A lovely actress I was treating for a rather severe frigidity problem came for her regular hour one day and paused on the threshold of my office. She appeared different--her face was softer, her motions slower--she was elated, and I felt at once that she had experienced the first reward for the hard work she had put upon her problem. I was right and shall never forget her method of telling it. She had on a lovely pink cape; its flowing lines and delicate color seemed to express the very essence of the feminine. As she stood smiling at me she unbuttoned the cape and with a beautiful gesture threw it on the floor between us. “Thus we can cast it away,” she said. Then, stooping, she picked it up. “And _thus_,” she said, “we can put it on again,” and with a flourish she put it back on her shoulders. That hour was a celebration of her new-found capacity. Her histrionic gesture, expressive of so much happiness in her, was not only graceful but was deeply symbolic of woman’s sexual nature. To see why this is so, let us first turn our attention to the biological meaning of the sexual drive. You perhaps know that every animal is motivated by a profound instinctual need to preserve his species. His nature has developed those characteristics that ensure the ongoingness of his kind, lemmings excepted, perhaps. We know that characteristics that _do_ ensure the species are, so to speak, more deeply rooted in the biology of a given animal than characteristics that are not absolutely necessary to the preservation of a species. Now, in the human animal and in many other species, sexual intercourse is the basic method by which the species is continued. In this elemental instinctual activity the male deposits his sperm in the receptive female, who then, within her body, nurtures and protects it until it is ready for birth. But here’s the important point: In order to deposit his sperm, the male _must have an orgasm_. If he did not, the sperm could not be deposited inside the female. Thus the male orgasm is absolutely necessary to the continuation of the species. If the male had ever lost his ability to have an orgasm the species would have disappeared from the face of the earth. However, it is not a biological _necessity_ for woman to have an orgasm to fulfill her sexual role. It is only necessary for her to receive the sperm. The mere reception of it, no matter how unresponsive she may be to the ardors of the male, fully discharges her duty to the species of mankind. Maternity, not orgasm, is her biological duty. She can be as frigid as the polar cap and it will not necessarily affect her ability to have children in the slightest degree.