There could scarcely be a better illustration of the whole theory of modern psychoanalysis than this. To Joan, at least, it was eminently clear. Her terror, expressed by her dream of the pursuing policewomen, disappeared before that session was over, and she stood ready to move into a mature and satisfying sexuality with her husband. With her conscious mind she now knew that she had been frightened of complete sexual love because, in the highest reaches of passion, her feelings for her husband unconsciously reminded her of the “dangerous” feelings she bad once felt for her father; thus she dared not indulge them to the utmost. Understanding the irrational basis of her fears allowed her to dispense with them. _Chapter 11_ THE MASCULINE WOMAN She was a strikingly handsome woman. I looked at her as she sat opposite me in my office and I remember being struck by the extreme femininity of her appearance: the glossy, clean softness of her brown hair, the peaches-and-cream texture of her complexion, the care she had given her toilette and her clothes. Everything was perfect. I recall I thought then: “Perhaps a little too perfect. It’s almost as if she is dressing for a role.” First impressions are not always correct, but in this case mine were. My new patient, whom I shall call Toni (her real nickname was also based on a boy’s name) was suffering from the form of frigidity that is often called the “masculinity complex.” She was, in short, the “clitoridal woman,” whose general characteristics we looked at briefly before. Her case is so typical and illustrates so many aspects of this very widespread type of frigidity that I have selected it to tell here. In my first sessions with her I could see that Toni’s clear thinking and logical mind, her emotionless, almost masculine forthrightness in expressing herself belied her softly feminine appearance. Her way of dressing was an unconscious attempt to hide from the world, and from herself, her real problem. She was thirty years old, had been married for seven years, and had a five-year-old son. For the past two years she had had severe migraine headaches, sometimes as often as three times a week. These headaches had started at about the same time that serious marriage difficulties had developed between herself and her husband. The problem, she stated honestly, had originated with her. Rather quickly she seemed to have lost all respect for her husband. Looking at him one day, she said, she suddenly saw that he had no ambition of any kind and was “insufferably smug and complacent.” He had not the slightest desire to better his lot, she realized, but was content to putter around in his cellar workshop with “inane and useless projects” or to spend his evenings “glued to the television set” or playing poker with a few “useless men.”