations and are in the main, although not
altogether, to be understood as an expression of the general female
tendency to take a defensive line. As against this, I do believe
that light is thrown on the riddle of female frigidity by certain
pathological cases in which, after the first and indeed after each
repeated instance of sexual intercourse, the woman gives
unconcealed expression to her hostility towards the man by abusing
him, raising her hand against him or actually striking him. In one
very clear case of this kind, which I was able to submit to a
thorough analysis, this happened although the woman loved the man
very much, used to demand intercourse herself and unmistakably
found great satisfaction in it. I think that this strange,
contradictory reaction is the result of the very same impulses
which ordinarily can only find expression as frigidity - which,
that is, can hold back the tender reaction without at the same time
being able to put themselves into effect. In the pathological case
we find separated so to speak into its two components what in the
far more common instance of frigidity is united to produce an
inhibiting effect, just like the process we have long recognized in
the so-called ‘diphasic symptoms’ of obsessional
neurosis. The danger which is thus aroused through the defloration
of a woman would consist in drawing her hostility down upon
oneself, and the prospective husband is just the person who would
have every reason to avoid such enmity.

The Taboo Of Virginity

2358

   Now analysis enables us to infer
without difficulty which impulses in women take part in bringing
about this paradoxical behaviour, in which I expect to find the
explanation of frigidity. The first act of intercourse mobilizes a
number of impulses which are out of place in the desired feminine
attitude, some of which, incidentally, need not recur during
subsequent intercourse. In the first place we think of the pain
which defloration causes a virgin, and we are perhaps even inclined
to consider this factor as decisive and to give up the search for
any others. But we cannot well ascribe such importance to this
pain; we must rather substitute for it the narcissistic injury
which proceeds from the destruction of an organ and which is even
represented in a rationalized form in the knowledge that loss of
virginity brings a diminution of sexual value. The marriage customs
of primitive peoples, however, contain a warning against
over-estimating this. We have heard that in some cases the rite
falls into two phases: after the hymen has been ruptured (by hand
or with some instrument) there follows a ceremonial act of coitus
or mock-intercourse with the representatives of the husband, and
this proves to us that the purpose of the taboo observance is not
fulfilled by avoiding anatomical defloration, that the husband is
to be spared something else as well as the woman’s reaction
to the painful injury.

   We find a further reason for the
disappointment experienced in the first act of intercourse in the
fact that, with civilized women at least, fulfilment cannot be in
accordance with expectations. Before this, sexual intercourse has
been associated in the strongest possible way with prohibitions;
lawful and permissible intercourse is not, therefore, felt to be
the same thing. Just how close this association can be is
demonstrated in an almost comic fashion by the efforts of so many
girls about to be married to keep their new love-relationship
secret from everyone outside, and indeed even from their parents,
where there is no real necessity to do so and no objection can be
looked for. Girls often say openly that their love loses value for
them if other people know of it. On occasion this feeling can
become dominating and can completely prevent the development of any
capacity for love in a marriage. The woman only recovers her
susceptibility to tender feelings in an illicit relationship which
has to be kept secret, and in which alone she knows for certain
that her own will is uninfluenced.

   However, this motive does not go
deep enough either; besides, being bound up with civilized
conditions, it fails to provide a satisfactory connection with the
state of affairs among primitive people. All the more important,
therefore, is the next factor, which is based on the evolution of
the libido. We have learnt from analytic researches how universal
and how powerful the earliest allocations of libido are. In these
we are concerned with infantile sexual wishes which are clung to
(in women usually a fixation of the libido on the father or a
brother who takes his place) - wishes which frequently enough were
directed towards other things than intercourse, or included it only
as a dimly perceived goal. The husband is almost always so to speak
only a substitute, never the right man; it is another man - in
typical cases the father - who has first claim to a woman’s
love, the husband at most takes second place. It depends on how
intense this fixation is and on how obstinately it is maintained
whether the substitute is rejected as unsatisfying. Frigidity is
thus among the genetic determinants of neuroses. The more powerful
the psychical element in a woman’s sexual life is, the
greater will be the capacity for resistance shown by her
distribution of libido to the upheaval of the first sexual act, and
the less overpowering will be the effect which bodily possession of
her can produce. Frigidity may then become established as a
neurotic inhibition or provide the foundation for the development
of other neuroses and even a moderate diminution of potency in the
man will greatly contribute to help this process.

The Taboo Of Virginity

2359

   The customs of primitive peoples
seem to take account of this
motif
of the early sexual wish
by handing over the task of defloration to an elder, priest or holy
man, that is, to a substitute for the father (see above). There
seems to me to be a direct path leading from this custom to the
highly vexed question of the
jus primae noctis
of the
mediaeval lord of the manor. A. J. Storfer (1911) has put forward
the same view and has in addition, as Jung (1909) had already done
before him, interpreted the widespread tradition of the
‘Tobias nights’ (the custom of continence during the
first three nights of marriage) as an acknowledgement of the
privilege of the patriarch. It agrees with our expectations,
therefore, when we find the images of gods included among the
father-surrogates entrusted with defloration. In some districts of
India, the newly-married woman was obliged to sacrifice her hymen
to the wooden lingam, and, according to St. Augustine’s
account, the same custom existed in the Roman marriage ceremony (of
his time?), but modified so that the young wife only had to seat
herself on the gigantic stone phallus of Priapus.¹

   There is another motive, reaching
down into still deeper layers, which can be shown to bear the chief
blame for the paradoxical reaction towards the man, and which, in
my view, further makes its influence felt in female frigidity. The
first act of intercourse activates in a woman other impulses of
long standing as well as those already described, and these are in
complete opposition to her womanly role and function.