Another more or less neurotic trait which acts as a cause of disharmony in the marital relationship is the sexual anaesthesia which is not at all uncommon in modern women.  The absence of any erotic passion is held to be a matter of physiological makeup by many authorities, but it is probably more often due to the inhibition of natural tendencies in accordance with concepts built up by social tradition.  In order to understand how social suggestion can have so powerful an effect upon the reactions of the individual, we must revert once more to the principles of behaviouristic psychology.

According to Watson,[4] whenever the environmental factors are such that a direct expression of an emotion cannot occur, the individual has to have recourse to implicit motor attitudes.  The best example in everyday life is probably seen in the case of anger, which can seldom be permitted to find an outlet in the natural act of striking, etc.  It is apparent, however, in the facial expression and in a certain muscular posture which can best be described as a “defiant” attitude.  Another good example is the submissive attitude which often accompanies the emotion of fear.  It is manifest in shrinking, avoiding movements, sometimes of the whole body, but more often of the eyes or some other special organ.

“In the sphere of love,” Watson remarks, “there are numerous attitudes as shown by the popular expressions lovelorn, lovesick, tenderness, sympathy.  More fundamental and prominent attitudes are those of shyness, shame, embarrassment, jealousy, envy, hate, pride, suspicion, resentment, anguish, and anxiety."[4]

The significant fact is that these attitudes function by limiting the range of stimuli to which the person is sensitive.  The attitude of shame concerning their sexual functions, which has been impressed upon women as a result of ages of thinking in harmony with taboo standards, thus is able to prevent the normal biological response to a situation which should call out the emotions of love.  In women who have an unstable nervous system this shameful feeling often results in a definite physiological shrinking from the physical manifestations of sexuality and renders the individual insensitive to all erotic stimulation.

This attitude of shame in connection with the love life came into existence as a socially conditioned emotional reaction set up under the influence of the traditional ideal of the “model woman” who was pictured as a being of unearthly purity and immaculacy.  It has been passed on from generation to generation through an unconscious conditioning of the daughter’s attitude by suggestion and imitation to resemble that of the mother.  Thus it happens that although an increasing amount of liberty, both social and economic, and a more rational and scientific understanding of the womanly nature, have quite revoked this ideal in theory, in actual practice it still continues to exert its inhibitory and restrictive influence.